[VOTE] Distorted Challenge - May 2022

V8

Four entries for the Distorted challenge this month. We got some brutal riffage and some melodic shreddage, just what the doctor told you not to enjoy 😅

Please have a listen and vote for you favourite - no prizes this month - but Bonus points for comments and feedback 👍️

Friendly reminder, the poll is up and working, though you'll still have to view voters to to count the votes

Voting closes Monday, 16th May 2022 at midday

Onto the entries!

Meticus - Momentum

I've something ready... At first I thought of distorting my pipes to make it even more icepicky... 🤣
But I decided to restrict distortion to the guitar 😃
I recorded pipes and guitar (2 channels each) and added synthetic bass, drums and a little choir to make it a bit epic 😅

Guidothepimmp - Distortion Challenge Done

Some wins on this one, and some losses. The win, a big one in my book, my first take at programming my own drums. Are they perfect? No, but the learning curve was a massive plus for me, hopefully this unblocks a lot of stuff going forward.
The loss, I am at a complete block for lead playing. Find myself in such a small box that it is frustrating and discouraging all at once.
That said, no dwelling on it, here is the entry warts and all. I lost patience with trying to clean it up. Enjoy!

V8 - The Sundae Special

My opportunity to deliver a solid icepicking. Started in the morning and had a couple sessions during the day. No time to mix (sadly) or add any leads (thankfully).

Used the Distortion factory pedal (Metal Zone) into two tracks, one direct and one with IR's. The pedal's onboard cab sim is actually quite good compared to the IR's - but I used the IR's - didn't have time/patience to re-track guitars. There's a track of bass that adds back some of the mids that I scooped out the guits 😏

- SydVicious (via Discord) - Skyfall

Hi all. For some reason I thought I had another week, and I only started my track on Friday. If it’s allowed, I’ll put down the last one I did (ie, it wasn’t done for this challenge), so feel free to “disqualify” it 😊

*And if you just wanna run through the entries without clicking here's a playlist:

Thank YOU for listening & Enjoy!

guidothepimmp

Groovy. Thanks V8

domhatch

well, my usual response is that i gotta go listen on the monitors.
then i never get around to it, and never get to vote.
so, in top to bottom order:
Meticus - a true rock n rollin' track, beginning to end. grabs you by the short n curlies, love the instrumentation. the second half is proper lekker.
GTP - luuuurv the drums. one note for me though: a little less china (or is it crash?), a little more ride – (personal preference), the geetah on the intro is special man. and then... and then – BOOM! this is a classic mate.
V8 - this is a typical V8 sound (meant as a compliment) to my mind. love the little incidentals. (do i detect a hint of the Duke in there somewhere?) very nice man...
SydVicious - this is a great take on the track. nothing to add...

great work all round folks!
dh|

guidothepimmp

domhatch cheers mate. That point on ride vs crash makes a helluva lot of sense. Will definitely keep that in mind. Ta

domhatch

ok, so. dumb question. how do i vote again?

V8

domhatch The polling software is kinda broken - click the preferred box, it is counting the votes, I promise. So while the counter won't indicate it, you can check for whom you voted by then clicking the "View Voters" red button . (You don't have to click the View Voters button to confirm a vote, it's merely to be able to see the votes.)

domhatch

V8 just a quick thing - in firefox, couldn't see the select boxes. chrome seems fine, will check now on safari.

safari is working fine, too.
dh|

domhatch

Ta.

domhatch

guidothepimmp i opine in a personal capacity, that's all.

studmissile

Initial listen sounds good. Nice one gents.

V8

Meticus : Ok, explain why you didn't distort the pipes, was the golden opportunity 😆 Perfect entry otherwise, guitars tight, upbeat & entertaining melody throughout. Have you ever recorded the pipes with some guitar/bass fx?

GTP : SOAD aerials into some MonsterMagnet/Audioslave? Drums were great, how much time did they take? Rhythm guitars phat but a touch fizzy (like I'm one to talk 😉 ), but in the quieter section (+/-2m50s) I could hear a lot of line noise between the notes, were you using pedal/amp offboard or all in the box?

Me: Dom nailed it, "in the style of V8" with a sprinkling of Duke 🤐 . Tons I'd change, drums #1. There are pluses - got to record with the distortion factory pedal and I'm even more impressed with it. Got to record a reasonably tight 16th groove too, which is something I've been working on for a few months. Oh and squealage was made. Heh.

SydVicious - Dig me a Bond theme and Adele's Skyfall was a great one to metal-ize. 👍️ Rhythm track is superb, drums, guits, bass - Epic, proper Bond theme feeling. The lead guitar doing the vocal line had me wondering if you playing slide or using a whammy at time to warble/vibrato the notes for that vocal sustain, it seemed slightly out of tune at times? Outro solo was cool!

Thanks for the entries guys, I really enjoyed each one this month. ⚡️

Meticus

Great tracks again! Well done, guys! I personally like distortion, great challenge topic 😁
Interesting songs and quite difficult to compare, tough vote (as always).

V8 Have you ever recorded the pipes with some guitar/bass fx?

I once twiddled with a virtual amp a bit for a pipe recording. But I didn' continue this, don't know why, it was some time ago. Maybe the result was not so interesting. Or it was tooooo icepicky, even for me 😅 Perhaps I will revive that little experiment some day 😁

guidothepimmp

Haha.. yeh there was line noise alright. That was thanks to the single coils in the tele and the high gain amp. Thats some of the noise i gave up trying to clean up. 😁🤘
Re the drums.. thanks. Yeh i was pleased with the effort. I had 3 takes. The first took about 5 hours. Ended up turfing it. The second took about 2hrs. Ended up turfing that too. Havimg learnt a bunch of lessons from takes 1 and 2.. the last take took about 40mins. I would say once i have the hang of it.. it could comfortably be done in 20odd mins

V8

guidothepimmp That was thanks to the single coils in the tele and the high gain amp.

Haha, that'll do it - I know a tele will cut through any mix...but you've got some nice humbucker'ed guits lying around?>

guidothepimmp . it could comfortably be done in 20odd mins

Can you do mine next challenge? 😅 Took me a hour just to find three kak ones, I really needed some dbl kicks in mine.

One thing I didn't mention, I got to use a couple theremin samples - i thought they worked great - so all doubts I had about theremin's usefulness have been dispelled. 😁

V8

Morning All, voting for the Distorted challenge voting closes tomorrow Midday! Get them votes in while you can...

Soundcloud playlist to tempt you to listen/vote:

klaasvakie

Awesome work guys.

@Meticus - your pipes sound great as always - this time around you really sounded comfortable on guitar, nice one.
@guidothepimmp - I think you put a lot of work into this one, and it shows. Loved all of it, and got my vote, but I think your palm mutes are specially tidy and deserve a mention. I find it difficult to keep those nice and chunky when I have lots of gain.
@V8 - Great use of samples in this. Think your inner bass player is shining through, this has a great groove to it - head bopping for sure.
@Syd Maritz - That first distorted hit sounds great - reminds me of Our Lady Peace or one of those early 2000s bands. Brave to take on such an iconic tune and very well executed. Love the dark turn at 2:50. If I had to give criticism I think the cymbal (china?) you used during the main Skyfall theme is too hissy (at least on my setup)

studmissile

All winners, had to really nitpick through them.

Meticus: Those pipe leads needed some distortion.

Guidothepimmp: My vote.

V8: Runner up.

SydVicious: Tall order, very impressive. Loved the solo at the end.

V8

Apologies all, was hectic this week!

Well done @guidothepimmp, this month's challenge winnnnnna! 🏅 🥳

Many thanks to those that voted and commented - always much appreciated!

Our pimmpy wonder has the dubious honour of choosing the next topic 😀 But let's help a brother out - if you have any idea's, let us know!

studmissile

Nicely played @guidothepimmp