Breathe

dainbramage

New member
My cousin and I had a recording session tonight, and I would appreciate any opinions and/or advice. It is an acoustic cover of an Alexi Murdoch-song called "Breathe".

 
It's lovely. The hand drum part is almost tight enough. You might either redo it or edit some of the hits to nudge them onto the beat.

There's background noise that you should cut too.

Can you bring out the backing vocal more? EQ? Maybe pan it closer to the center vocal?
 
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Great suggestions, dobro. Thanks, I will do some editing on the handdrum as well panning the background vocals closer to center, which will give them more volume.

Another thing, when I'm listening to the track with a certain type of headphones it seems a bit distorted. I do not hear this through monitors or any other sound system (I tried 3 different ones). Anyone else hear any clipping? If so, fortunately it is probably from the last stages of the process, namely the master compression, which was done in a hurry. It could easily be corrected if it is in fact clipping.
 
Sounds pretty good. I like the reverb used, but it is a little boomy on my set up.

Yes, I too thought the lead vocal pushed it level-wise, but not 100% sure if I hear clipping or not...it seems close to it anyway.

Are those new strings on the guitar? The crispy. metallic tone of new strings seems to come through. It almost has that DI tone, but then the verb on it is pretty convincing...was it mic'ed?

Good vocal performance, but I might drop it back just a tad? I agree with dobro on the percussion. It's close, but there are some stray hits here and there that detracted for me.

Don't know the tune and it isn't so much my kind of thing, but I thought you did really well with this. Thanks.
 
What an intriguing title. Now I'm going to have to go listen to it to see if it's as naughty as it sounds.
 
Sounds like something you might come up with, Heat.

You know, I'm really enjoying some of the stuff I hear here and on Soundcloud and on Bandcamp these days. It's sort of like home recording has arrived. What's interesting is that you hear all sorts of stuff at all sorts of levels - it's not all cleaned up and pristine like the recording industry makes things. It's got stuff with warts and stuff that's broken and stuff where people are breaking the rules and stuff where people don't even know the fucking rules. I like that kind of... soup, especially when occasionally some excellent music breaks through. Feels real.
 
Sounds pretty good. I like the reverb used, but it is a little boomy on my set up.

Yes, I too thought the lead vocal pushed it level-wise, but not 100% sure if I hear clipping or not...it seems close to it anyway.

Are those new strings on the guitar? The crispy. metallic tone of new strings seems to come through. It almost has that DI tone, but then the verb on it is pretty convincing...was it mic'ed?

Good vocal performance, but I might drop it back just a tad? I agree with dobro on the percussion. It's close, but there are some stray hits here and there that detracted for me.

Don't know the tune and it isn't so much my kind of thing, but I thought you did really well with this. Thanks.

Hey thanks for taking the time. The boomyness is part of what worries me in addition to the possible clipping. It sounds good on my monitors, but have a huge drop at about 60-70Hz and I compensate with a very inaccurate subwoofer which makes the low-end pretty hard to evaluate. I think the guitar track (which is indeed DI with about 5% wet lexicon hall reverb) might be conflicting a bit with the bass track, making it boomy, but wherever I try to cut it sounds worse.
 
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Oh, and I also checked "three ounces please" on your page and enjoyed that one quite a bit.

Thanks! I checked out your stuff on Soundcloud, its brilliant and very varied. Your newest song along with "Drift" were my favourites, which I'm sure is not the case for everyone but those really caught my attention.
 
It almost has that DI tone, but then the verb on it is pretty convincing...was it mic'ed?

Since you wrote that, I've been thinking of maybe doing a mic'ed guitar track, pan the original one and the new one far left and right. You think that would be worth a shot?
 
Doubled tracks add a ton of body to a part. Considering that this is a pretty sparse arrangement (so far), it might benefit from a bigger guitar sound. But it would involve one miked track, and one DI'ed track, which might be strange in combination. Or otherwise. Do it. I'd love to hear what that sounds like. :guitar:
 
"You think that would be worth a shot?"

Yes, I do. I just really like sound of acoustic guitars captured with mics though. I've never tracked one DI, but it always seems to have a distinct sound to it that I don't care for so much. Yours is actually quite good though as I wasn't even sure.

Why not give it a go and see if you like the results?

Hey, I think I just realized you're that guy that posted the strange little video of a day in your life at work, and then took off for S. America, right? If so, welcome back!
If not....uh, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.

Thanks for the nice words on my tunes. I look forward to hearing more of your stuff.
 

Hey, I think I just realized you're that guy that posted the strange little video of a day in your life at work, and then took off for S. America, right? If so, welcome back!
If not....uh, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.


Haha yes, that would be me! Thanks I am all inspired like you would would not believe by the experience, tons of park jam sessions, those people really have no problems with keeping their talents public, i miss it already!

I will post a cleaned up mix based on advice in this thread shortly. Thanks again to everyone.
 
Cool. I have no direct experience with either culture, but I would imagine that Norwegians are quite a bit more reserved.
 
Cool. Didn't read every comment, so anything I mention could have been addressed.
I'm hearing a little pumping here and there that could be a result of the Soundcloud player. Lead vocal sounds really hot and closely-tracked, maybe peaking here and there.
I like the acoustic guitar capture. For direct in, it's really not bad to my ears, though there is some lower frequency boominess that you might want to hi-pass. Also some chair creaking during the quiet parts, most noticeable around 1.25, 2.57, and 3.45...is there an air-conditioner running in the room? The verb tail on the hand percussion is really long. Matter of taste, but it could be reigned in a little. Really not bad for an off-the-cuff live recording though. Nice work.
 
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