madonna 2

interesting.

what's a health food song?

the song is rather odd. :D

the mix sounds good, at least to my untrained ears.

peace
 
Cool!

I don't know what else you could tweak. Sounds pretty darned clean and crisp to me. Stuff is where stuff is supposed to be. OK - I think the little motif that runs constantly throughout could maybe be a bit more subliminal. Maybe even move it around?

Drums are really clean - and no one's gonna crit your snare sound!!

Vocals are really cool - lots of character and variation in your voice - and it develops through the tune.

I can't grasp the message....care to elaborate a little?

Nice thoughtful work!!
~Milan
 
Weird but nice. I listened to a few other songs of yours too. Kinda reminds me of a band I used to watch in Santa Barbara called Spencer the Gardener.
 
Twilight-Zone-y-type song dobro-ther! Your voc tracking and translation is so well rounded,clean and pure. The subtle,vocal-twang-technique U added on your lyrical content, gave the song an even more mysterious flavor! Instrumentation and arrangement backed you up quite nicely!

Superb!
 
I just listened to md_1 from my Dobro folder after I listened to md_2.

I love this song. It's gotta be a blast to sing this stuff. I mean, for the most part I enjoy the feeling of singing my own stuff, but I've never really felt like a singer, so it feels a bit unnatural at times. When I listen to you, it sounds like it just rolls off the tongue.

What I think I noticed most about md_2 was a boost somewhere around 1-2K in the vocal. The consonants, like "k" in "walking" are more pronounced. So in the vocal track have you bumped those mids up, or did you cut the low mids and raise the whole track to compensate? Or did you just retrack the vocal with a different mic position?

I also really liked the bass again in this tune. IMNO you get a great bass tone for your music.

My only nitpick is something I've only recently started to seriously address in my own stuff, and that's the vocal sibilance. Some of the 5K area (esses) is a bit hyped. Personally I can't sing straight on with my mic or the sibiliance dominates the mix. It's less noticable I think with electric guitars, but with synths and warmer acoustics it becomes more obvious that the vocals are coming from some place else. The extra high end of the vocal almost detaches it from the rest of the mix, if you know what I mean. I don't think it's nearly as bad here in Madonna as it has been in some of my past mixes. But I'm finding that with the right angle of the mic, I don't need to apply any EQ in most of my new mixes. Just something to think about as we start to fine tune our recording methods. And of course, these observations may not actually even apply to you.

Sounds like a big improvement Paul. The details are much much more clear. Nice work.

Tom
 
Sluice:

"So in the vocal track have you bumped those mids up, or did you cut the low mids and raise the whole track to compensate?"

The latter. I've got you to thank for that. Attention to lower mids has opened a door for me. So much stuff piles up there. Keep as much as possible light there, and things start taking care of themselves.

Plus that group/bussing/compression thing I told you about a while back. Plus you can experiment with pushing the highpass filter on some tracks - guitars and other things don't have to be at 82 Hz; they can be at 90 or 100 or 110 or... Now I can get things brighter and clearer without having to boost the high end. Excellent. I was worried that this mix I've posted here was too bright.

Yeah, you're so right about the sibilance, especially that spoken portion in the middle - it's egregious LOL. I've tried redoing the track, but I can't get close to the feeling on that sibilant original, so I've stopped trying.

Thank you for the re-listen. Wish you were here, as they say. I'm going through all the mixes on the album and hearing loads of new stuff to tweak. You gonna be anywhere near Singapore in the next two weeks, or are you too busy with the video work?
 
Well, I've recently sort of reined in my sibilance criticism. Mainly because I've been listening to a bunch of records from the 80s lately and I noticed that there's assloads of sibilance on lots of those records.

I mean, 'Graceland' is often held up by engineer geeks as an example of sonic excellence and there's TONS of sibilance on that record. Like, he'd get REAMED if he brought that around HRC. Check it out.

So, while I could stand a little less "essss" on this, it's also nowhere near enough to freak about - or so says my new "laid-back" esss policy.:)

No real complaints from me on this. It's done, dude. Didja re-sing some parts?

Chris
 
Pedullist said:
I like second mix.

I like Dobro.

I like good music.
Click to expand...

I agree with Tjarko. Not much left to say.

Ok, one thing. The glock (or whatever that is) could be softened a little bit. When I record glock I usually put some limiter on it to take some of the click out of it. You're using fruity loops, right? Still might help.
 
I love the way this sort of aims itself in many directions... Japanese flavors... Tokyo at night, 50 stories above the street naked ... thinking about tempura...

Said it before, but it bears repeating: The best stuff inspires one to record ... as your songs do... no exception w/'madonna'

Was good before... is still...
 
....interesting tune lyrically and in the vocal performance....like crossing Talking Heads with Devo and Aisan pop...enjoyed the groove....the initial strings struck me as harsh at first but either they softened up or I warmed up to them :D ....good sounds!
 
Sounds good!

If it were me I'd probably surgically lower some of those breath sounds. Not eliminate 'em, just push 'em down a bit. That's one of the advantages to advanced editing capabilities.;)
 
See.....now I must be weird 'cause I think the esses are just right.
I like this so much man......really cool tune......I do believe this is my favorite of yours............or maybe I'm loaded, not sure which.....
Just kiddin'.....this is my favorite of yours.
The only thing I'd like to hear is toward the end of the song....another synth or two should join in on that repeating line.
But a great song........really! :)
 
Okay, a detailed reply or two:

MC Gitarz - thanks for the idea about lowering the motif that runs through the piece - not only have I done that on the newest tweaking of this mix, but I'm doing it on other songs as well. I'm such a doober sometimes - it never occurred to me until you mentioned it that instruments could lay back a bit once the singing starts. Duh...

As for the message, it's straightforward enough: the universe is one thing, so everything that happens is an aspect of the universe acting on itself. The madonna illustrates a series of three aspects of that - lovemaking, giving birth, feeding the child - it's interesting to think of the universe as doing each of these things to itself, especially if the child she gives birth to is a symbol of spiritual awakening.

fprod - thanks for the idea about the glock. I use a sound like this three times on the album, and each time, it's got too much edge. I haven't tried to tame it yet. I'll try limiting - thanks for the idea. :)

Groucho - I didn't redo any of the parts, really. But the first set of feedback I got on this song focussed a lot on the string synth I used, and it was *really* useful feedback. So I axed some of the synth parts, split the rest up and panned it all over, and added some more synth parts in some places. The fact that only one person noticed the synth in *this* mix is a huge relief to me. But I think I can still run some subtractive EQ on that synth in a way that'll make it less obtrusive.

MAC2 - yeah, I agree about the synth. See what I wrote to Groucho above?

M Brane - I take your point about the breath sounds, but I've got a kinda quirky personality in this regard - I don't want to airbrush out the warts and moles - I want to leave them in. It makes it sound more real to me - kinda like Bob Dylan's jacket buttons smacking on the back of his guitar on the last track of Planet Waves. I wish there was some way I could record my *sweat* when I record LOL. But I'll consider what you said - I'll try it out and see what it sounds like.

Thanks *very* much to everybody who responded. I actually thought I'd nearly finished this mix for a minute... :D
 
sounds good.. I still think the twinkling sounds could come down, and that repeating synth line that goes all the way through could be dropped out for a few verses and brought back in in others.. the repetitiveness gets to me.. the repetitiveness gets to me..recording sounds good but the repetitiveness gets to me.. there was only 2 or 3 parts where I noticed sibilance.. not my favorite of yours, but very cool!
 
Catching up with this thread real quick Paul, I can see some people might have read my comment about sibilance as a you-should-redo-this critique or something. And I didn't mean it to be a big deal, just something to watch for and experiment with on future recordings. I was mostly suggesting that you experiment with different angles of your mic and see what different timbres you get from your mic. Not because I think you have to, but because I know you like to experiment. For example, if I sing head-on into my mic, the low mids and highsssss are very strong, and sounds great as a solo track, but absolutely shitty in the mix. But with a little tilt down from above my mouth, my natural voice is recorded more accurately, and it is much easier to mix because its natural midrange is allowed to shine through the mix. See?

Like I said in the first post, the sibilance comment is a nitpick, so I hope you didn't think I was telling you to start over, especially not for my paranoid ears. But a little too much sibilance can sometimes seperate the vocal track too far from everything else, particularly where there is a lot of DI or synth stuff happening. And I think that's because the synth and DI stuff has a "flatter" frequency range. Or something.
 
B.SABBATH said:
sounds good.. I still think the twinkling sounds could come down, and that repeating synth line that goes all the way through could be dropped out for a few verses and brought back in in others.. the repetitiveness gets to me.. the repetitiveness gets to me..recording sounds good but the repetitiveness gets to me..
Click to expand...

I agree with both of these comments. Dropping the synth line for a verse will make the listener perk up and say where did that go? Then bring it back and the listener goes ahhhh, nice.

Great work dobro. You create some of the coolest moods in your pieces. I usually see a scene of some sort when I listen to your tunes. That's pretty cool. :cool:
 
Very nice piece. You have some interesting textures going on here, and the vocals are right on the money! I think you have one of the coolest vocal sounds around, very distinctive.

Listened on headphones and the vocal sits very nicely. The percussion gives the piece kind of an eerie feel to it and the melody is strong.

Nice job! How is that album coming? Have you picked a cover yet? I liked the covers you were contemplating in the cave.

:D
 
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