Nice Day For a Heart Break

  • Thread starter Thread starter Manslick
  • Start date Start date
Nice song, man!
Very nice arrangement and performance.
What I notice is it's pretty compressed. I like a bit of pumping compression but sometimes it sounds a bit too much here. It also sounds like you were using some side chaining between voice and guitar, which is a good thing, but sometimes very obvious. But I put all that down to taste, it's still a damn good tune.;)
 
The download link worked fine for me too Manslick. Enjoyed it a lot - good performance and the lyrics are very good. There was something I really liked about the line 'looks out the window and thinks hmmm' - I think it's because the rest of the instrumentation drops around it before kicking back in.

In terms of nits, I think you need to give the backing vocals a bit more body on the chorus though as they sound a little thin currently and I think the timing could be a little tighter on the hi hat/cymbals in the intro just before the flangey guitar comes in.

Nice work.
 
Thanks for trying the link Rob.

My daughter will be happy to hear your comments about the lyrics. She finally got the nerve to show me something she wrote.

Yeah the whole production is one big experiment with computer effects inside Propellerheads Reason+Record package. This is one I could tweak forever.

The timing, glad you noticed. Damn - drums are hard to play. :)
 
The lead vocal sounded nice and clear. It got a little abrasive on a note or two.

The cymbals I think got clobbered in the MP3 conversion. They get a little swishy here and there.

The clean guitar is a little abrasive. The attack is a little sharp.

Bass has a little cardboard-ish sound to it. Maybe a little cut around 600hz might help.

The background vox (doing the ah's) were kind of weird sounding, but I really liked them.
 
These are words I just kind of put together and sent to my dad (Manslick) on a whim, not expecting them to be made into a song, but I am so pleased with the outcome. As a non-musician, it is amazing to me how someone can take words that someone else wrote and put them to music, and make it work and I think that is just what he did here. I'm a fan! :)
 
TripleM said:
The lead vocal sounded nice and clear. It got a little abrasive on a note or two.

The cymbals I think got clobbered in the MP3 conversion. They get a little swishy here and there.

The clean guitar is a little abrasive. The attack is a little sharp.

Bass has a little cardboard-ish sound to it. Maybe a little cut around 600hz might help.

The background vox (doing the ah's) were kind of weird sounding, but I really liked them.
Click to expand...

Good to see ya Trip.

I recorded the drums 8 bpm faster than the track with the intention of applying a vari-speed affect. But, my recording software only time stretched the track, it didn’t alter the frequency.
I tried using a sampler and with some help from Propellerhead I learned that the frequency differential is -1.372 semitones. But, pRecord uses a much higher degree of accuracy when calculating tempo and the sample would drift.
So I just lowered the tempo back to 97 bpm. This introduced some weird interaction with the cymbals and I like weird so I let it be. I think the phasing is a bit more pronounced.

There is a lot of compression on the guitar but I liked that ripping tone.

The bass is DI along with two mics and at different points the acoustic sound of the electric bass is more audible than the DI, plus I got some weird fret noise in there too.

I thinned out the BGV, three part harms double tracked with no eq was just too much gravy.

Last night I did a reset on the mixer with the intention of starting from zero, but the thing sounded so anemic I just said the hell with it. I’m indoctrinated to this one now.

Thanks for the spin Trip. When I saw you’d posted I expected a lot more white glove treatment. What’s up, you getting soft? :)
 
everlongtree said:
These are words I just kind of put together and sent to my dad (Manslick) on a whim, not expecting them to be made into a song, but I am so pleased with the outcome. As a non-musician, it is amazing to me how someone can take words that someone else wrote and put them to music, and make it work and I think that is just what he did here. I'm a fan! :)
Click to expand...

What a surprise. Keep writing.

I love you honey. :)
 
You completely killed this song with compression. And it's been pretty well documented lately that I'm not anti-loud or anti-compression, but this is one instance in which the audio snobs are correct. Back off the master bus compression/limiting and let this bitch breathe some.
 
Very well written and arranged. Kudos on the lyrics and nice job putting them to the music. The compression is interesting - I hear a bit of ducking but I think it helps keep the vocals on top where they belong. Personnally I would leave this - maybe work on it later if you really need to change something but enjoy it for now.
 
Cool Song, I'm pretty sure I like the second mix more. Are you using a straight limiter or a multiband? IMO multibands can be less noticable, i.e I might compress the bass 3:1, the lowmids 1.5:1 and nothing above 2k. Just a thought.
 
Hey PDP, the limiter is an MClass Maximizer on the vocals.

It is a straight limiter with the soft peak option turned on.

There is nothing on the stereo buss.

I’ll have to look to see what is on the bass, but I think only some EQ and compression.

Generally it’s compression on instruments and limiting on vocals.

My mixing style is largely reactionary and I don’t take notes so I’d have to look at the rack to see exactly what is where.

I’m using Reason for the processing which does have multiband compression but I’m not sure about multiband limiting. I do have multiband compression on the drums.

Thanks for the thoughts.
 
I think v2 sounds excellent Manslick. I haven't got v1 to hand for direct comparison, but does seem like it has more room to breathe with less compression and the backing vocals sound much fuller this time around. What I liked about the lyrics and vocals was that they seemed to capture the everyday mundaneness of the tragic - in a kind of Comfortably Numb/Warren Zevon-ish sort of way.

Great collaboration from familia Slick :)
 
Hey Rob, thanks for the spin.
The mood of the song is what my daughter described as “kind of slow and creepy”.
Well to me that means Em6 to Em. You really can’t go wrong with Em, especially if you’re a guitar player.
 
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