my second post in the clinic

A

alexspetty

New member
i posted this one in the songwriting forum already, but i like the more technically oriented critique this forum offers.



-alex
 
This song is freakin awesome... all around a great song!

Lyrics, structure, performance--all top notch stuff.

I love that acoustic sound, the acoustic riffs sound sweet, and those vocal harmonies in the chorus are amazing!

This song goes near the top of my list of good songs I have heard lately from anywhere, including radio, tv, etc.
 
Another win man.I dont have any suggestions at all.This mix sounds killer.All the way around this is a top notch recording/Mix/Performance.......do you play all the parts?

What software/Recorder do you use?This is high quality stuff.
 
yes i wrote it, sang it, and played guitar on it. lawrence france (my music partner) collaborated with me on the arrangement.

my good friend kurt smith played bass and aaron bertoglio played drums (they both kick ass incidentally [imho]).. lawrence france played the counterpuntal guitar part and sang some of the backup up harmonies.

the tune was tracked to sonar 2.2 through 3 synched darla cards breaking out into a mackie 24x8. all signal processing was done post and outboard.

the drums where submixed on a mackie 1402vlz and the kick was triggered thus the highly beefy bass thud you hear in the recording.

the cut was "mastered" with sound forge 6.0.

-alex
 
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Both songs sound very professional. Great taste and great job. I love good harmony.

What are some of the secrets of getting that studio quality? Do you like using baffling or have a sound treated room or both.

It sounds like you have a lot of equipment there, and you know how to use it.

Joe
 
What a great chorus! I love the snare sound too.

Great stuff! I like the rhythm changes. The whole thing has a strong hook, without being too "radio." Very nice!

Hmmm, I don't think the AM radio effect is necessary at the end.
 
nice drums ...really nice..and the thudding kick drum too.

the vocals seem almost too crispy to me.

the chorus is very nice.

the whole mix is very full and punchy and very radio ready, to me.
 
very polished mix and another great song! man i could learn a lot from you. but i'm sure that i won't lol!

only thing that stuck out was that kick drum. just didn't sound quite right to me.
 
Man you guys on this forum are just killing me!!! This is awesome! I don't mean to gush on every single thread I go to, but man all of you guys are so good! This tune just blows me away. What a great voice...great job!
 
erichenryus said:
only thing that stuck out was that kick drum. just didn't sound quite right to me.
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well.. i did something kinda wierd with the triggered kick.. like 40% of the bass kicks are the original recorded thud while the other 60% are the triggered sample. i did this to kinda fool the ear from thinking it was totally triggered, but at the same time get that full beefiness of the sample kick in there. the result is a little wierd.. but wierd in a very subtle way.. most ears wouldnt notice i think.. or at least i hope!! :)

-alex
 
alexspetty said:
most ears wouldnt notice i think.. or at least i hope!! :)

-alex
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i'm sure they won't! this whole thing sounds very professional

i'm sort of a drummer.....and none of my own drum tracks sound this good cause i'm using a v-kit to record right now. the whole experience has caused me a lot of headaches and general loathing of samples.
 
I'm not one to give criticism on recording and mixing and all.... so I'll just comment on the end product...

This song totally kicks ass!....

Absolutely awesome... its like Lays potato chips, I cant listen to it just once...

:)
 
I'm not going to even bother to comment on the mix ... awesome. I went to your website and I'm anxious to hear more of your stuff.

Now ... fess up ....how did you record and process the vocals? If you get the vocals right (and you did), it goes a long way in making a mix sound professionally mastered. Not that other areas don't contribute, but FOR ME, the vocals are so important. Also, if I posted all the questions I had, I'd be here all day. LOL.

BPOCO.
 
Sorry Alex, I can't help you. You're way ahead of me! I have to agree the overall caliber of the stuff in this clinic just blows me away! It's good to have people like you here to show me what I should be working toward.


Twist
 
bpoco said:
Now ... fess up ....how did you record and process the vocals? If you get the vocals right (and you did), it goes a long way in making a mix sound professionally mastered.
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To get vox right (imho)

you first need to put a lot of voice out there. you gotta sing it like its your last day on earth. i realize that not everyone has a wide range or great pitch control (not to imply that i think i do.. cause i dont), but regardless the quality of your voice you are never precluded from putting your whole heart into your instrument. risk sounding bad to sound good. if the heart is there the voice will follow (within reason obviously). give the mic all you got. thats my philosophy.

also.. try to keep your mouth about 2" from the P guard. and dont move your head around a lot. maintaining mic proximity is important.

you secondly need to have a quiet room. I dont have an isobooth or anything , but i do have a room thats free from potentional noise and rather small. the walls of the room are padded with egg crate foam to keep reverberation to a minimum.

you also need a good condenser mic. an sm-58 (even the betas) just wont deliver the depth of tone. i use a neuman km184 condenser.

mic pre's are a must. i use a joe meek mq3. (not the best, but not the worst)

ok. so that gets you to tape, which for me is sonar 2.2xl on a pc system with 3 echoaudio darla24/96 cards synched togehter.
i run everything back out from Darla's breakout boxes to my analog mackie 24x8.

(btw. i use fairly low sample rates 48KHz for working and dithered down to 44Khz in mastering.. 48,000 samples per second is enough to fool my ears, plus it keeps file sizes resonable when working with large numbers of tracks. also, put your working tracks on a different physical drive than your OS.. i noticed a big improvement on my pc as a recording medium once i did this.)

from the mackie i go outboard for vox signal processing. first i eq it through my trusty Rane GE 60. Then I wet it ever so slightly with some Lexicon M480L verb. Then I compress all of the vocals to keep the overall effect of the harmonies sonically cohesive. i dont squash it too much. in general i think less is more with signal processing. oh yeah, good near field monitors will go a long way at this point in telling you what exactly it is that you have on tape and letting you know how your processing is really effecting things. i use behringer truths right now, which i like. but i do want to get some "real" monitors like some mackie hr824's

i would say the most important thing for good vocs (imho) is to lay solid tracks.. by that i mean put a "lot" on tape in terms of tone and feeling. also very important, make sure the whole production is rhythmically tight, ie. in time. the performances should all be locked up tightly with eachother. this is probably the number one thing you can do to get that pro feel.
the first track I always lay when starting a new song is a click track (a metronome set and recorded at the desired tempo for the song). then I lay a guitar scratch track as sort of a compass for the drummer. after a solid drumming performance is laid tightly over the click then you have a great starting point.

next track bass. then rhythm guitar. if all this is tight and locked in. then the production will sound good before you go to mix.
now that the basics are down and tight. just sing it like you own it.

anyway.. i just read over what i wrote and it think it sounds a little too know-it-all-ish. if you get that impression while reading this, please know that i dont mean it that way. in fact i know I have TONS to learn from people on this board. what i have outlined here is just my current way of going about it to get what sounds good to me.

Thanks for listening,
Alex
 
OUTSTANDING!!!

I was especially impressed with the bass tone. There's so much "good" here that I can't possibly relate it all, so I'll just focus on the negative.

I didn't like your vocal approach at the beginning...you sounded like you were trying to sing rough instead of letting it just happen, so up to the first chorus, it's not as great as your obviously capable of doing.

That's it...my only nit-pick...lol.

Excellent advice on the proximity effect too. You totally pissed me off by pulling off that ridiculously long "SSSSSsss" with no sibilance. Nice job.
 
really enjoying

your music.

You guys really are great. I cant get enough of "living in a restless world". Really georgeous song and recording too.

I just got a condesor mic and am trying to record me and the guitar (and a bongo!). Any tips?

brilliant

Erland
 
your last recording rocked... this is no different. :p You've got a great voice.


and great drum sound. :p really good... I like his toms... I'm guessing that's a nice set, because those high toms sound sweet.


WATYF
 
alexspetty said:
To get vox right (imho)

also, put your working tracks on a different physical drive than your OS.. i noticed a big improvement on my pc as a recording medium once i did this.)


OK - not that I wanna go off topic, but he's right (I've been a network engineer with a Masters and several Certs including A+ Network+ MCSE/MCSA... and so on... and so on)

Here's what I did (I realize not everyone can afford this, but it does increase performance immensly when using PC for HDisk recording:)

I got 4 10GIG SCSI HDs set up as s stripe set with an Adaptec SCSI card...


OK SCSI is expensive, but you can do this easily with several ATA 100 drives... look around for someone selling old drives, buy 2 drives (size doesn't have to match, but should all have same RPM - ATA 100 or better work well) -- Also if you can buy a 4th drive ...

Set them up 2 of the drives to act as a single volume (Assuming you're running Windows 2K Pro or better) in a striped set...

the system will treat both drives as though they were 1 - allowing a significant increase in performance...

the 4th drive only needs to be about 3-4GIG and should be set up as your only Swap Partition.

So to recap:

Main (Drive 0) drive is your OS and software
Drives 1&2 Are for data only in a striped set
Drive 3 is your swap partition.

Also when possible, use multiple sticks of ram - (ie: if you want 128 meg of RAM use 2x64 Meg sticks... if you want 256 use 4x64 if your machine will allow 4 or use 2x128 -- the ram will refresh faster and indevidually which will increase performance.)

Wow... sorry... I tend to ramble... If this should be in another are please tell me and I'll move it... :)

- Tanlith -



... oh yeah... Alex... Love the song man! :) I love the precision of the stops and starts in the chorus.
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