I Said Yes

grn

grn

Well-known member
It took me a little over a year to complete the recording of this song as I heard it in my head. Just as a warning there are some adult-oriented lyrics in this song, but it is very tongue in cheek. I am looking for any feedback on the balance of the instruments - there are quite a few and it was difficult to get them all to shine through but sound like one cohesive unit. There's drums, upright bass, acoustic guitar, dobro, banjo and a male and female vocal. What would you even call this genre?

View attachment I Said Yes - 15 July 2017_mixdown (3).mp3
 
The forum said no...

Sounds real good. The biggest problem I'm hearing is the balance of lead vocal and the female harmony. They are competing rather than complimenting each other. It gets in the way of intelligibility. You should decide, is it a duet? A harmony? One of the two is going to have to be the lead. The other needs to be in the background.
 
I'm noticing a few things.

First, I think the tempo is too fast. The vocals fly by pretty quickly, and you get the impression the singers had a bit of trouble getting some of the lines out. The two vocal performances aren't always in tight synchronization - they're a bit loose. They missing some of the lower and upper ends of the range. It makes them a little boxy. The female vocal gets buried in spots - mostly when she hits the high notes.

The guitars are clashing frequency-wise with the vocals. There is kind of a general buildup of energy in the 1Khz range. There are just a lot of instruments in the mix that are occupying that general range.

The bass is not very strong. It's a little low in volume. It's also missing some of the bass' natural low end.

The snare sample is pretty slappy and weak sounding. The crash cymbal samples were a little harsh and sometimes a little too sizzly. I'm having trouble hearing the kick. The wood block is pretty loud.
 
TripleM said:
I'm noticing a few things.

First, I think the tempo is too fast. The vocals fly by pretty quickly, and you get the impression the singers had a bit of trouble getting some of the lines out. The two vocal performances aren't always in tight synchronization - they're a bit loose. They missing some of the lower and upper ends of the range. It makes them a little boxy. The female vocal gets buried in spots - mostly when she hits the high notes.

The guitars are clashing frequency-wise with the vocals. There is kind of a general buildup of energy in the 1Khz range. There are just a lot of instruments in the mix that are occupying that general range.

The bass is not very strong. It's a little low in volume. It's also missing some of the bass' natural low end.

The snare sample is pretty slappy and weak sounding. The crash cymbal samples were a little harsh and sometimes a little too sizzly. I'm having trouble hearing the kick. The wood block is pretty loud.
Click to expand...

Well this was a harsh awakening so I decided to remix the entire song taking everything you said into account. The woodblock was a live snare I recorded just hitting the rim so I left that, but I replaced the kick, snare and cymbals. I'm still not happy with the clarity on the bass, but I'd love to get a second opinion on that and maybe I can work on that tomorrow. I was a little confused when Robus said the female vocal was too loud and you said it was too quiet so I turned it down, but then used parallel compression to even it out.

The tempo will have to stay as is and honestly I prefer this song a little fast and loose because it goes with the lyric. I don't want this track to sound too produced. The two vocals are supposed to be doing different things, but I did change up the panning of the instruments so hopefully they don't interfere as much. I was definitely a little slow singing a few of the verse words, but for some reason I like that that's not perfect.

If you have time, I'd love to hear what you think. Hopefully this has a better feel to it. And thanks for the feedback!

View attachment I Said Yes - 15 July 2017 (REMIX)_mixdown.mp3
 
Didn't hear the original, but this remix sounds very good. Vocals are just right, to me. Nice mix between them. Nice vocal tones, great performances. Perhaps the guitars are a little blurry/muddy, but it's a fine line, in my opinion, between muddy and full/rounded. Were these all tracked live?
 
The second mix is much better. I immediately noticed there wasn't the bunch-of-goo in the 1K area like mix #1. I can hear stuff now.

The bass is better in this one. You could probably nudge it up just a bit.

The vocals sound much better. The male is quite a bit louder than the female vocal. I'd nudge up the female vocal a bit.

I like the drums better. The snare is still a little weak, but not too bad.

I'm hearing the acoustic guitar on the right and banjo/guitar-riff on the left pretty clearly. They sound pretty nice.

Big improvement.
 
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