Lend us your ears for a few! :-)

B

bendbones

Member
Hi All,

I originally tracked this back in '05 but just this weekend decided to re-track the drums and bass guitar (both of which are still a little flappy having done a few takes over the last few days). Please let us know what you reckon of it so far/what I can to to improve it - always a work in progress! :-)



***old link****New link in following post

EDIT: I should point out the drums were done using EZ drummer and the pop/rock kit. Listening to it a few more times I think some of the fills are pretty rubbish. I will redo these tomorrow.

cheers,
ben.
 
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well...

...tried to tighten up the drum fills and redid the bass guitar..I still think its a little loose in places and the snare sounds a little artificial - what says the community?



An updated version (edit):



cheers,
ben.
 
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Hello Bendbones,

I like the tune. Unfortunately I am not listening on my monitors, so I can't comment on low frequency levels. I have no problems with the drums/fills and the samples seem decent. Being a drummer, I am never completely satisfied with samples that I use but they can suffice.

Just an opinion, but the vocals are jumping out of the mix to me. It may be my speakers though. The drums and guitars sit well and have depth. On top of the instruments the vocals seem to be "in your face". If it was my song I would try to get more room ambience with the vocals and pull back on the compressed/in your face sound. This is likely a result of how you tracked the vocals though.

Overall, I dig it. Glad that you took it out of the 2005 vault:)
 
I think is very good. EZ Drummer is great. Can fool anyone. I do all my songs with it and people seem to like them. Great tune!
 
thanks man...

I really appreciate your feedback...I'll have another bash at the vocal mix tomorrow...giving my ears a break for the rest of the night :-)

Gotta love ez drummer

Ben.
 
Any better?

I updated the track based on Sound and Vision's comments by reverbing the vocals a little and adding a harmonic exciter at around 7k. I couldn't back off on the vocal compression because I currently don't have access to the original unprocessed vocal tracks.

I also added some side chain compression to both the kick and the snare in an attempt to add punch and also added some top to the kick to try and add clarity...

Thirdly, I also added a harmonic exciter to the picked guitar part to try and add clarity and hence less mud around 3.1k and also a stereo imager in an attempt to widen it.

Please let me know if I've made improvements or not. The earlier mixes are still linked above....



thanks,
ben.
 
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Nice tune, Ben, very original.
Pity that the voices are so buried though, they lack the necessary mids and sometimes sound like a whisper. Don't know if it's down to the singer's performance or maybe the gits are too loud. Funny when you listen to your old recordings isn't it? When I listen to my old ones I feel like running away.....:D Nonetheless, song's good.

Joe :):)
 
thanks man...

Hey thanks Joe - those are my vocals...well an attempt at least ;-)... At the risk of trying to polish a turd (vocal wise), do you think they could be improved by boosting the mid e.q? Will certainly try tomorrow, am just about to hit the sack...

I should perhaps get some singing lessons and finally get round to buying/borrowing a decent microphone...

cheers,
ben.
 
Oh, the voice isn't bad at all, it's just that in the recording it seems to lack body in the middle. What mic were you using to record it? You don't have to go to great lengths for a good mic, an all-rounder like an SM58 will do the job well.

Joe
 
Nice song. I agree with Joey, perhaps give the vocals a bit more prescence; but I think you've got a really nice voice.

Good job on EZ Drummer; I've recently got it, and I wish I could make it sound as realistic as you have. How much of that did u do with the in-built grooves, and how much did u make yourself?
 
thanks...

Hi, thanks again both...will try to EQ slightly differently.

Joe - because I've never considered myself a singer, I've never bothered with looking for a decent mic (a huge mistake in retrospect); the one I used was a really awful dynamic shure bg 1.1 (this is like a budget sm58)...

Aled, yeah I absolutely love ez drummer, one of the best music purchases I've made...basically the main grooves are my own but most of the fills are those that came with the program...
I find the trick is to not rely too heavily on the default ez drummer mix; you should aim to use a multi rather than stereo output. This allows far greater control because you can then EQ the different channels / apply compression (e.g. parallel compression) to kick and snare etc etc
I'm not sure what DAW you're using, but I highly recommend this guys youtube tutorials. He covers a few ez drummer basics:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Farout5150

cheers,
ben.
 
I like this tune bendbones. The vocals get a little buried when all of the instruments are playing, but other than that it sounds good. Good job.
 
I use Reaper as my DAW. I have been using it a bit two dimensionally so far I think- generally using the inbuilt grove and mix pre-settings. Need to spend some more time playing round with it. As I have no experience of real drums, I thought that writing the drums parts would be very tricky.

I'll def check out those videos.
 
ez drummer...

what you can always do is take one of the inbuilt grooves to get a 'realistic' hihat pattern and then edit the snare and kick beats as required...saves a bit of time...and listen to what real drummers do of course; it also helps to know a drummer! :-)

ben.
 
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