Kelly: thanks man. I agree that the vocals are a little low. The "extra voice" in there is me repeating the 2nd verse during the first, and the first during the second...since they are basically interchangable. I didn't want it to be really phonetically audible...I just wanted a voice in there. Maybe I shouldn't have panned the main vocals off. Hmm.
I'm having a huge problem with vocals. I can't turn my ART up past about 50% or the SM57 starts to sound like a tin can. So the levels on those vocals topped out at like -20db which is just horrible. That's why you can kind of hear a hissing in the vocal part. I'll have to work on it more. I did the vocals in about 20 minutes (came home 20 minutes before everyone else...recall that I can't sing in front of people)....maybe I'll redo them later.
The bass was a last minute turn up. Bass is sooo hard to mix responsibly because if you turn it up, everything shakes and feels cool. Then when you turn it back down to acceptable levels, that cool feeling is gone. I need to resist resist resist! Oh, and the bass is double tracked, hard left & hard right...which has something to do with the boominess. I was going for wide, but I got boom.
Dolemite: As my other stuff might suggest, I just LOVE to nail people with dynamics. "Nobody expects the spanish inquisition." There's about an 8db mean difference between the first section and the kick. Heh, maybe I should consider not doing that anymore...it's just fun to turn it up really loud and see people kind of jump.
I like the song length where it is. I'm so tired of the same old pop song structure and I'm experimenting with alternative styles. I recently got into Pavement, and there's this song they do called Zurich is Stained....a perty little number that clocks in at just around 2 minutes. There's only one really nice change in it when the second verse starts....but because there's only that one key moment, you appreciate it more and listen for it. I'm not on the same songwriting level, but that's kind of what I had in mind. Plus, there's nothing worse than a 5 minute whining song
CMiller: argh...the more I listen to the vocals, the better I think they are...but I know that's because I know how they're SUPPOSED to sound. Like I mentioned to kelly above...I'm having level problems, so I couldn't compress the vocals without swishing the background hiss. You are absolutely right, they're not horribly inconsistant, but not being a singer I do need the help of a compressor.
I'm glad you mentioned the gurgling noise. That's an open hi-hat sample stretched out about 40 times...then I did some sine wave nastiness to it...and finally ran the sucker through Prosoniq's North Pole resonant filter (a really cool freeware VST plug,
http://www.prosoniq.com ). I also ran the main guitar through the filter which gives it that sort of organlike quality that melds with the background noise.
Oysterman: I was sort of going for tension. I also find it a bit irritating...it's right in that frequency range that makes your ears feel all clogged up. You should have heard it before I mixed more of the electric string noise in there, it was really annoying. I tried to find balance between annoying and irritating, so that when the shit kicks in at the end, it's all the more relieving. I'm actually suprised that more people didn't have this same complaint. Personally I really like the way it makes the transition feel. I do agree that it interferes with the vocals, but really they just need to come up in level considerably. Thanks for listening!
Slackmaster 2000
