Original Song - Fade to Gray

F

fpr3

New member
Hi All!

I joined the community earlier this year after finishing phase 1 of my home studio (interface/DAW). Hoping to get some opinions on this track, which is the first song I tracked and mixed at home (excluding drums). Had to save at 160kbps to get < 10MB.

All feedback welcome!

Thanks,
Paul

View attachment Fade to Gray 9-07-15 160.mp3
 
Welcome to the forum Paul. Your first dig at this sounds pretty good. Good composition. Couple things....did you mean to have the room sound in the intro? Sounds like I can hear someone talking in the background?

Bass needs to come up in parts. It gets lost. You may have to do some automation to get it right.

Chorus? Vocals are hard to understand sometimes due to all the spacey reverb you have on them. I am sure its the effect you wanted because it kind of goes with the rest of the song, but maybe dial back the reverb a little. On the verses, sounds like Pink Floyd, but same thing...too much verb causes the vocals to get lost.

You some cool guitar parts in there. They don't sound bad...I don't like the lead tone though. A little too high end hyped in my opinion.

Drums don't sound bad either, I would say a little more kick would drive the song a little more. The bongos towards the end don't sound good...sorry man lol

Good start on it...just need to dial it in.
 
I thought the acoustic guitar in the intro sounded pretty good. I think the singer has a nice voice.

The vocal has a lot of reverb on it and it makes it difficult to understand. If you want the verb to set the trippy mood, you need to recognize the tradeoff. When the louder instruments kick in, it becomes very difficult to hear the lead vocal.

The bass is kind of boomy. A little too strong in the low-lows.

I liked that crunch guitar that comes in at about 1:10.

Drums sound OK.

The sound effect stuff was OK. Not my thing personally. But I thought they were used effectively in this type of song.

I liked the way you built up to the louder sections.
 
I agree with the comments above. Good voice and guitar, good song and hooks. Too much reverb on the lead vocals. The levels seem to be all over the place. Instruments that are hard to hear in one part of the song are overly loud elsewhere. I imagine there are a lot of tracks and takes in here, possibly recorded at different levels going in. All the complicates the job of getting a mix. If that's the situation, your choices are automation or multing parts with inconsistent levels out to separate tracks.
 
Wow, thanks for the replies! Great to get some opinions on the mix. The song is tracked in many pieces, so there is a lot of mixing to do for dynamics of each section, making things tricky.

@Bruthish: Yes, the "room" sound is my son Miles, mixed in with the "see everything like it's new" lyric. Which parts do you think bass gets lost? I think I will re-track the guit solo - it was done a long time ago against click, with gain cranked on several pedals...pedal to the metal... I agree the tone is harsh. Will have to look at the reverb again, each section of vox is on a separate track, so pulling the reverb down in the sections with more guitar will be straight-forward. Good feedback!

@TripleM: Consensus on the reverb! I want to get that "out there" sound in the middle section, but need to dial it back in the louder parts. Will look at the bass low-end also.

@Robus: Indeed lots of tracks need specific level mixing, and reverb needs tweaking. Any specific notes about which instruments get lost?

Do you guys ever add EQ after reverb (low cut maybe) on something like a vocal reverb send? Any tips to keep the long trails but maintain clarity? Tame Impala is a good example of ridiculous amounts of reverb and echo on vocals, yet they are crystal clear.
 
I'm not able to listen to the track again right now as I'm away from my monitors. I tend to put the reverb on a separate track and send the parts to that track to save on CPU power. I always put an EQ plugin after the reverb. Mainly I cut the low end mud. I'm not an expert on reverb, but here's what I understand. If you are using reverb to blend the parts, the tail isn't so much important as the predelay. If you're using reverb as an effect, then whatever sounds good to your ears is right. Others who know more than me can add their opinions, contradict mine, etc.

It's a royal pain when you have tracks that are comped from numerous takes that were recorded at different input levels. There have been times when I just gave up and tracked the whole part over again, rather than try to level balance all those takes. I'm learning my lesson and being more careful about recording at consistent levels.
 
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