depths of europa

Thanks for checking us out! I'm digging the stuff you have been putting out. Keep it coming!

Saw your ska songs on the recording forum. Hey I normally don't do this, but because of your name and interest in ska, I thought you might want to check out my band Our sound is still changing. We have some of our older songs recorded and some videos with new stuff on our page. Give us a listen!

Bacchanalian Bliss | Facebook

Thanks, That's a lot of advice! I may try to track down a horn section. I bought an organ VSTi and after buying it i realized that my operating system isn't compatible (it only works on Windows 7!) Guess it's an excuse to buy a new comp!

Check out this new one I recorded last night. It nowhere close to a finished mix, just wanted to get the idea down.

Ska demo # 2 by craig.schmidt on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

I also recall seeing you mention the recording of guitars, to which I will always say mic a cab if you have the ability, it really does add to the recording experience however frustrating or time consuming it may be. But since you're going direct, I will offer one piece of advice -- use effects sparingly but effectively. Do use reverb for a room effect, don't drench it. EQing will be your friend, but give all your instruments space. That sort of thing. It's really a try-listen-try again sort of process, which leads me to my last piece of advice for this wall of words. Once you get to the end, and this applies to anything, listen to it on different speakers, headphones, monitors, etc. With how many layers you can have in ska, you want to make sure nothing is unbalanced and sticking out like a sore thumb. Also why other opinions can be useful. And like I said, try these as a starting point, but like anything, don't take it as fact, tweak 'til it works for what you want. Hope I've helped!

As far as additional instruments go, they fall decently into place centrally, but if you find things layering up a little too much, visualize a full band playing it. Not to any extremes of course, don't want your horn section 100% to the right and the bass player somewhere offstage making a sandwich. But it's sometimes good to add a little bit of variation with tiny (and I mean TINY) adjustments, because while purely audio, panning can almost give a visual effect to the music. Don't do it just to do it though, that'll get confusing. It is, however, worth experimenting with and seeing what can make it that much more interesting.

This'll be a few messages, there's a 1k character limit so bear with me

To be honest, anything that was ever done with horns was always an actual three-piecesection, so no, I've never used VST for that. If you get into it, you could probably give me a few lessons :P

As far as advice goes, I'll start with the matter of panning. I know you specifically mentioned guitars, but I'll gladly throw out some more ideas just to give you ideas. I generally have anywhere between 3 all the way up to 5 differently panned tracks for guitars, depending on each situation. For yours I'd probably have 2 or 3, 2 being two to either side, forward "facing" so to speak(so think 10 and 2 o'clock respectively), 3 with the same setup with one in the middle, slightly lowered in volume. Bass on the other hand, as mentioned before, is very fundamental here, so you'll want a noticeable, very "up front" track. You want it to say HEY I'M IMPORTANT - so central and open, but not overwhelming.