The Moonlit Flood Demo

Dearborn

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The Moonlit Flood Demo by Christopher Ciccone | Free Listening on SoundCloud

I'm working on three cd's right now, learning bits and pieces of recording and mixing techniques as I go and applying them to different song sets. My first CD or demo is "Tales of the Heart" which was recorded with just guitar and singing without playing to a metronome. I'm going to go back next and retrack all of that and add a full bass & drums then remix with what i've learned from working on the two following CD's.

"The Trails in the Stars" was my first attempt at composing everything (bass & drums and finishing vocal parts to old songs) and even using a Finale to notate the bass line for an upright bass VSTI to play, though I've recorded the bass parts DI on an electric. I'm split on what I like better and am even thinking of trying to combine the two. The recorded bass tracks have more accurate articulations but some of the tone of the upright VSTI. At first it was easier to get the VSTI to sit in the mix, but I've improved a bit with mixing the played electric, as you will notice on 3 tracks in "The Moonlit Flood" (Tracks 01, 07, & 10 are mixed with the electric as I haven't notated them yet).

This is "The Moonlit Flood" my 3rd CD or Demo CD. Some of the main differences in the mastering is High Passing the tracks around 118hz and as a last step before the limiter as lowering the bass was suggested. I've also been playing with a Compressor as a last process to try and adjust the feeling of pulse in the music. I've noticed doing this can change the sense of the musics speed without changing anything else like the tempo.

What I'm really trying to learn is a good process that can showcase my musical work well to people and articulate as much of the individual parts as I can. This ends up making the music being somewhat interwoven sounding and is something I think I'm going for or attempting to create with clarity of sound and vibes. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
 
I started reading your post and was like, ...wha? You're throwing out disc titles and song titles and plugins and frequencies and track numbers and I'm totally lost. Did you have a specific question about a track or just want some general feedback on all of it? I mean, you've got a cool sound. It's quite different from what I usually produce or listen to, but that's cool.

A couple things that jumped out at me in a casual listen - things get a bit out of sync in the 2nd track. I would either do some edits or rerecord the guitars to lock in with the drums. Also, I think you should edit out some of the hiss and mouth noise at the beginning of your tracks.
 
I'm noticing a lot of hiss. Even if it's tape, I'm hearing a lot of hiss.

The guitar sounds distant. Like the mic was across the room.

The bass had a cool sound. But the part seems a bit chaotic for the song.

The lead break goes on for a real long time.

I think a doubled vocal would sound fuller and might work well. It's missing a little high end clarity.
 
I listened to the first track. Seems like everything but the bass is high-passed pretty high. That makes it hard to find a focus because there's so much going on in the highs instead of the mids. I'd try a mix where you leave the EQ alone except for high-passing out rumbles/junk. I think if you just focus on the mids it'll be a lot easier to mix and listen to.
 
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