by Versilaryan » 27 Nov 2011 00:46
Not bad! With a little big of mixing and mastering, I can see this really standing out!
I did have one small beef with the arrangement, though. Maybe it's just because I'm absolutely addicted to that wonderful djent crunch, but I think you could've varied the rhythm guitar part a lot more. It kind of droned on, especially because it was a single line with no palm muting, chords, or anything else to distinguish it from the melodic lines playing overtop it. In the end, that resulted in a lot of conflicting lines, all fighting for supremecy.
Additionally, something you can do is double-track the rhythm guitar part to make it sound bigger and beefier, so you can safely tuck it more in the background without fear of losing presence. Record it once and hard-pan that track left. Then record the same track again and hard-pan that track right. That way, regardless of how loud the tracks actually are, it sounds a lot bigger because of the minute discrepancies between the two recorded parts.
Lastly, on those lead guitar lines, vibrato and reverb are your friend! Distorted guitar is NOT at all an expressive instrument. Every note you play is the same volume and decays that the same rate, unlike, say, a piano, where you have greater control of the dynamics you play. As a guitarist, you have to make up for that in your writing and in what you do with the longer notes to bring out the phrasing as well as make sure those long, decaying notes stay interesting.
Then, add some reverb and maybe some /really/ light delay on those melodic lines to make them fuller and sound less tinny.