Rats and witches...

fritsthegirl

fritsthegirl

Taste of home
This tune has taken ages. It was 3 songs for a while and I dumped it God knows how many times...only to come back to it. Finally it came together as one song. Hope it was worth it. Let me know if anything sounds really bad, or a bit bad...I did a bit more playing around with the EQ and such, so might well have gone a bit too far. Thanks for listening. :)



every day the beat goes on
just like the rhythm of a song
when you were 10 you didn’t care
now 80 doesn’t seem so long

this is life you live it every day
do your best just not to lose your way

when nights are black you can’t turn back
your ruthless dishing out of flak
you drink too much, take drugs and smoke
it’s obvious you’re dumb and slack

this is life you live it every day
it ain’t easy when you lose your way

this is where the story gets you
this is when the wolves come out
rats and witches, crazy bitches
spin you round and round about

this is life you live it every day
you do your best just not to lose your way
 
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Really nice song Trish. Overall it's an easy listen. Performance-wise there's some minor timing stuff going on at the very beginning between the bass-like instrument and the handclaps...really not bad though. I like how the claps are quiet when they come back in at 1.26, but I think you could probably raise them a little more...they're pretty faint. And personally, I wouldn't mind if the claps faded out with the rest, but that's personal taste, and I'm kinda fishing. Overall I think this is pretty good and doesn't sound forced at all to me.

Umm, the vocal melody during the verse, however is almost exactly the second song from Belle & Sebastian's Tigermilk.... forget what it's called. Could be coincidence, could be subconscious influence.
 
I like this, particularly the lyrics -- they have an attitude and emotional color that works perfectly with the music. I'm also a stickler for perfect rhymes, consistent rhyme schemes and correct syllabic emphasis, all of which are flawless in your song.

One small technical suggestion (for what my suggestions are worth, which is not much): at least on my system, it sounds like the flute lines are located in the same place in the stereo field as the vocal and sometimes one runs over the other. Perhaps pan the flutes out to the sides a bit, one flute left and one right, which will emphasize the nice harmonies while retaining the focus on vocal? I had to deal with exactly this (flute versus vocal) and found some judicious panning helped.

Nice work!
 
Hey trish, very nice song and cool lyrics as always. I hear Fleet's comparison with Expectations.

I'd bring up the handclaps too, so that there's less of a volume jump when the guitars come in - it's a bit too steep at the moment. What did you do with the EQ? The lead vocal sounds to me like you boosted the mids and cut some lows. If so, I'd ease back on both a touch - the vocal cuts through the mix, but sounds slightly on the thin side. I'd like more of the low end of your voice back in to make it more rounded. I may be way off however...

Also, have you used a de-esser? If not, then get yourself the free spitfish plugin.

Nice song though, glad you finally managed to reconcile the parts. Sometimes I feel I'll be recounting my battles with half finished songs to a shrink in twenty years time :D
 
Oh dear, Expectations!! Sorry Belle & Sebastian. I feel pretty bummed out by this. I can't believe after working on it for so long I didn't hear this myself...it totally explains why I couldn't let the melody go...I love that song as well.

It's lucky for me they don't hang out on here, I feel bad.

Thanks heaps for the feedback guys, good and bad. :) I had a look at everything this morning, did that spitfish de-esser and just removed the EQ from the vocals. Redid the bass at the beginning, hope that's slightly better timing now. I actually faded out the hand clap all together after the intro, I thought it was too much having it run through the whole song. I also panned the flutes a touch more to the left and right.

I'm not sure the vocals are any good actually, listening to them just now I'm sure the volume changes throughout. Parts sound like I recorded it in a big empty room, I've never really heard that before and I'm recording exactly the same as I normally do, same position and settings. Maybe the only thing I did differently is turning the gain up a touch, would that cause this do you think? Bah, I hate vocals, they're always such a nightmare for me. :D

Thanks again for the feedback!
 
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Me personally...I drink too much, take drugs and smoke, and I slack...but I'm not not dumb.

I think it's a lovely tune. I like it a lot, but the mix is kinda strange. Your vocals are much smaller and drier sounding than the guitar, yet quite a bit louder?. The mellotron flute thingy sounds perfect. The lyrics are cool. The guitar sounds kind of roomy. I listened many times...thank you.
 
Lovely AND cool.
Nice work with the doubled vocal.
I like the whole thing - the panning of the flutes works - oh, & nice arrangement with them too.
Terrific lyrics and a good story.
Expectations - well Old, New, Borrowed & Blue is reality plus B&S with out the & is just BS.
I'd have liked the bass to have carried on even pushed to the background and simplified - you created an expectation - nothing wrong with creating that tension but I thought the bass was cool.
IMPRESSED!
 
Yeah this has a space and volume issue. The vocals sound completely separated from the rest of the mix. I'd like them blended in better. The rest seems okay to me. I don't know who Belle and Sebastian is, so fuck it. Everything sounds like something else anyway. And I don't drink much, take drugs (anymore) or smoke, but I'm still dumb and slack, so it's cool.
 
Strong: lyrics, singing, flute sound

Weakish: flute noodling behind the vocal - it would be much stronger I think if most of the flute work happened when you weren't singing. By the way, that two part flute bit is magic.

Weak: hand claps sound like they were recorded in a goofy space; incessant folkie guitar strumming - how about redoing the guitar with an intermittent pattern of strumming? Strum strum strum strum pause. Strum strum strum strum pause. It would drive it more; sound on the guitar - low mid darkishness going on.

Nice tune. I think it works just fine.
 
heatmiser said:
Me personally...I drink too much, take drugs and smoke, and I slack...but I'm not not dumb.

I think it's a lovely tune. I like it a lot, but the mix is kinda strange. Your vocals are much smaller and drier sounding than the guitar, yet quite a bit louder?. The mellotron flute thingy sounds perfect. The lyrics are cool. The guitar sounds kind of roomy. I listened many times...thank you.
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Thanks Heat. I agree the mix is weird...I think it's the vocals. I'm always doing those a billion times, the guitar, 10 takes tops. The vocals, I could do those til the day I die. I really ought to consider getting lessons or something because I'm always trying to fix something in the mix that comes down to a lack of skill in this area.
 
rayc said:
Lovely AND cool.
Nice work with the doubled vocal.
I like the whole thing - the panning of the flutes works - oh, & nice arrangement with them too.
Terrific lyrics and a good story.
Expectations - well Old, New, Borrowed & Blue is reality plus B&S with out the & is just BS.
I'd have liked the bass to have carried on even pushed to the background and simplified - you created an expectation - nothing wrong with creating that tension but I thought the bass was cool.
IMPRESSED!
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Cool, thanks Ray! LOL at the BS, it's kind of made this feel like a bit less of an achievement knowing I copied another song, but never mind, it was bound to happen one day and the rest of it was original at least. I would have liked the bass to carry on too, it's actually not a bass though, just the E string on my guitar. I need a bass. I think I'm going to get one soon because I kind of always wanted one and I am starting to miss this thing I have never even had.
 
Don't adjust anything for other people. Your voice is very, very good.
The mix forces you to pay attention to the vocal.
In this kind of mix, if you don't sing well it will show right away.
You sing VERY well...
Congrats!
C
 
Greg_L said:
Yeah this has a space and volume issue. The vocals sound completely separated from the rest of the mix. I'd like them blended in better. The rest seems okay to me. I don't know who Belle and Sebastian is, so fuck it. Everything sounds like something else anyway. And I don't drink much, take drugs (anymore) or smoke, but I'm still dumb and slack, so it's cool.
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Thanks Greg. I'm pretty sure it's the gain that's made the vocals sound different. And I normalised the vocals too. Since I don't really know what that does exactly, I probably shouldn't have done that.

I should have said I in the song, but I am in denial. :D
 
dobro said:
Strong: lyrics, singing, flute sound

Weakish: flute noodling behind the vocal - it would be much stronger I think if most of the flute work happened when you weren't singing. By the way, that two part flute bit is magic.

Weak: hand claps sound like they were recorded in a goofy space; incessant folkie guitar strumming - how about redoing the guitar with an intermittent pattern of strumming? Strum strum strum strum pause. Strum strum strum strum pause. It would drive it more; sound on the guitar - low mid darkishness going on.

Nice tune. I think it works just fine.
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Hey cool thanks Dobro appreciate the feedback. I'm pretty pleased people like the flute bit because that was what the whole thing started out with. My friend is going to play some parts on his flute, but he's not around for a while so I had to use midi for now. Maybe you're right about it not having to be the whole way through. I might try it. You know it's actually some random chinese drum vst I used for the 'handclap'. God knows what it is, but maybe it's worth trying a real hand clap.
 
fritsthegirl said:
Thanks Greg. I'm pretty sure it's the gain that's made the vocals sound different. And I normalised the vocals too. Since I don't really know what that does exactly, I probably shouldn't have done that.

I should have said I in the song, but I am in denial. :D
Click to expand...

I assumed it was about you anyway. :D

About normalizing: don't. It achieves nothing. If you want to adjust the level of the vocal (or anything else), just turn it up.

When Greg's talking about getting the vocal to blend in with the rest of the mix, he's talking about putting a reverb or delay on it, which if done right, will make it sound further back in the mix, blending in with everything else. The more reverb you put on it, the more it will blend in. The drier it is, the more it will be upfront. Forgive me if you know this stuff already:

* Don't put the verb/delay on the vocal track as an insert. Set it up on a buss, and set up a Send on the vocal track to the buss.

* Find a verb/delay preset you like the sound of and put it on the buss. (This'll take time. It's like shopping. Actually I like cruising presets better than shopping.) Keep the verb 100% wet on the buss. Leave the level at the default setting.

* Turn the Send level on the vocal track down to 0 and listen to it. Slowly fade up the Send level of the reverb and decide if you like it. If you like it, set it at a modest level so that it isn't obvious.

* Go back to the same verb on the buss and shorten the decay/tail on the verb so that it becomes even *less* obvious.

Now your vocal's more blended in. Tweak to taste.
 
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