To the Songwriters / Singers of ES

[sean_e_b]

1) No, they're all synthesized.

There's no problem with this, but you need to make the instruments sound more realistic. I'll upload some of my tracks in a couple days, so you can hear the difference. GOOD PLUGINS ARE VITAL in making computer sequenced music. Assuming you have a halfway decent DAW (FL Studio / Cubase / Logic Pro / etc), I'll recommend adding the following:

*As a poor farmtown kid, I didn't exactly get a lot of these in a legitimate fashion

MusicLab's RealGuitar

http://www.musiclab.com/products/realgtr_info.htm

Terrific samples make this perfectly mimic an acoustic guitar. It contains 8 options to choose from, so you can have it play it picked style or fingered and with nylon or steel strings. If you add an AMP effect to this (you can get some pretty good ones for free) you have a perfect electric guitar.

EZDrummer

http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=7

A good drumkit plugin is probably the most important thing a computer musician can have (especially for guys like us who don't make techno or hip-hop)

Various Soundfonts (sf2s)

You can find a lot of good soundfonts free on sites like http://www.hammersound.net . I highly recommend you get a good Bass Guitar sf2. If you need any help finding good sf2s, let me know.

2) Just a little reverb, and "double-layer" the vocals

You might want to start triple layering the vocals. 1 layer evenly panned, 1 layer panned 45 degrees left, and 1 layer panned 45 degrees right.