Absolution City

[TeyshaBlue]

Got together with a couple of buddies this weekend and tried out my new Zoom r16 recorder/interface. When I entered the room, everything was in black and white and all the dudes were wearing hats...

Pretty tough mix...lots of stuff happening in the 250hz range that I'm fighting with. I'll probably end up importing this into Sonar just so I can apply a little higher quality eq on some of the string and backing pad tracks.

Comments are welcome so fire away!

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=8330116&q=hi

 

[cantthinkofname]

i loved it

 

[jeffmaher]

The panning seems to be biased a lot to the left.

The muted trumpet has some strange 'rotational artifact'...must be a midi sample?? Maybe check the parameters and get rid of whatever things are going on, to flatten the signal??

Same with the strings...but not so much.

Other sounds are real nice. I'm a sucker for m6 chords.

If the bass is midi, I suggest an upright sample. There's no transient or decay...just the bottom full of low, indistinguishable fullness. Unused potential for ooomph, there, I think.

Piano has typical stereo spread?? Pan the ctr...or bias R to balance the mix?

And the bass is sounding under the bass piano notes....splitting them would make for a fuller thang, I reckon.

Maybe take care to homoginize the blend [levels] in instruments when everything sounds, to give a mental pic of a single group?? More like real-life watching a combo in a basement club in the big city??

Helpful??

 

[TeyshaBlue]

The panning seems to be biased a lot to the left.

The muted trumpet has some strange 'rotational artifact'...must be a midi sample?? Maybe check the parameters and get rid of whatever things are going on, to flatten the signal??

Same with the strings...but not so much.

Other sounds are real nice. I'm a sucker for m6 chords.

If the bass is midi, I suggest an upright sample. There's no transient or decay...just the bottom full of low, indistinguishable fullness. Unused potential for ooomph, there, I think.

Piano has typical stereo spread?? Pan the ctr...or bias R to balance the mix?

And the bass is sounding under the bass piano notes....splitting them would make for a fuller thang, I reckon.

Maybe take care to homoginize the blend [levels] in instruments when everything sounds, to give a mental pic of a single group?? More like real-life watching a combo in a basement club in the big city??

Helpful??

Thanks Jeff. That muted trumpet is a mic'ed muted trumpet sample. It sound pretty clear in .wav, but it is a pretty bright sample. Pretty sure the swirling issues is Soundclick's 128/sec mp3 compression limit.
The bass was a Warick fretless that I probaly over eq'd. I wanted a soft, acoustic bass sound and I was trying to emulate that by removing material in the low to mid range of the bass track. I lost too much definiton tho. I should've waited a day or two before I mixed it down...
The piano was a stereo grand sample from the Fantom, so it's pan settings were left in their default...presumably balanced, but maybe not?

I'm really fighting the panning issue. I've lost alot of hearing in my left ear and I mix almost as much visually as I do aurally. The meters show me that I have a balance mix +/- a couple of db. I think the drum kit I'm using via a Roland Fantom G6 is biased a bit to that side. Seems odd to set up a kit that way, but it might be part of the problem. Were I tracking this in Sonar, I have a nice spectrum analyzer plug that gives me alot of information as to what's happening in the stereo field. It helps me keep things balanced, but I intentionally restricted myself to just the R16's processing so I could get an honest idea of it's capabilities.
Thanks for the very thoughtful and helpful critique! I appreciate it.

 

[queepy]

Cool..not my regular genere of music, but I can appreciate the musicianship....I like the laid back swing vibe....Guitar is pretty tasty around 2:20...what is that effect on the solo? Sounded kind of like a auto-wah mu-tron thing....great playing all around, enjoyed the listen!

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Cool..not my regular genere of music, but I can appreciate the musicianship....I like the laid back swing vibe....Guitar is pretty tasty around 2:20...what is that effect on the solo? Sounded kind of like a auto-wah mu-tron thing....great playing all around, enjoyed the listen!

Thanks for the listen, queepy. Yeah, Noir is a developed taste. The guitar effect used at the mid point solo was an auto-wah patch in the Zoom R16, as well as the tremolo and the distortion used in the last guit solo/fill. Pretty cool little box.

 

[K Road]

Very moody, overtones of a modern James Bond theme with an outro that is very reminiscent of Zero 7. Lush, full live sound - quite sparkling.

K.

 

[jeffmaher]

I'm really fighting the panning issue. I've lost alot of hearing in my left ear and I mix almost as much visually as I do aurally.


Yup...same w/me. I switch the phones....like I had to, to check for the bias.

I have no HF in the left...but it's louder; and no LF in the right...which is down to 70% level. So I have to check all the time on the graphs and pan-o-meters....and mix levels in mono.
But there are armless people who make a good living painting with their toes.
Just one more challege for us to overcome w/ experience. Beats being deaf. Glass half full, always!

 

[kcearl]

very cool T...enjoyed...just get Sade to belt out a couple of verses and yer done

 

[kcearl]

Very moody, overtones of a modern James Bond theme with an outro that is very reminiscent of Zero 7. Lush, full live sound - quite sparkling.

K.

ah Zero7 yes I hear that now..good shout


great band

 

[Greg_L]

Sounds pretty good. Something is not jiving with my internal meter. The snaps and stuff kind of throw the flow off for me. Once the wah guitar comes in, it seems to gel, but before that, it seems way off. The horn is kind of ear splitting.

I love the vibe to this though. Very spy movie like.

 

[Llarion]

"The song was dark", I thought, as I uncorked another bottle of scotch and took a shot right fom the bottle. Lightning flashed in the distance as a knock sounded on the door. It opened, and in walked trouble.

"Master EQ", I said. "I didn't expect to see you on this kind of night.

"No such luck, gumshoe", he said. I'm razor sharp, sharp like cheddar, and I'm on that 4KHz cracker, and ain't nothing you can do about it".

Little did he know that, being a good detective, I was not without my own food metaphors. I took out another cigarette, and sneaked a look at my thesaurus.

"Listen, before I call the G (minor) men, I'm gonna tell ya one thing. You need smoothing. You need to make like pate in the upper mids."

I took another swig from my flask, sauntered over the board, cut 4Hz by 2dB, cut 8KHz but 2db, and dropped the skins back in the bucket by 2dB.

"Take that! Next time, remember who you're messing with..."

Then I shot him, because it seemed like the thing to do.

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Sounds pretty good. Something is not jiving with my internal meter. The snaps and stuff kind of throw the flow off for me. Once the wah guitar comes in, it seems to gel, but before that, it seems way off. The horn is kind of ear splitting.

I love the vibe to this though. Very spy movie like.

The finger snaps were a catastrophe. Who knew two guitarists couldn't snap their fingers in unison on 2 &4 at 72 bpm? It does drag the song's "grid" around by the ear.

Something weird happens to that muted trumpet at the beginning...the horn that is killing everyone. In .wav, it's very clear. The oscillating, swirling fuzziness in the 128k/sec soundclick upload is, in .wav, revealed to actually be the player's vibrato captured in the sample.
Thanks man.

 

[TeyshaBlue]

"The song was dark", I thought, as I uncorked another bottle of scotch and took a shot right fom the bottle. Lightning flashed in the distance as a knock sounded on the door. It opened, and in walked trouble.

"Master EQ", I said. "I didn't expect to see you on this kind of night.

"No such luck, gumshoe", he said. I'm razor sharp, sharp like cheddar, and I'm on that 4KHz cracker, and ain't nothing you can do about it".

Little did he know that, being a good detective, I was not without my own food metaphors. I took out another cigarette, and sneaked a look at my thesaurus.

"Listen, before I call the G (minor) men, I'm gonna tell ya one thing. You need smoothing. You need to make like pate in the upper mids."

I took another swig from my flask, sauntered over the board, cut 4Hz by 2dB, cut 8KHz but 2db, and dropped the skins back in the bucket by 2dB.

"Take that! Next time, remember who you're messing with..."

Then I shot him, because it seemed like the thing to do.

That post is made of win.

 

[Greg_L]

The finger snaps were a catastrophe. Who knew two guitarists couldn't snap their fingers in unison on 2 &4 at 72 bpm? It does drag the song's "grid" around by the ear.

Something weird happens to that muted trumpet at the beginning...the horn that is killing everyone. In .wav, it's very clear. The oscillating, swirling fuzziness in the 128k/sec soundclick upload is, in .wav, revealed to actually be the player's vibrato captured in the sample.
Thanks man.

Put a 320 kbps version up via www.lightningmp3.com.

 

[joeym]

Cool soundtrack-vibey stuff, Teysha....
Not jazzy all the way, morejazzy-bluesy and good. Recording sounds crystal clear to me, although as remarked before it tends to lean very much to one side panning-wise. Ah but the seasoned musicianship shines thru. Shady jazz-bar, Humphry Bogart, chicks that really look like chicks, oldie Fords....all that comes to mind when listening to this melancholic beauty. Nice listen!

Joey

 

[TeyshaBlue]

Thanks, Joey. I love Noir..dunno why, really.
Over the next few days I'm going to dig into the Fantom and see if I can change the panning assignments in the drum kits...that should help somewhat. Other than that, I think I need to get away from panning so hard on my stereo samples...ie the Grand Piano. I tend to just let the samples lay where their defaults place them and pan 100% L + 100% R. Apparently, this aint a great idea. Now that I'm more aware of this, I hope to be able to correct it over the next few projects.

Greg....here's a 320k link. Thanks for suggesting that site.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=20962

 

[Greg_L]

Thanks, Joey. I love Noir..dunno why, really.
Over the next few days I'm going to dig into the Fantom and see if I can change the panning assignments in the drum kits...that should help somewhat. Other than that, I think I need to get away from panning so hard on my stereo samples...ie the Grand Piano. I tend to just let the samples lay where their defaults place them and pan 100% L + 100% R. Apparently, this aint a great idea. Now that I'm more aware of this, I hope to be able to correct it over the next few projects.

Greg....here's a 320k link. Thanks for suggesting that site.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=20962

Yeah, that sounds better. The harsh things aren't as harsh.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Cool song. Not the sort of thing that I'd normally listen to by itself, but it'd work great for a soundtrack or somesuch.

I agree everything seems to be leaning a little to the left. Even if the total volume is balanced across the spectrum, most of the definition of the instruments is on the left.

Something does need to be done with those snaps. They're off from each other occasionally, which isn't so bad (it helps drive home the point that they're real, tracked snaps). But something about how they sound is off. They kind of sound like they're sampled. Maybe you have too many effects on them?

 

[nzausrec]

Very, very well made.
There's a lot more in the left. Drums are way over there, as are most of the instruments.
But, it's nice instrumentally. Touches of 'Shine on you Crazy Diamond' come thru for me.
It is not as 1920's retro as you think - is more modern than that.
Maybe finger snaps are a bit wierd, I don't know. They didn't anger me or anything, just stand out they do - perhaps because they are not electronic/midi whereas other instruments are? But, overall they are fine .. and enhance the listening pleasure.

Hehe.
Good sounds.