Songs

[Dead Elvis]

New to this! Got some tracks that me and a few mates put together over the last 6 months. We are not really a band cos we only got a mic a gibson SG and a Zoom mrs1044 and are never gonna play live. In total we got 160 songs which are usually non rehearsed 1 takes with a few overdubs. Songs are listed chronologically so in theory should get better as you go down the list! Ive compressed the mp3s to 96kps so the lack of quality probably hides the mistakes. Only a project which was started as a joke really.

Any way feedback welcome!!

SONG LINK: http://www.elvisisdead.fsnet.co.uk/html/tracks.html

WEBSITE: www.elvisisdead.co.uk

[rats]

Yeah you're greenhorn, aintcha? Well podner, I reckin maybe you could use a little neighborly advice if'n you want to get through this with your hide still intact, and your new pal ratso's just the one the one to give'r.

A few pointers about your approach.

1. This is an MP3 mixing clinic, where people exchange critiques on songs, songwriting, playing, recording techniques, and first and foremost MIXING. When you make statements like Ive compressed the mp3s to 96kps so the lack of quality probably hides the mistakes. it doesn't give the criticts here a lot of incentive to listen. Just a thought.

2. There are many people here that will listen to anything, also many that only download ever so often and carefully chosse what's to be downloaded and critiqued. No one here is going to download 160 songs and critique them. Just another thought...maybe you should start small, say with maybe one.

3. From my point of view, and maybe others may get this too, the general tone of your thread says "Hey! I'm new here, never listened to anyone here's stuff, but I just posted 160 tracks of low-bitrate MP3 garbage that my friends spent no time on at all getting to sound good, one take, and I would like you to download and listen to all of it and tell me how bad we suck. It's all a joke anyway."

You may need a bit of work in your marketing hooks.

My suggestion: Find a good song in your portfolio, tell us a bit about it ie; how it was recorded, what instruments, etc., get your best effort mix going on it, save it to a decent bitrate, and come back. I'll bet you get some good helpful response.

BTW nice to meet you Mr. Dead Elvis. Love the title.

[Dead Elvis]

I appreciate your comments.

Everything you say makes sense but i think you've missed the whole point. What we do is a case of take it or leave it. If you dont believe what we do fits in with 'your' forum then fine, youre probably correct.

The comments regarding 'mistakes' is a little piece of self-depreciating humour on our part. The real reason the songs are of low bitrate is because not everyone has a dsl connection. I cant expect people to download a 3 minute song that is 5 or 6MB in length and to be honest it puts me off downloading most of the stuff on this forum.

Ill just let people decide for themselves.

All the songs are mixed final. Bitrate will NEVER alter that. they are in stereo afterall.

This was not a marketing ploy. I despise people who post shit to newsgroups and forums with nothing more than a weblink saying check this out.

The lofi 'style' is the way we approach our music and believe that appraoch has the same merits as any other approach.

I will take the advice and post links of high quality bit rate songs one at a time. The mix wont change tho.

Cheers

Nice to meet you rats, perhaps i'll check some of your shit out.

[rats]

96 kbps isn't a bad bitrate, I was just echoing your "96kps so the lack of quality probably hides the mistakes" comment. Most of my mixes are there too.

I'd be a lot more apt to downlaid a song if you'd point me somewhere to start. I like some lo-fi stuff. Beck's One Foot in the Grave, early Folk Implosion, Moldy Peaches. I have no idea what your band is doing though. Style? Are you Jehovah's Witnesses? Devil Worshippers? Dave Matthews cover band (worst by far)?

[TripleM]

I listened to Blunder because it was the first one on your list. Boy those 80Kpbs MP3's shoot down pretty quickly.

Nice feel to the song. I thought some of the guitar sound was pretty good. Musically a decent song.

Quite a bit of mud in the mix. Although there was one guitar that sounded ok, there was another one that was muddy. The bass was very muddy.

Quite a bit of pitchiness in the vocals. I had real trouble making out the words. I realize that it's not a requirement, but there is a point where you can't use that as an excuse for poor tracking. The vocals were just too blurry. They're covered by the guitars in many spots too.

There were some spots where the guitars "jumped out" at the listener. Ditto for the vox in a spot or two. Applying some compression might be the answer here.

My thoughts...

[The Ghost of FM]

I checked out women , the last rack.

Understanding that the newest stuff would be the best sounding, I didn't venture any further in the way back machine.

The vocals were horribly eq'ed. I have heard Taco Bell Drive threw windows with more definition and less distortion then the double tracked or slap backed effort that you had there. The only words that I could understand was, "fuck you" somewhere around 47 seconds.

The guitars sounded pretty good. Nice tone and playing skills.

I couldn't hear a bass part. Was there a bass part?

I can't remember how the drums sounded because I was too distracted, trying to listen to the vocals while gritting my teeth.

Considering that you have said these are final mixes, I am assuming that even if you get useful advice here, you won't act on it so, I won't offer any.

Welcome to the clinic.

[Dead Elvis]

Thanks for everybodys comments. I suppose i didn't really know what i was tryin to achieve by comin on this forum but im kind of gettin used to principal behind it so sorry if people thought i was an idiot.

I would urge everyone to IGNORE my first post and I'll start posting songs one at a time and try to make them a bit more coherent. I may even start to comment on other peoples tracks. Contrary to what rats beleives, i have d/l several!!

btw rats Folk Implosion are cool but if you want Lou Barlow at his best check Sebadoh