David Houck's project - my arrangement of Mark Knopfler's Don't Worry

[David Houck]

A number of weeks ago, I decided to learn Don't Worry by Mark Knopfler.  It's a beautiful tune, and I love listening to him play it.  Once I had pretty much worked out my arrangement, I set it aside.


Well, I finally got around to trying to record it, and it took a while.  Since I haven't played it enough to play it well, there were numerous tries before I finally recorded something worth sharing.  It's pretty rough, and I don't intend to spend more time on it right now; but I did want to share what I had with you.


Here's the link; as usual, this is marked private, and not to be shared.


Thanks for listening.  Constructive criticism re effects, tone, recording quality, etc welcome.

[elwoodblue]

Wonderful, nice choice.


A touch of compression would be my only suggestion, tempering the peaks to allow a bit more
low mids to be brought up.


Thanks Dave 

[David Houck]

Thanks for the suggestion Elwood.  I did add a good amount of limiting when I was editing the recording, so the peaks are down a lot from where they were.  But good to know that what you are hearing is still a bit much.  It's hard for me to tell what's the right level to work toward.

But then compression isn't exactly the same thing as limiting, and what you're getting at also relates to squeezing the frequency range?

The problem there might be that I have high end hearing loss in both ears; and that the higher frequencies are drowning out the low mids as a result.

[elwoodblue]

Might be worth a shot with a compressor.
That might 'warm' it up a tad.


..or go at from the other way...drop all the levels
and add a little bass (125-200hz?).
That would effectively drop the highs I think.


I listened on studio monitors, my 52 year old ears have a little roll-off too.


BTW...It's real nice as it stands...I was just enjoying the studio talk, it's inspiring 


(edit: more thought--was the recording direct? if so...have you tried cab simulators?)

[David Houck]

Thanks Elwood.  Not exactly direct; it's modeled.

[rv_bass]

Very nice, David!  I like the reverb you use, and adding a touch of low end to compliment the highs would be nice as well.

[tx196059]

Well done David! Great music for a Saturday morning. I like Rob's idea of a little low end to warm it up a bit. Fantastic as it is to. Thanks for sharing.

[David Houck]

Thanks guys; and yes, I think you're right; a little more low end would be nice.

[edwardofhuncote]

That was great Dave. Why Worry is one of my favorite tunes anyway, and just the right mood for my Saturday morning coffee-time. 


This is your SII 6-string, Karma, right? The clarity is striking... not sure if I could offer anything useful tone-wise. I like it just fine as-is. 


One thing you might try... (just for a crazy idea) there's a video out there of Mark Knopfler playing this on his Strat, with an acoustic guitar putting this cool little counterpoint underneath his main theme. I bet you could work out something for that. I'll post it over on the Listening Thread.

[growlypants]

That was very nice.  I enjoy listening to ALL your work. 

[David Houck]

Thanks guys; and yes, that's Karma.

Gregory; for now and the near-term future I'm just recording pieces "live", the idea being that I should be able to play the pieces live just as they sound on the recording (if I can remember them and if I practice them often enough).  Multi-tracked pieces may be something I turn my attention to at some point in the future; but for now, just the one stereo track is more than enough for me to work on.

[dead_head]

Very nice, David!   Fwiw, if you have access to a multi-band parametric equalizer, with a few tweaks of  freq., q, and gain on the high end,
you might be able to soften the slight brittleness. I have a GML model 8200 parametric equalizer that would do just that. Perhaps you could try a
plug-in that would the same thing?  Thanks for sharing your piece with us.


Rob

[David Houck]

Thanks Rob.  As it happens, I have a "dynamics" compressor in the signal chain of this song, and after reading some of the previous comments, I plugged in for a while and worked with the settings.  I think I've dialed it in such that it addresses your observations as well as some of the other comments.  The peaks and brittleness seem to be reined in a good bit.  So this thread has helped me focus in on how to better use the compressor, which I plan to try on some of my other songs.


Oh, and there are already two parametric eq's in the signal chain, the second of which is turned on for that little cascading melody at the end of the chorus and then repeated at the end of the song.