New demo... female fronted pop/rock stuff

mattr

mattr

Resident moody teenager
Recorded the majority of this yesterday afternoon. Still missing some vocal parts (and the long notes at the end of sections need sorting) but this is more or less as "finished" as its going to get (see note below).

Now, I must apologise in advance for the 96kbps MP3, but I have excuses! This is the only bounce of it I did yesterday (which was only done because the band wanted to hear how it would sound on myspace) and I can't boot into my XP drive to do another at the moment. Just added an SSD and installed Win 7 on my PC which has screwed up the precarious chain of bootloaders I had on my various drives... time to dig out the Windows CDs for the Recovery Console :p

So quality is rubbish, but its good enough to get an idea of the song.

Hasn't got a name yet...

Only mic used was a Rode NT1000.
Half the guitars were through an Orange half-stack, others were DI.
Bass was DI. Drums are Steven Slate.


Now, the side note... the band sent a demo I did for them a few weeks ago around to a few of their favourite bands (in what they thought was a futile effort to get some support slots) but it managed to catch the interest of a successful American power-pop band who have now arranged for them to fly out to California in April to record a full-length album. The producer wants as many demos from the band beforehand as possible so he can begin to tear them apart and so on to save some time during preproduction, so this demo is part of that. No point polishing it up fully :)
 
Great! Fab! Zowie!

Lead vox gets buried sometimes; there's a midrange gap, or an upper midreange bump, lending a little harshitude... a tad, and I think the bass range is SLIGHTLY under-repped. MINOR crap. And certainly not critical.

This singer [I've heard her before, right?] kicks it. Love the parts, rough mix, sound, energy, and inventiveness ...and RESTRAINT of the arrangement. I don't hear room for any more parts....sounds complete...and right on-target with similar music hitting the pop stations in the past couple months.

Nearly radio-ready....and certainly a sound worthy of investment by people who do that. I hear Top 100.

Wish I done it.
 
Thanks, and passed the feedback onto the band :) I think I might have scooped the guitars a bit too much which would explain the harshness. When I have time I'll go for one more polished mix and post it up when its done, and in a decent quality MP3 this time!
 
For what it is, it sounds awesome. You have really good dynamics. I would suggest maybe applying some kind of special vocal effect, like a delay or vocoder somewhere. Little vocal tricks always makes guitar songs better and worth listening to over and over again and it will set your vocals apart from the repetitive chugging guitar and drum sounds.

Try it out if you're looking to try something a little more outrageous.
 
Cool song man,

When the band came in at the beginning I wanted it to hit me harder...more bass in the mix?
When I crank my Tannoys it hurts my ears.

The Vox are getting drowned out.

But man, i feel bad giving you "feedback" its a sound I wouldn't be able to get...
 
Very good tune, yeah chart material. Singer's got a great voice, but it needs to cut thru better in the mix. Otherwise, pretty nice work!
Joey :):):):)
 
I agree with everybody else. The lead vocal is buried, can't make out a single word she said. It's the typical issue w/ pop-rock. You have to decide if this is a guitar song or a vocal performance, and based on the performance, it should be the latter. I would mix the bass up for more punch, while mixing rhythm guitar down, and bring up the lead solo briefly when she's not singing. Yeah, I know that's really 80's, but it's what the material calls for. I hear what you say that the backing vocals aren't complete. That will fill out the vocal section, like Journey, Heart, et al. Just admit that it's all about the lead vocal, and the rest is a piece of cake. Great work with one cheap mic-Richie
 
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