Love the first song, Radio Transistor. I had to favorite that. Pacific Coast and The Way were pretty cool. The rest of the songs dragged to my ear -- tempo is pretty slow in each song and a lot of repetition within the songs and many sound like they're in the same key (not sure if that's true). 13 songs is a lot for one album, too.
Thank you for taking time out of your life to listen Nola. Everyone has their favorites and it's interesting to hear the three you mentioned among them. I've never heard that before, except for Pacific Coast. I did choose to go with a slower tempo with pretty sparse arrangements. I like the feeling of isolation and calmness it gives. The keys are as follows: 1.F - 2.F# - 3.D - 4.C - 5.D - 6.A - 7.A - 8.D - 9.E - 10.G - 11.Gb - 12.G - 13.Gb. I've never noticed before, but three songs are in Gb/#. They are wildly different and don't follow similar patterns, but all the same it's off to have three Gb songs on one album. As far as repetition, most rock songs have a lot of repetition, I would argue there is far less here than on any typical "hit" song. But maybe more than some other indie releases.
The lyrics in most of these are very good -- kind of a "discovering life" theme throughout. Organic feel to the entire album...doesn't sound like a whole lot of processing, which I dig. A bit of a Wilco vibe to entire record. Mixing wise it's well done (just a few issues like the Ride cymbal gets loud, and drums are louder than the vocals in some places). Nice work, though.
Thanks, I've worked hard over the years to discard meaningless lyrics from my songs. If I don't have anything to say, I won't keep the verse. The theme is in fact a kind of "coming of age" through adulthood life experience tale. I suppose that's the human condition, and we all write about that. So yeah, you're dead on. You're also right about the drums occasionally overtaking the songs in moments. I still struggle with the micro edits on drums to ensure vocals push through the mix, and I still have the same issues with distorted guitars and pianos occasionally. I kind of pine for the old days of moving the faders in groups while mixing down to a full track. I can use the "bands" to manually adjust, but I still miss phrases sometimes. As for processing, I try to keep it as organic as possible. I certainly use plugins for reverbs, delays, eq and compression, but that's it. No quantization, autotune (unless it's used as obvious effect) or super heavy limiters.
What would you say was your breakthrough learning moment from this place or in general?
Did you have these pro mastered? The cohesion is good. I have 10 songs I want to release as a collection and not sure how to go about getting them to all sound as a unit when I mixed them differently over time.
I'll check out the older record soon.
From this site? Well, I learned a lot about using reaper, using compression appropriately, and of course all the help with mix reviews over the years. When people take the time to give real constructive criticism, it makes a huge difference. I sit alone and mix for 4-8 hours sometimes, and I simply lose sight of the forest for the trees.
I spent countless hours getting these to gel with my mixes and especially the main vocal performances. But YES, I did have it professionally mastered by a friend of mine in a studio in Manhattan. He helps create an equilibrium that elevates the mixes every time. Sometimes I prefer my originals, but his mastered version hold up against many different playback sources, so he wins. I can refer you tom him if you want. He takes a few months, but I'm always happy with the results. My older album really shows what he can do to force cohesion, because pretty much every song was recorded in a different year, location, with different players and with different equipment. So yeah, it was a mess sonically. Now it works. Thanks again for listening and providing your review, I really appreciate it.
