'Just Want You To Know'-Indie Rock

rockonin

rockonin

New member
I programmed the drums using Groove Agent One in Cubase 5. Used a Epiphone Wildkat guitar for guitars, through a Line 6 Pod effects unit straight through the audio interface. Used a Fender bass through an Ashdown combo bass amp. The vocal mic was a Sontronics STC-2 condenser. Any feedback welcome.

 
There's some good stuff going on but I'm hearing a few issues.

The guitar doesn't seem quite locked to the drums, primarily in the choruses. Or maybe they're too indistinct.

It has that "mixed by the guitar player" thing in the choruses.

The cymbals seem to have the highs all to themselves. Maybe find something else to contribute to that range, vocal clarity, more edge to the guitar. Or cut some highs from the cymbals. The drums just sound tonally distinct from the other tracks. Overall I could use less cymbals (or less bright cymbals) and more of the rest of the kit.
 
I like the idea you've got going here, reminds me a lot of the Arctic Monkeys with your voice and the guitar tone and riff.

You've got a good interesting drum part, but it's still a little robotic as far as the velocities go. It'll be worth spending some time thinking about accents and getting a more natural feel. The toms are panned a little wide for my tastes as well.

I'm not sure what to suggest about the guitars. I think the tone is great, and during the choruses I love the wide panning of them. But that panning doesn't work as well when they do the call-and-response thing, its a little disorienting to me. Could be because of my monitor placement and that I tend to sit too close to them, exaggerating the stereo field from my perspective. But food for thought anyways.

Nice job man, glad you posted this.
 
Your programmed drums need some velocity work. They sound too robotic. If you can't be fucked to do it properly, just doing a velocity randomize between a certain range will definitely make them sound better than this. Bring down the panning on the toms. One of them sounds like it's flying away at the top left and another one is trying to hide under my chin on the right. If I'm not mistaken, there seems to be a lot of compression on them during the last chorus.
Trust me, it'll help a ton.
 
Cool track. The vocals sound good but they are not coming across well in the mix here.

I am also getting Arctic Monkeys from this track.

Checked out your soundcloud. Wow, pretty varied history of tracks. This is the only rocker you have posted amongst lots of electronic music and one metal tune. Is this a new direction for you, or have you always done different styles of music? I think you should keep going with this. You do it really well.
 
I thought the song was pretty cool.

The guitars sound pretty good to me. But I think they're a bit out front and they're covering the vocal. The guitars ping-ponging in the intro was cool. I'd stop doing that after the intro.

The cymbals have a hyped high end. And I think soundcloud is kind of butchering them (SC often does).

It's a little weird, but the bass seems to slowly fade to the back as the song goes on. Early in the song, it's at a level that I like. But by the 2:00 mark, it seems too far back. It doesn't happen immediately, but gradually.

And it almost seems like an impersonation of the guy from Arctic Monkeys. Good singing tho.
 
Thanks for the feedback guy really appreciate it.

I only spent about 6 hours on the mix down. I agree with the comments you guys made regarding vocals being clear in mix and the guitars been a little overpowering.

For you guys who said that this sounds like the Arctic Monkeys, i play guitar in an Arctic Monkeys tribute band along with the guy who sang the vocals in this track.

I have two more tracks similar to this that i will record some vocals to. If this goes well i'm going to go and re record everything in a proper studio.

Thanks again.:thumbs up:
 
This is super cool. I thought it was a really exciting song.

I thought the intro had too much going on, specifically all that panning. I feel like you should rely on the high quality of your song and just let it be simple here.

I really love the rhythmic thing you did (eighth-quarter-eighth?). I thought that that could be emphasized even more, like more attack on the guitars. Also louder/more attack on the kick here.

I thought the overall weakest thing was the drums. To me it sounded like they needed to have more body (I think this is correct term…they needed to be thumpier.) I wanted to feel it in my body but instead I heard it in my head.

I thought the lead vocal should be a little louder.

Your voice has a neat sound to it, I think you should feel free to get a little strange with it at times.

I’d do the backing vocals weirder. You know what I mean.

I thought the ending was anti-climactic. I didn’t like the drawn-out “no”.

What if you ended it more suddenly, “No” short and then the music cuts out.

So many opinions.

Awesome song!
 
4tracker said:
How do you do this? Is there a tutorial somewhere? It would save a lot of time. I hate randomizing velocity manually.
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I have no idea what DAW you're using but if you just select the entire MIDI track, there should some sort of "randomize velocity" function in your DAW. Google it.
Don't randomize it between 0-127 though, that'll sound like total ass.
 
The lower bass notes all seem to be muddy-indistinct to me during the verses. Agree with the others that the cymbals seem to be the only high end and overly exaggerated because of it.
 
Very cool tune here. I heard lots of hissing and too much high end, particularly in the cymbals. Since it goes over a lot of the track and instruments, including the vocals, I would try a MBC w/ everything above 6/khz hit pretty hard. But again, that's probably the easy/lazy way to go about it. Might be better to tame the cymbals (eq) on their own, and then use a 20:1 de ess on the vox bus on everything above 5.6-6 khz. Otherwise, awesome arrangement and melodies.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
That's like driving with the throttle all the way down and controlling your speed with the brake.
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Oh, I've done that before! But really, I'm hearing the harshness in everything, so I don't know how much work he wants to put into it. It'd be like using a soggy band aid at best. But better than nothing IMO. I did go on to say "it might be better to...".
 
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