I'd really value your feedback for my band's stuff that I produced...

[Steve Henningsgard]

These are two songs from our upcoming full-length that I produced and engineered, and am co-mixing with a buddy of mine:

We're still in the mixing stage, and thus have some stuff that isn't quite polished yet (such as the tom's). The biggest thing I've noticed listening to them is that "The Dark Design"'s guitars are too loud, and that the kick needs a bit more space cut out/definition in both.

Please let me know what you think! We've been working on these for almost 9 months now, and are very proud of them. We wrote, performed, and recorded all of these ourselves at no cost thus far (except for our time and energy), and really want to make sure they sound as awesome as possible before releasing them to the world.


*EDIT: I should mention that we've spend the majority of our time on "The Dark Design," and are in the process of tweaking "Illumination": this is evident in the mixes

 

[Jouni]

Props for patience at first, dude, in 9 months you can create a new human being.

But it seems to pay.
Excellent sounds!.. I can rarely pick up the basslines in the midst of all them gtrs, in produced stuff even, here really well present,no your guitars are not too loud.
Sounds pretty damn nice to me!

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Props for patience at first, dude, in 9 months you can create a new human being.

But it seems to pay.
Excellent sounds!.. I can rarely pick up the basslines in the midst of all them gtrs, in produced stuff even, here really well present,no your guitars are not too loud.
Sounds pretty damn nice to me!

Dude, don't freak me out like that! I'd probably go insane and explode if I ever had a kid haha.

Thanks for the compliments! Do you really think the guitars are an OK volume? They seem to be stepping on the vocals and drums a little bit to me, but as a guitar player I know I'm prone to turn my own instrument up too loud, so perhaps I'm just over-compensating!

 

[jjjtttggg]

Fantastic!

Not really the kind of stuff I'm into, but WOW!!!

I'm pretty new to home recording in "the modern age", so my 2 cents are maybe worth a penny, but WOW!!! Great sounds!!! Great mix!!! I agree with previous poster: the guitars are fine. Playing is amazing. The vocal style is really not my bag, so I can't comment other than to say it sits in the mix well. I can't think of a thing to say that would make it sound better, but like I say I'm new...

I would REALLY be interested in a "play by play" description of how you went about recording it if your ever so inclined as to share it.

I'm gushing like a teenager, but hey . . . Great stuff!!!

J

 

[guitar zero]

Depends on what you're trying to emphasize the guitars or the vocals. The way I hear this mix (the first song), the guitars are out front and the vocals are a bit behind them. I think in some places the vocals are not just behind the mix, but acually hard to hear. Other places they're fine. Like I say, depends on what you're after. Second song: nice piano, love the guitar entrance. Nice job. Vocals sit better in the second mix methinks.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Not really the kind of stuff I'm into, but WOW!!!

I'm pretty new to home recording in "the modern age", so my 2 cents are maybe worth a penny, but WOW!!! Great sounds!!! Great mix!!! I agree with previous poster: the guitars are fine. Playing is amazing. The vocal style is really not my bag, so I can't comment other than to say it sits in the mix well. I can't think of a thing to say that would make it sound better, but like I say I'm new...

I would REALLY be interested in a "play by play" description of how you went about recording it if your ever so inclined as to share it.

I'm gushing like a teenager, but hey . . . Great stuff!!!

J

Thank you sir I must admit, I did intern in a decent studio in town for three months to save up the 10-hours-worth of free studio time that we used to record the drums, but everything else was recorded in either home-studio or completely-not-studio environments. Everything's being mixed entirely ITB at my buddy's home studio. As for a 'play-by-play', I could write for hours about every little thing we did to get this to where it's at: any specifics you're interested in?

Again, thank you for the commentary thus-far

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Depends on what you're trying to emphasize the guitars or the vocals. The way I hear this mix (the first song), the guitars are out front and the vocals are a bit behind them. I think in some places the vocals are not just behind the mix, but acually hard to hear. Other places they're fine. Like I say, depends on what you're after.

I agree. We had originally mixed the guitars differently, but when I started futzing around with the second song, I ended up re-doing the EQ/compression completely. When I copied the Aux track over to the first song, I neglected to change anything volume-wise before doing a quick bounce: thus, the guitars are a little over-bearing!

Second song: nice piano, love the guitar entrance. Nice job. Vocals sit better in the second mix methinks.

Thank you I like the vocal mix better in this one as well. I'm excited to work on it a bit more, specifically with dynamics and such. There are a lot of harmonized guitar overdubs on this one that need to find their places!

 

[WhiteStrat]

Dude you guys have reason to be proud--this is excellent stuff. Your writing and playing are top notch.

I think you should trust your ears. I heard the same things you did on the first one. Better "space" for the kick and the guits are a bit hot--but I'd also make more room for the bass on that one.

I know you said you've spent more time on the first one, but the overall balance of the second sounded better to me: guitars sitting "with" the drums instead of on top of them and the bass guitar was "there" but everything has it own space.

Keep it up and you'll have an awesome album!

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Thank you sir! I/we worked very hard on song-writing and practicing to hopefully negate the need for much editing. All in all, there are probably 5 or 6 edits per song, usually 3 or 4 drum takes spliced together (not bad considering we'd practiced with him only twice before recording!).

I'll update the mixes when I can (don't have any time in my buddy's studio until mid/late-August unfortunately :/)

Thanks again for the commentary

 

[ido1957]

Design...
The vocals are being stepped on by the lead parts mainly toward the end where they harmonize. I guess you need to figure out if/when to emphasize each... I think your recording turned out well and you just need to decide what to spotlight when....

 

[Chili]

Especially love the ending.... not that it ended, mind you. Arrangement is good and guitar playing is great. really like those licks you've got in there.

I'm not crazy with the vocal, only because it's sharing a lot of freq with the guitars. I don't think overall volume needs to come up, just a bit of the 2k - 5k range. But I'm not an expert by any means...

Yeah man.
Cheers,

 

[suprstar]

You should be proud, hell ya you guys rock! I listened to that one a few times, I agree the guitars are louder than the vox, but it's not offensive to me. I'm a huge metal head, I'd totally expect to hear that on the metal channels with In Flames, At The Gates, Lamb of God, etc.. I think the production sounds great. Characteristics of your songwriting and playing remind me of those particular bands too, which is good cuz they're my fav's! In fact I stuck your mp3 in my playlist, hope you dont mind

 

[darkcubus]

Very professional sounding production. Good work.

 

[heatmiser]

Totally outside my usual listening stylistically, but I've heard enough of this kind of heavy stuff here to say that this is very well done. My congratulations and admiration for your dedication to this project.