[Indie] - Moonshine

Hi Forum

I would like to hear your thoughts on this latest track. Written, performed and recorded in 5 hours by my brother in law and I, with his 7 year old son on the Djembe. As both of us came of age in the 90's, you can hear a number of indie/britpop influences.



David
 
I thought this came out really good. Liked the bass guitar, all the hand percussion, the strummy acoustic(s) and the vocals. I liked the way the vocals were processed too. Loud and clear for me but softened just enough with a little slapback effect or shortish verb on there. What did you do to them? Anyway, it's a fun track that moves along nicely and a cohesive mix to my ear.

Only two little things I thought of that might improve it?

One, I didn't really care for the intro so much...I just felt like the drums, basically all by themselves, had kind of that software drum room/verb sound to 'em - sounded fine though once everything else came in. Plus, not that it's a super long intro, but with just the drums, I thought it was actually too long. Maybe just a quick fill and then right into the song, or have the intro feature more of the hand percussion, and wait for the drums to come in when the rest of the instruments do? That's how I was hearing it anyway.

Two, when the acoustic plays the little riff solo thing towards the end, it sounded a little thin. I liked the tone for strumming, but all by itself I would've liked a thicker tone, or maybe even an electric playing that part instead?

Overall, those are really subjective points, and I thought it was a success. Thanks.
 
Good tune, I like it! Well written, played and recorded I think. "Heatmiser" is pretty right on in his comments, I agree with his two main points. Also I think adding in a bridge part and extending the whole thing out a bit would be a good idea also.
 
I might dry up the vocal quite a bit, just an aesthetic point though. Mix sounds really good, there are a couple points where the vocal could use some leveling I think but it's not a big enough deal to risk unbalancing the rest of the mix. Cool song too!

Is the djembe that drum thing? Pretty talented kid, I couldn't keep a pattern like that going for 4 minutes haha
 
Thanks for the comments everyone. I really appreciate the constructive feedback

The vocals were processed in Isotope Nectar with some fairly short delay and plate reverb plus some saturation. Mark is not keen on his naked voice so I had to effect it up. The drums are Toontrack Superior triggered from a Roland drum kit, so yes they are software drums. It was all done in Ableton and each different element is a looped clip from a take, apart from the Vocal which was done afterwards once we were in arrange, so the 4 minute Djembe is actually a bit of an illusion. We would have got round to doing a middle eight except our wives called us in for dinner :-)
 
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