A female-fronted pop-rock demo I should have finished months ago...

[mattr]

Recorded this as a favour for a friend back in September and posted a very dodgy mix of the instrumentals, but never got around to polishing up the complete mix due to starting med school and all the new time commitments that have come with it. They've rewritten it as a completely different song now, but I stumbled across a few spare hours this evening and decided to spend have some productive downtime finishing it

I don't apologise for the limiting. Its a very hot mix, I know... I was kind of using this as a learning experiment to see how far I could push a mix without losing too much punch and "openness" along with an added touch of faux-commercial sparkle. I almost vomited writing that last sentence but hey, I'm recording free demo tracks for pop bands as a hobby, do you expect me to be doing the right thing?

Since listening again whilst typing this and its been uploading I've decided its lacking in the low end, the guitars are WAY too loud and the vocals are buried, but I guess I can sort when I get around to it that in another few months time

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=26375

...oh, and its missing vocals for the second verse. Deleted them because the lyrics were atrocious but never re-recorded the new ones. I should really stop with the excuses and just admit it was a bit of a botch job.

So my main questions for this evening are...

1. Despite all that, is it still an acceptable mix? All constructive criticism appreciated.
2. If you were a 14 year old kid, would you "like" this on your Myface and illegitimately (yet helpfully from a promotional POV) distribute it amongst all your other 14 year old friends, or would you know it had been cobbled together in some other teenagers bedroom?

And reading through what I've just written, I seem to have a line-of-though tonight relating to superficial values, deception and exploitation. Am I a bad person?

P.S. Happy 2011 (I don't think I've quite sobered up yet)

 

[PDP]

1. Yes, but it's pretty harsh, I'd back it down just a touch.

2. I have no idea what 14 year olds would do with this, try asking in the marketing thread.

 

[mattr]

...but it's pretty harsh.

Thanks for the reply. If you wouldn't mind, please could you expand a bit so I can see about improving it?

Harsh as in harshness/distortion-type-stuff introduced by the compression, or harsh in terms of the general balance of the high-end? Fatiguing?

 

[PDP]

Maybe just take a little highs off the guitars above 3-4k. The master sounds pushed just a bit too much, even 1-2db less loudness might help. Its pretty smashed yes? Overall it captures that genre well.

 

[jjjtttggg]

I like it a lot! My main suggestions would be to make the vocals a bit more prominent and the guitars a (teeny) bit less so. She's a really good singer and for a good part of the song she's hard to hear. The track does seem really loud which I know is compression/limiting, but I don't really know how to do that so I can't comment on how/whether to change it. I think for the song/genre the effect is quite appropriate. Maybe a teeny bit less, though? I don't know. Really a good song to me.

J

 

[guitarplayr82]

If you were a naive 14 year old kid, would you "like" this on your Myface and illegitimately (yet helpfully from a promotional POV) distribute it amongst all your other 14 year old friends, or would you know it had been cobbled together in some other teenagers bedroom?

This definitely doesn't sound like it was put together in a bedroom, or at least most teenagers wouldn't think so. It sounds comercially acceptable and I think, out of the teens that are into this genre (myself being one), this could definitely be a hit amongst them.

 

[mattr]

...

Thanks, I'll play around with the EQ on the guitar bus and see if I can soften it down a bit.

...

You've confirmed my thoughts about the vocal levels... will see about pushing them up a bit more / digging some space out of everything else. Thanks

...

Awesome, cheers for the feedback!

Don't get me wrong, I'm into this genre in a big way too, but I sometimes try to remove my personal tastes from the picture when I'm recording as an attempt to keep an objective view on things... there's always the danger (which has caught me out many times before) of getting sucked in by a song and seeing [hearing] everything through, erm, rose-tinted, err, ears? Idiom fail...

My quip about naive 14-year-olds was probably out of place, after all I was one not too long ago; being an arrogant yet equally naive 18 year old isn't any better

 

[rayc]

Sounds like a good song in there - your own critiques are pretty spot on.
The vox aren't buried though - I like their relative levels.
It is a little overpowering in the high end of the guitars & snare!
It doesn't sound any worse than "radio" stuff if that's what you're asking.

 

[PoeticIntensity]

The guitars get a bit messy right before the choruses. Maybe a bit less reverb on them? Punk is usually pretty dry due to fast music becoming a bit messy when loaded with verb.

Really like the vocals. Dripping in reverb, though.

Really like the drums... Dripping in reverb, though.

High-end needs to be tamed. Listening to this loudly is pretty harsh.

Love the sick snare roll getting crazy loud, only to drop out into an acoustic riff. Arrangement rocks.

Yup! Good job, man. Wipe away some of the reverb messiness, and tame some high-end, and this thing would be awesome!