Wrote a song for the Wife for our 1 year - Would like some feedback please!

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Omniwang

New member
Hey guys!

I wrote this instrumental for the wife to give to her on our anniversary and I'm working on some new stuff of a similar style (but a little faster and heavier probably) and was wondering if you guys could make any suggestions on how I can make the song sound better overall. Did I drop the ball somewhere? Should I have cleaned certain parts up in some way? Could I have added or removed something to add something else to the song?

The song is called 'First Summer' named after what I remember my first summer with her being like. Ignore it being called a rough, it's not a rough at this point.

https://soundcloud.com/user-66230428/first-summer-rough-3
 
Omniwang said:
Could I have added or removed something to add something else to the song?
Click to expand...

Words!! :eek: I'm not kidding. If you're going to make this a gift for a special occasion, put some effort into making it special. You gotta put yourself into the recipient's position. If it's a gift for her, what would she want to hear? If you think you can't sing, make it spoken word over a backing track. Maybe your wife is unique in this aspect, but most girls are not into guitar wanking instrumentals. :D

I thought the snare was way too loud and lacking any kind of dynamics. It over powered the mix. It also sounded very robotic.
There were some timing issues with the solo guitar here and there.

Congrats on your one year anniversary. :)
 
Yeah I can't sing unfortunately. She knows I can't sing either. She's a pretty good vocalist and has tried teaching me but it's like trying to cram a square peg through a circle hole, it's just not happening. It's not that I didn't put effort into writing this, certainly the opposite. I spent about 3 months writing this, every day I'd play the song over and over and make changes here and there. I really wish I could sing, you have no idea dude haha.

The drums are done with a vst, I don't actually own a kit myself but I can look at dropping down the volume on the snare a bit. Thanks for the feedback on that one for sure.

Could you elaborate on the problems with the timing in the solo? I'm not certain what part you mean as the whole song is kinda a solo I guess?
 
Chili said:
There were some timing issues with the solo guitar here and there.
Click to expand...

Yeah...I heard the same thing. The solo isn't locked in with the drums everywhere, it's like the riffs are doing their own thing at times and go well off the beat timing...and having the drums up that loud makes it even more obvious.
 
I think I know the part you guys are talking about. Lemme look at that. Maybe have to re-record the guitar there.

Thanks guys!
 
The drums are too loud given how sparse the mix is. They're not that loud in isolation, so either lower them or bring the guitar up. The snare seems to be the main culprit. Sometimes the snare sounds like it's in the right ear and sometimes the left. I'm not sure why...

The timing issues are acceptable in my book. I mean parts are slightly off, but it's the scars that make us human. Having robotic drums and human guitar parts is one problem with drum machines and samples, though...I'd loosen up the drum part a bit and put a little swing and velocity difference on it. If you want to go really in depth place hits early and late on the grid, etc.
 
That's a good idea Nola.

I was thinking about the drums a bit here, I'm not a great drummer but I notice when I'm going to try a fill I tend to speed up/lighten the hits on whatever I'm going to do just before the fill so I'm going to try doing that with the drums a bit too. The vst I use does let me make each 'note' low-medium-high as well as adjust the volume for that piece of the drum kit individually so I'm going to try playing around with that a little bit to see if I can make them sound less artificial.

I'm also going to drop the snare a Db or two and see if that helps make it less over powered.

This genre, whatever it is, is a little different for me and I'm not the most experienced at mixing to begin with. I guess I went into this expecting the other instruments to end up being louder or heavier than they ended up being and didn't compensate on the drums to get everything to fall into place correctly.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time out of your day to give this a listen. I don't have a ton of people around in person who I can bounce these things off of and none of them record their own music so my local feedback is a little lacking.

Thanks again everyone, really appreciate it.
 
As a song I'm not sure I hear romance? definitely needs some words.

The tom on the right sounds too wide for me. I felt there was a lack of bottom end and I agree that the snare needs taming. lots of really good stuff though :)
 
Haha I appreciate the input, I just get a feeling or emotion and write music that makes me feel like that *shrugs* It's not so much about the romance, more the excitement and joy I felt when we first started seeing each other. Not that there isn't excitement and joy now! LOL!

Hopefully she hears what I'm trying to get at with this song haha.
 
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