Blues Cover (feedback please)

[Meiklejohn]

Hey, so this was my first ever real attempt at mixing. I recorded all the instruments myself, other than the drums (EZdrummer) and I did all the mixing and mastering myself. I've been home schooling myself for a while now and this was the end product.

A few things to note first - I'm unfortunately not a singer, I LOVE singing, just not very good at it.

Things I picked up myself were that the lead guitar was too loud and the vocals were ropey.

All in all i was pleased with the outcome of my first try... However, I don't want to be "pleased" I want to be ecstatic and have people questioning whether it's mine or a professional...

So yeah, any help and feedback would be fantastic!

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!


https://soundcloud.com/meiklejohn/scott-meiklejohn-someday-after-awhile

 

[FoulPhil]

It's pretty cool dude. The EZDrummer could use some work to make it more natural. Maybe try some different kits and pick a better hi hat. Best thing you can do is figure out you midi editor

 

[jimistone]

Great job man!
I luv da blues. I agree with Phil that the drums need humanizing a bit and the hat needs changing. The guitar tone is pretty good, but it has just a hair too much crunch for my personal preference. That's subjective really so take it with a grain of salt. Nice guitar playing...I thoroughly enjoyed the listen.

 

[Bruthish]

Agree really cool song. I feel you about the singing...I would almost give up all my other talents to be able to sing real well, but it ain't gonna happen so you just have to find your comfort zone and do the best you can. I think your vocals sound good on this. Nothing to be ashamed of.

I like the guitar tones. Good playing. The drums sound very center focused. Maybe try a kit with more air around it and more stereo. The vocal's mix sounds good but the music sounds a little dull in the upper ranges. It needs some "air" up there. I little boost will help. Great job

 

[Meiklejohn]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate your thoughts.

When it comes to EZ drummer I have no idea how to pan the drums? It's pretty much all sitting in the centre. Is there a standard kinda idea of where they should go? Hat - left, snare - right sorta idea?

And bruthish, I love being a guitarist but I'd give it up to be able to sing like Paul Rodgers or someone haha.

 

[FoulPhil]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate your thoughts.

When it comes to EZ drummer I have no idea how to pan the drums? It's pretty much all sitting in the centre. Is there a standard kinda idea of where they should go? Hat - left, snare - right sorta idea?

And bruthish, I love being a guitarist but I'd give it up to be able to sing like Paul Rodgers or someone haha.

They are normally already panned, but if you're just using the stock drum set you wont have a lot of options without sending each piece of the kit to it's own channel in your DAW and then panning it like a regular track. If you have different drum sets for EZ Drummer you can try different ones until you find one that sounds like it fits your music and then figure out how to get into your midi editor and start screwing with changing the velocity. That's the real trick to make it sound more natural, but it's still never going to replace a real drummer. If you're like me and just going to make music with what you have then it's worth learning everything you can about how to do this kind of stuff. It took me a long time to make my stuff sound a little better

 

[andrushkiwt]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate your thoughts.

When it comes to EZ drummer I have no idea how to pan the drums? It's pretty much all sitting in the centre. Is there a standard kinda idea of where they should go? Hat - left, snare - right sorta idea?

And bruthish, I love being a guitarist but I'd give it up to be able to sing like Paul Rodgers or someone haha.

i haven't listened to the track yet, but I use Superior Drummer 2 and can tell you that Toontrack's drums are already panned. If you open the mixing board in EZD, you will see the different pieces and its panning position. Unless EZD is different in that regard than SD, all pieces should be in a good starting point. In mine, snare and kick are centered, hat slightly left, overheads panned, toms panned. Check out the mixing board in the program, you'll see the slider there. if i listen to the track and everything is all centered, then it's not the case for EZD, i suppose (unless you moved the pieces somewhere else along the line)

 

[Meiklejohn]

Next project I'll make sure I pay more attention and spend a bit of time on the drums. Take note of the initial panning etc. Thanks again guys. Very much appreciated

 

[TripleM]

I thought the lead guitar and the vocal sounded good. Good blues playing and singing.

The bass, to me, was missing some low midrange. I was a little on the sterile side. A bit too much in the the low end. Could use a cut somewhere below 100hz.

The mix was a bit narrow. Not much on the edges.

Minor things. Overall it was real good.

 

[CMolena]

The only "bad" part of the mix for me is the lack of a real drummer. I think blues its too organic to program a drum beat. Ask someone to play...try to learn yourself..IDK.

Other than that, I love the tone of the guitars really piercing yet with a good body to it. Have you used an amp or used some sim? The vocals are pretty good too. Nice song man!

 

[hhinterwebz]

yea the drums could be punchier. the singing is great! it sounds like it just needs a little more punch maybe? but i think its almost good enough as is.

 

[Chili]

Next project I'll make sure I pay more attention and spend a bit of time on the drums.

Why wait until the next project? Go back and fix this one. It's ezdrummer, it's not like the drummer packed up his gear and went home.

Good song, good performance. No worries on the vocals.

You can always tell when a guitar player mixes his own song. When you get done recording the tracks, you are no longer the guitar player, you are the producer and engineer and you have to mix the song for your audience and not yourself. That means stepping back and listening from a different perspective. In this case, the guitar and singer are too far forward in the mix.

As others have noted, the drums sound boring and robotic and mono (which I don't get). EZDrummer is usually too wide-panned and has to be reeled in a bit. Probably you've got a mono switch selected or everything going to track one. You can select Stereo in the EZD mixer. Google to find out how. To fix the robot rhythm, you should go into the midi tracks and edit to add more feel. It's tedious, but can be worthwhile. Think of how a drummer plays and make it like that.

The bass is sooo.... pedestrian. It's like you added it only because you know a typical 4-piece rock/blues band needs a bass. For me, the bass should be the star of the show.

What I like to do: Kick, snare, bass and vocals all at the same level or really close. Get those four meshing really good. Then add in hihats, toms, guitars, background vocals, keys etc, in a supporting role. Do one at a time, then get them all working good together. Then add in the solo instruments. They should be at or slightly less than the lead vocal.

Cool man, have fun.

 

[Robus]

Nice playing, singing is nothing to be ashamed of. Some of your long string bends were sharp. What DAW are you using? Reaper has a feature (I think it's under Edit in the FX window) to automatically build and output route that sends the channels of your drum program to separate tracks. I'm all the full feature DAWs have something similar. Then you can pan them through the individual track controls, or even render the sounds to audio files, each on its own track. As others have said, you need to humanize this a bit. Needs a shuffle feel.

 

[Meiklejohn]

Hey guys thanks for all the comments and listens! I really appreciate it.

The guitar tone is a Gibson Les Paul classic reissue, playing through a fender mustang iii believe it or not.

I use reaper as my daw, unfortunately a week before I went to mix this my audio interface went pop (focusrite 2i4) so I had no way of listening to the track on my monitors... So I ended up mixing it all on my akg headphones, they are like £30-£40 headphones. I was too impatient to wait for my new interface to arrive, which should be this week.

So next week I plan on getting stuck back into it and redo the drums and have a look at the bass and I'll repost it it and get some more opinions.

Thanks again guys and girls.

Means a lot.

Scott