Tear apart my mix - The Storm Song

H

hemeltz

New member
Hello,
With some new (oh so beautiful) mics and a whole lot of practicing, I created this track of one of my favorite original songs so far. I need some comments on the mix because I'm afraid I'm missing something big in this stage.

Piano (and electric piano) is a Korg d200
vocals recorded using an mxl v67i (love it)
all through my audiogram into sony acid music studio.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
-Harry

LINK: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1060769
 
Very pleasant start.
relaxed, taking it slow.
Lyrics great, not quite cliche so brings in feelings well without corn. Like the high note thing at end of verse. Kind of Simon Garfy with lyrics. And melody is sort of old styled but never heard that sound quite before myself so original coming thru for me. Like the revert back to the sky analogy in that chorus (pre chorus).
Pinao too strong velocity hard in parts. Understand it is a piano/vocal. Now, get in the bvs and .. ahh, here they are, Wow.
Wow. What a finish!
Love it.
Very much.
 
Thank you I'm so glad you like it! I had to automate some of the piano because it was getting too loud, I suppose I'll tweak that a bit more to get it perfect. Thanks!
 
Nothing to say about the arrangement, I wouldnt know where to begin..


performance was beautiful, I wish I had the skill and/or talent to be so naked in a song...very nice work


the piano does need more taming, it takes away a lot of the energy of the song later..


not sure I like to the repeating vocals over the top...sounded a bit gimmicky and unecessary...I also couldnt help thinking the vocals couldve done with a little more compression to thicken them more??

Im not listening on a very good system though so please take that into account


very nice work hemeltz :)
 
That's a Korg?? Damn I bought myself the wrong fake piano. I'd turn up the electric piano a bit. Or maybe not, I can't decide. Actually yes, I think they're too quiet. On a personal note, some barbs might be nice. It's very smooth. But I think that was your intention in which case: bravo.
 
Thanks! Yeah my Korg is amazing, some of the best money I've ever spent.
By the repeating vocals over the top, do you mean in the last chorus?
 
hemeltz said:
Thanks! Yeah my Korg is amazing, some of the best money I've ever spent.
By the repeating vocals over the top, do you mean in the last chorus?
Click to expand...

yeah that bit, totally lost my concentration on the song...as it stands the piece doesn't need any gimmickry imo
 
I think the piano needs attention....but you've already picked up on that. It does dominate the stage. The left hand has alot to do with that...maybe lighten up on that hand a bit as well.

I heard some really odd rebverb tail artifacts at 2:28 - 2:36 and 2:41 - 2:49 with those short, abrupt chords in the piano. I'd look at adjusting the tails if you have that editing ability.

Nice vocal performance...not reeal crazy about the multi-vox echoes towards the end, but it's not a deal breaker.

A little tweaking and this one's good to go.:cool:
 
Dittos on the piano sound. Your playing is chops-tinged, and good. Your voice is decent enough...sounds like this is fresh, and the occasional pitches...not quite hitting the notes...is because of uncertainty, not inability.

Where the work falls down:

Words are real flowery, sometimes trite...a little cringe-factor.

The phrasing/melody needs a lot of work...which might just be playing the crap out of it for a month to plug into the best choices waiting to be discovered.

The arrangement is not coherent enough. My gal, not a musician, but with good ears and instincts, got lost on large parts of it. The element that seems to be missing is your instinct, for example: late in the song there's an extended I IV cycle that ends on a weak chord...the I or IV...that, otherwise, could be capped off nicely with the V7 to punctuate it, and lay the intro for the verse following. Instinct.

Raw talent is evident. Instinct for poetry, arrangement and the indefinable stuff that makes a performance work is in infancy. Maybe try to shorten and more clearly define the major parts.....work out kinks on the phrasing and melody....and stick it on a shelf, and move to the next one...and the next. Only experience will get you to where you can use your tools to build a beautiful, aesthetic song. And do some serious listening and analysis of good recordings in the genre. Get a feel for good arrangement: there's real value in actually learning some cover stuff to performance quality.

Keep on going. Keep posting!
 
Thank you, thats incredible advice! When I wrote the progression, I think my favorite thing about it was the I IV progressions that reoccur all the way through, although somewhat differently. I can agree with you that it doesn't quite resolve all the time. Since I is a maj9 chord, it depends on how hard I hit the different notes of the chord to give it different resolutions and I think sometimes I missed the type of resolution I should have had.
If anyone's interested, the story of the song is that there were supposed to be massive thunderstorms in my town one day, and one half of town got it and my half of town only got the mist and humidity and feeling of a storm. I love thunder storms, so I wrote a song about it.
 
Beautiful singing voice. Nice performance.

I agree on the piano comments.

A couple of vocal things...

You can hear your mouth opening at :57 in a distracting way. you might be able to edit that out.

You seemed to pull away from the mic around 1:06 - 1:09. It might have been needed, but you pulled back a little too far.
 
Thanks everyone. I'm definitely reconsidering the repeating vocals at the end. Maybe I'll replace them with some traditional background vocals to fill it out and really make it a finale.
Thanks!
-Harry
 
IMO the repeating vocals at the end could be kept, but if so, they need to be pulled way back as to complement the mix in a more subtle way, not trying to jump out front and take the spotlight. They would need to be more of a filler just kind of sitting in the back if you DO keep them.

But, even so, they might sound a tad out of place. I'm not really sure. I think knocking some high-end off them could help, just to make them more a part of the 'body' of the song and less like the star of the show, trying to rise above and take all the attention.
 
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