Repectfully request reviews of my music:

[alfugazi]

I would greatly appreciate any reviews/insight you musician/casual listener folk can provide for me:

http://www.garageband.com/artist/leeolsen

This is not spam or any kind of pay for play situation. I am just looking for honest opinions of some of the songs I have either written and/or co-written. Any feedback you can provide would be most appreciated.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[Rusty Coggs]

Checking out your songs

I'd be glad to give a listen,or look
at your lyric sheets.I like al types
of music, with the exception of (rap)
To each his own,But a far as I'm concered rap is not music,For those that do,Thats fine,as they say what ever flips yer switch.So a long as its not rap crap I would be glad to
check your songs out.

 

[jvasey]

Lee,

I listened to the first four songs, and here's what I thought.

1) The vocals need to be more consistent in volume. Use a compressor wisely and keep them louder in the mix. As is, the quieter lines get burried by the music, and the parts that are sung louder are sitting about right. I'm guessing you set the levels so the loud parts don't get out of hand, but instead use the compressor or ride the fader.

2) Too much reverb on the vocals. With all the other instruments sitting in your face, (dry), having the vocal dripping in reverb makes it sound like a band in my living room with the singer at the end of the block. A good way to fix this, is to use a group reverb for vocals, guitar, and snare at the end mix, rather than each individually.

3) The picked bass sound on the 4th song needs some help. It sounds like it was recorded direct without a direct box. Either that or the EQ was shelved in a nasty way.

4) The songs themselves arent bad, but aren't particularly memorable either. My favourite was the Spanish (I think) one. It had a cool guitar riff, with a nice tone, (reminded me of Shadowy Men), and the horn arrangements did a great job of hammering that melody home. The more you can do to hook the listener in this manner the better off you'll be. I had that simple melody from Hewletts Daughter by Grandaddy stuck in my head for most of last year because they would sing a melody, then drive it home with the keyboards.

Hope this is of some help.
Good Luck,
Jeff
PS. feel free to email me with any questions. jvasey@sympatico.ca

 

[alfugazi]

you wrote:

1) The vocals need to be more consistent in volume. Use a compressor wisely and keep them louder in the mix. As is, the quieter lines get burried by the music, and the parts that are sung louder are sitting about right. I'm guessing you set the levels so the loud parts don't get out of hand, but instead use the compressor or ride the fader.

We used compressors. Was a fast mix I did. It could also be the quality of the mp3. Mp3 degrades significantly.

2) Too much reverb on the vocals. With all the other instruments sitting in your face, (dry), having the vocal dripping in reverb makes it sound like a band in my living room with the singer at the end of the block. A good way to fix this, is to use a group reverb for vocals, guitar, and snare at the end mix, rather than each
individually.

(Which song are you referring to?) We used effects on everything.
Guitars, vocals, bass, drums, you name it......


3) The picked bass sound on the 4th song needs some help. It sounds like it was recorded direct without a direct box. Either that or the EQ was shelved in a nasty way.

(The picked bass sound we were after was intentional. We used a direct box. There is alot to making music I understand. But there are things that people on the outside do not understand what we are trying to do or say. Sometimes the overall effect is lost.


4) The songs themselves arent bad, but aren't particularly memorable either. My favourite was the Spanish (I think) one. It had a cool guitar riff, with a nice tone, (reminded me of Shadowy Men), and the horn arrangements did a great job of hammering that melody home. The more you can do to hook the listener in this manner the better off you'll be. I had that simple melody from Hewletts Daughter by Grandaddy stuck in my head for most of last year because they would sing a melody, then drive it home with the keyboards.

(I appreciate the feedback and your consideration. I was wondering if you would mind checking out one more tune of mine?
If it's not to much bother, please check out a tune called
"Chasin' Dragons". I would appreciate your feedback on this one as well.

Thanks.

 

[jvasey]

Alfugazi

The vocals sit much better in that song. It's probably a mix of the instrumental parts being a little more sparse, and the vocal reverb being shorter compared to the guitar. Some of the quieter lines still get a little lost though. You might want to consider inserting a compressor on the vocal tracks during mixdown to use as a limiter. Leave the threshold fairly high, a high ratio 6:1 or more, and the lowest attack setting. This will allow you to mix the vocals a little higher without worrying about the loud parts. Another trick is to create a noise track that's synced to the really quiet vocal parts, and use it only to trigger the sidechain on the guitar/keyboard compressors.

I went back and listened to Madness again. It sounds like your going for a Kim Deal "Canonball" type bass sound. If you were, you might want to use a parametric EQ to boost around 80-100Hz, and a bit shorter attack time. Something I used in the studio to fatten up picked lines, was splitting the signal. I'd run one through a RAT, and mix it into the clean. It could also just be that the bass itself doesnt have very good pickups, or that the player was picking back too far. If you got the sound you were trying for, ignore all this, but to me it sounds like it's not quite what it was trying to be.

Hope I'm of some help
Jeff