Get Up! An ode to an agoraphobic.

[cephus]

I had a friend who needed a pick me up a while back. Three months later I recorded this as a response. I think she's picked up by now.

http://www.soundclick.com/brettmitchell

The song is called get up. There are a few mistakes. I think the vocals might be a little low. I actually will probably redo the vocals next time the wife and kids are out of the house. My "vocal booth" has terrible acoustics.

This was mixed in headphones and i listened to it on about 6 different stereos to see if anything was jumping out. I think it sounds OK with ipod buds.

Help me find the bumps so I can smooth them over.

 

[Greg_L]

I like the song. Nits: The timing's pretty loose. Vox could definitely be louder. Guitars are cool, but they're kind of dark. It sounds like their mic's on the edge of the cone. Kind of muffly sounding. I think more "air" in the gits would sound better. The drum panning is weird and sounds kind of ridiculous. It makes the whole song lean too much to the left.

 

[cephus]

note to self: switch sides on headphones every once in a while

I am pretty deef on the left side.

This is like the second attempt at using those alesis electronic drums and they are panned weird. My deafness made me not notice.

Maybe it's my laptop, but the soundclick sounded pretty boxy compared to my desktop and mp3 player. Do they render it in some way that changes the sound?

 

[PoeticIntensity]

Cool idea for a song. I thought the sounds were pretty good, but as was noted, the panning is pretty jacked. The vocals seem to have room bleed as well.

 

[Greg_L]

Do they render it in some way that changes the sound?

Not that I'm aware of. Unless you have a premium account, it's a 128kbps player. That aint great, but it's pretty standard. I don't think SC degrades the sound any more than any other high-to-low kbps mp3 conversion.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

I like the synth sound. Very Rentals.

Is it just me, or are the toms in the intro too loud relative to the snare?

I'm hearing more "air" on the vocals than the rest of the instruments. Did you do something drastically different with them?

Overall, good song. It's catchy, and none of aforementioned nits are really gamebreakers.

 

[cephus]

I don't think I have a good enough voice for reverb so i always use delay. As a guitar player, I guess I feel that I'm allowed to put as much ketchup on as possible. I was facing a wall rather closely when I recorded the vocals and I don't really like the way they recorded. I can do those over again pretty easily.

The intro drums are from a different take that I didn't use the rest of. The middle part where it goes to halftime is another chunk. I just wanted big toms and big fat bass drum. I've had such terrible luck recording real drums that I thought the electronics would be better. But they are so freaking hard to play. Every clanger is so loud.

There are 2 channels of e-drums panned hard left and right, so alesis dictated the spread by their programming. I never even thought about it until you guys mentioned it. I messed around last night moving them both closer to the middle and it started getting muddy. I may just have to live with it. I don't think I have the chops to play it again.

To me, this song is 80% my sharona and 20% mickey mickey you're so fine . I had the song written on piano (the chorus is just an all the white keys major scale). but I would never have been able to play it out. I rearranged it for guitars and ended up with this. It isn't really even in my style. I don't play this kind of music really.

I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. This is about the 7th try on the mix. It only sounds good to me loud and usually when you turn them down, you start to see the warts. This one I can turn down and it only sounds 70% shittier than when it cranked.

Thanks for the comments, though. I need some more practice and I appreciate the guidance. I thought i had a pretty good handle when I was using 4 track cassettes. Piling on more and more tracks isn't really a solution.