An interesting song.. listen in?

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Rhino_Rick

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This is Rhinoplast, the ska band I'm playing sax/organ and singing a bit in. I posted some stuff months ago but we scrapped in in an attempt to get things sounding better. And we did.. but..

I'll be damned.. it's so quiet and not very big.. take a listen.

Our instrumentation:

Vox/Guitar/Organ (Xb2+Leslie 145)/Bass/Two trombones.

Equipment used:

Aardvark Q10
AMD 1600, 1.024g of RAM, 7200HD
ATM25(kick), SM57's (some drums, two on the upper rotor of the leslie cabinet for stereo), a pair of expensive Shure overheads we rented (can't think of what they're called) and an AT4033 for vocals/horns/center of Leslie. Bass went direct from his amp.

We're trying to accomplish a mix of ska/rock/funk and other things. I want to have this tune reviewed before I go ahead and jack up a bunch of other songs. Got any suggestions? All will be taken dearly to heart!

Thanks much guys..



Our website, obviously...
www.rhinoplast.com

-Rick, Detroit

(please keep in mind I'm hardly a singer but the group insists I sing this song. I have to fix a bunch, 'specially in the bridge.. but it's not THAT bad..)
 
nice vox, i like this song alot, very original tune, on the mix it sounds to me like the snare has nothing but mids on it, no highs and no lows. the bass drum could use more low end to get a little more punch. the voxs and organ and guitars sound great, maybe a little less volume on the gits, but other than that this is a very good mix (imo), i am by far no pro so take this with a grain of salt. also you could add some reverb to the snare and that would help a ton. nice stuff keep posting im realy enjoying this song. thanks for sharing tim pate.
 
Hey Tim!

The snare is a piccolo... I'll see what I can do about grabbing some more from the top and bottom of it. Damn thing is hard to dial in real nice. We had a 57 sitting on it but I'm not too happy with the power I can get from it.. then again I did EQ it a bit to drop some of the other crap out of it.

I've got a little touch of verb on the snare now but was thinking of kicking some in to liven it up.

Thanks for the reply. Any more dare check it out? :)
 
Ska is so much fun!!

Can't wait for this to finish downloading...

Wow, for a piccolo, not much crackle there, is there... needs some steroids at about 4K. Come to think of it, the master EQ needs a jumpstart in the upper mids and a rolloff between 400Hz and 1KHz.

Don't shortchange yourself man, I think you sing this just fine. Ska is not about vocal chops; it's about personality, and that you definitely have. The harmonies ae tight too, so everything is reined in nicely!

The only relatively serious transgression I'm finding is in the little one beat breaks, everyone is very tentative; it sounds like they don't trust the drummer to come back on time. And he *is* back just a tad on the far side of the beat each time. I have this mental picture of everyone looking frantically around at each other for a nanosecond, thinking ".. now?" This is one time where the drummer has to take UTTER charge. BLAST that kick. if it's wrong, but it SOUNDS confident and "on purpose", it's much easier to forgive. :)

Love the guitar nooding at the end.

In all, and excellent, fun piece! TONS of personality and presence!

Hey, by the way, to get more crackle out of that piccolo snare; it seems to be all about stick surface area. Invert the left hand, hit with the fat end. Get as much rimshot in your backbeats as you can too; they resonate so well that way. Beats the hell out of your sticks, but it's worth it! :D

Well done!

Cheers,
Phil "Llarion: The Jazzinator" Traynor
www.llarion.com
 
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Excellent response! After an hour of getting responses I"m going to pool stuff together and fire off another mix. We have to send this off for the possibility at getting on a compilation Thursday morning.. got one more tune that we're sending but I'm sure the suggestions will apply all around.. hehehe.

Thanks for the props on the vocals, that made my night. I just wish I was born with one of "those" voices, y'know?!

The drummer.. ahh.. our drummer.. 16 year old kid.. hehehe. We just got him learning the metronome way of life and he stuck to it pretty well but sometimes he gets a little carried away and has to find his way back home if you catch my drift. He's coming along well and has been studying with a great local guy for awhile. He's our future prospect. :)

And for the record, the only time we look around at eachother and go, "Now?!" is at live shows. That was all done in pieces. Hehehe.. But live shows can be kind of nuts sometimes..

Anyone have an idea of how to just get the damn thing a bit bigger and louder? And I forgot to mention, I'm using Cubase SX, too, if that helps. I've got the mastering plugin compressing the entire mix and keeping it in check, is this a big no-no?!

-Rick, Detroit
 
Last night I added a bit more verb to the snare and it totally gave it some more depth, it sounds much better!

I'm having a bit of trouble compressing the kick and keeping it sounding real nice, I had the attack real real small at one point but opened it up to about 10 ms and it sounds much fuller now. However with that I'm clipping in some spots now. Tried normalizing out some of the real hard hits but that only goes so far and is quite time consuming.

Also I loaded up Ozone and did some stereo widening I think it really opened up the sound. Have to tweak it a bit more tonite but it feels much bigger and has more life now. Between that and a touch of reverb I caked on (Timeworks) it's sounding nicer.

I didn't have a chance to do the audio mixdown yet but I will be tonite because we have to ship it off TOMORROW! I can't believe it, I'm so under a deadline!

Any suggestions for me as we wrap up this song (and it's companion)? When I get the mixes I'm going to send off I'll post them for you to hear. If you liked this tune you'll like the other for sure. The other singer is on it and is substantially clearer than me.

Thanks guys!
-Rick, Detroit
 
You need to bump the EQ up some around 3-4k and also maybe a little at 8-10k. That would give some life to it. It's very muffled sounding right now. And evrything sounds very compressed to me. Is it? If so that might be one of your problems. A piccolo snare ought to have plenty of snap to it and I've gotten plenty of high-end on drums with 57s so I don't think it was the mic. Either it's in the mix (the EQing especially) or you didn't track it hot enough. Good song though and nice playing.
 
I echo LT. Bobs thoughts about boosting the overall mix in the high end some.It sounds really muffled right now.....you must be mixing with some really high end responsive speakers that are fooling your ears because this is just as muffled/dull as an old cassete tape sounds when it's been sitting up for years.



Nice performance all the way around.
 
I totally hear it too but I couldn't tell what it was.

I just played it through my normal computer speakers and the upper end sounds DULL and LIFELESS. On my monitors it sounded much fuller and not nearly as dead. I've got a pair of Yamaha MSP3's, is this my problem!?

I'm going to jump on that as right now and drive to kick some life in.. the pair of tunes has to be shipped out in 6 hours!

Thanks guys!

-Rick, Detroit
 
Sick song man!!

i love ska!!
im workin on one myself at the moment. Im tryin to find someone who plays trumpet though. i used to play but someone stole the damn thing!!!

iv only heard the first minute so far though coz it didnt download completely, but dont worry, im downloading again now.

by the way, COOL website!!

peace

Balshazza
 
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