Harmonically Suspect

Anders Erisian

Anders Erisian

XLIII
Just revived a couple of recent projects I'd left to moulder for a while. Got a few tracks in this style and i wanted to pitch them to a couple of people i know and see if they were interested in playing stuff like this as a group, just to muck around, have a laugh recording it, maybe play a couple of lo-key gigs and see if we can't get beaten up by some bikers or something. So essentially this mix just serves as a demo to pitch the idea, but i do want it to sound as good as it can.

That said the playing is a bit rough, all me, a collection of scratch tracks really, but i have put some effort into getting the mix pretty close to the sound the finished product would have. I reckon i've improved a bit in getting a mix suitable for the instrumentation. Any opinions on that most appreciated. As i said i know the performance is a bit loose, i don't think it's a total trainwreck, but feel free to comment on that too, i could be wrong.

Also there is a female vocal missing from this, if the structure seems strange, it's meant to be one of those conversational duet type anti-love songs, and all you are getting is the man's reply to the woman's questions. Corny maybe, but it was always going to be.... I'll just say that the female vocalist is the one i'm most interested in collaborating with, the lyric is written, i just don't have the voice. Thanks for any listens.

 
I had to listen to this a few times to fully grasp it's dissonances, in some ways it's a bit post rock/psychedelic, for me the dissonances are far too intense.

Here's a few ideas: try turning down the organ in the choruses,

there are too many guitar parts going on at the same time, try muting them in parts,

this mix needs more panning and seperation, LCR panning would sound cleaner because it's a very full arrangement.

Less or even no reverb, keep it minimal, try echo or short delays instead.

anyway that's what I would do if I was mixing it.
 
I noticed there was much more power in the kick than there was in the bass. The kick really hits you, but the bass is kind of flappy.

The vocal is washed out by the effects. I don't know if you were experimenting with them. But it renders the vocal very difficult to make out.

Won't comment on the playing since you said it was scratch.
 
Hey thanks for those responses, all very useful feedback to me.

Btyreman: Thanks for trying to 'get' the dissonance, I knew it was pretty out there, hence the title. Psychedlic post rock sensibilities applied to funky jazz sounds most certainly, you saw straight through my pretense.
Did a fair bit of fiddling with the panning scheme, i will see if i can't spread it out a bit more.
A bit of volume automation on the organ is on the cards, that is the really dissonant element. The lead guit is really just the melodic placeholder for the vocal, and i would definitely have it drop out at some points in a finished song. There is only one rhythm guitar track which i considered dropping at points too. Valuable insights.

Scwarzenyeager: I'll take interesting as a compliment! The drums had a fair bit of work go into them. Cobbled together using velocity layered sampling from a cobbled together set of drum samples recorded to tape, played on an electronic kit. Home built easy drummer/drum replacement :D There is a live conga line i recorded, but i pulled it, things are crowded already, but i'll probably sneak some fills back into the choruses.

TripleM: The bass is flabby, and i probably struggled with it the most in the mix. My only functional bass at the moment is a dean metalman, only got a very high output humbucker on the bridge, so not ideal for this style but i winged it anyway. I wanted it to be more low end ambience than a melodic/ rhythm element, this mix i turned it up too much i think, should have left it down, but the playing is the nail in the coffin.
Vocal would be 3 male voices singing in harmony, but for now is just me tripled, and it was recorded with a laughably nasty dynamic, i broke my favourite mic last week and need to do some soldering. I turned that down in the final mix too, probably should have left it more up front for intelligibility. Yep i was experimenting.

The lyrics if you care:
I'm flying away today,
because i cannot take you.
If you think there's something wrong with me,
then perhaps, i'll educate you.
I'll be smiling in the summer,
and when my thoughts they come around,
and they sink right back to you,
I'll be thinking thoughts
about the things i do not need,
and i will/won't miss you
 
I've heard a lot of your other songs on here, many of which were great (like that one where you played samples of some politician, followed by "you're a liar, etc), and you seem to have a knack for coming up with good songs using "untraditional" melodies. Put some more elbow grease into this one and I think you've got another.

I think you've got to bring the vocal out more... rather than turn it up a shitload, though, I'd get rid of some of the effect you're using and just make it more easily understandable. Gotta be able to know what you're saying in an anti-love song. Then dangle a Foster's in front of some young lady, get her into the home studio and have her sing the girl part. The hell with corny, this is the internet... be as corny as you want, the bikers aren't going to beat the shit out of you until you actually sing it in front of them. :)
 
Thanks NTB, vocal will be retracked, it really needs to be a proper 3-part harmony, and in retrospect the fx are nasty.

You sly bugger, you saw straight through my ploy to lure a certain woman into my little den of iniquities for some 'collaboration' ;) Hopefully our creativity will mesh together perfectly.:guitar:
But up in these parts it'd more likely be a tinny or stubby of XXXX than foster's but i reckon they branded it that way because they weren't allowed to print it's real 4-letter name on the label. I'll add some of the local rum and port to the equation though. And i'm not scared of a flogging, i've got a couple of associates who would qualify as bikers, and it's always fun to challenge some of their assumptions, particularly when it comes to violence. lol

Thanks for the advice.
 
Anders Erisian said:
Thanks NTB, vocal will be retracked, it really needs to be a proper 3-part harmony, and in retrospect the fx are nasty.

You sly bugger, you saw straight through my ploy to lure a certain woman into my little den of iniquities for some 'collaboration' ;) Hopefully our creativity will mesh together perfectly.:guitar:
But up in these parts it'd more likely be a tinny or stubby of XXXX than foster's but i reckon they branded it that way because they weren't allowed to print it's real 4-letter name on the label. I'll add some of the local rum and port to the equation though. And i'm not scared of a flogging, i've got a couple of associates who would qualify as bikers, and it's always fun to challenge some of their assumptions, particularly when it comes to violence. lol

Thanks for the advice.
Click to expand...

Sly like a MF, my friend! They don't teach you this stuff in school, you gotta be born with it.

Every time I think of Australia I think of this...

View attachment 90377

...so Foster's was all I had to go on.

I love barroom violence as much as the next guy, but the trouble with bikers around here is that they're usually on crank, there are always a shitload of them, and they're fucking huge! How the hell are guys that are always fucked on crank that big? I just steer clear of them.
 
Hi Anders, I'm glad I got chance to check this out as I really enjoyed it. All the layers worked well for me - I didn't find the arrangement cluttered or too dissonant. It reminded me a little of Tortoise/Sea & Cake type stuff.

Like others I wasn't mad keen on the vocal effect and I think that reeling back some of the reverb would tighten up the sound. Also, the bass could do with more definition to me - I can hear it's there, but it's a bit indistinct. Nice piece though :thumbs up:
 
Thanks rob. It was unintentional but i know what you are saying about possible influences. Well i think i got enough positive feedback on this to consider it a worthy project to see through to completion. Wasn't really fishing for compliments, but at least i've got some confirmation of what i suspected were the weakest elements.

Been mucking around with this a bit since i posted it and trying some of the suggestions given, mostly wider panning schemes, and the bass tone. The vocals didn't really have a lot of fx on them, just a touch of reverb and comp, it was 3 separate takes layered, but i stripped everything off them and played with the panning of the 3 parts and i've got a bit more clarity i think. I guess i was leaning towards a fairly mono sounding mix, I'd become used to it and lost track of how centred everything was. But i think i'll give it a few days and let some of the changes soak in before i post an amended mix. Won't get too carried away, ultimately i need to re record the lot.

But thanks for the feedback, it's good to get motivated to take a musical project a bit more seriously for a change. Might have found the other vocalist too, so things are looking up :) Thanks again to all for the direction.
 
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