Be Brutal :-)

Markd102

Markd102

New member
Finally worked out how to do a simple web page :p so I thought I'd stick up an MP3 for you guys to listen to.

A couple of notes on the track.......

I'm not playing on the track and It's not my song, so I'm after comments about the engineering, not the playing etc.

You'll notice that it's very full and busy. This is intentional as the song is about the growing problem of youth suicide in our district. The object of the exercise was to portray the tension and confusion that mush be going on in the mind of a potential suiced victim.

The last point is just a bit of a gloat ;) for me.... the bass and violin parts are played by John Rees, Bassist from the great Australian band "Men At Work".

Hope you enjoy it.

Mark

Watershed Recording Studio
 
Well I liked the song-I'm no expert but that sounded like alooooot of reverb on the snare. The bass guitar wasnt to audible through my headphones either. Other than that it was very listenable. If I was tracking that violin, I probably would have used it only when there was no singing-like at the end of lines etc. But you say you were going for a full effect so I think you got it! Nice job overall!
 
I liked the mix overall. I really like your guitar sound, and the violin is really sweet.

I think the reverb on the snare is outdated. The kick is not present enough and I can hardly hear a bass .

Other than that, the mix is nice. Did you boost the highs on the vox? Maybe try a narrower Q.

quite a good mix though, I like it. And since the song is good, no one other than the band members and the mixing engineer would be paying attention to the mix.

Funk on!
 
This has a nice listenable quality to it.The Violins are compteing with the whole song from begining to end.( I guess you couldnt help but bring it up in the whole mix since Rees played the part eh?:D)

The drums sound a little Too compressed.Did you compress the whole rhythm section?It sounds like the compression is squashing the life out of the bass guitar also.Did you track with compression?

Im not anyone to be giving advice as Im just a novice myself but the Violins need to be used a little more sparingly.Maybe too accent the end of a vocal line as the previous poster suggested and to fill out the instrumental sections in between vocal lines.

If you do want them to be audible through the entire song they might sound better pulled back during the vocal sections just to fill the space and not really be so dominant and in competition with the lead vocal.Do some old fashion gain riding on the Violin tracks or program them to come up and down at the appropriate sections.(if you have that new fangled digital stuff.)

Thats about all my untrained ears can hear!I really like the song.The singers voice is great!:D
 
I liked it...and of course, I liked the snare reverb. I don't give a shit whether it is dated or not....sounds good. Maybe a little less vegemite overall, however.

I liked Men at Work..and couldn't get the reference out of my head while listening......

nice vocals
 
I definitely wanted more kick and bass in the mix. Just something to enforce the time a bit more. The vocal sounded a bit harsh at times--like too much upper mid EQ. I felt the same about the acoustics--I wanted to hear less in the 2K range and more up around 8 or 10k instead. I could go either way on the snare reverb, being a reverb junkie myself! Other than those things, I thought the tune flowed along well and had a great feel to it. I thought the recording itself was excellent. Just needs to be mixed in a different way to bring out its best.

OK. Now for the brutal part. I think you have a great title to support your song idea. Unspoken Words. That is pretty heavy in itself. And--I applaud you for tackling a difficult theme. I just think the lyric needs some work. To begin with, I think you should cut to the chase in the first two lines, so we know where the song is going and what its about. You don't have the luxury of of painting lanscape pictures in the first two lines, though they are nice pictures.

I also get confused about the point of view. You speak of yourself:

"Maybe I'm not worth the time"

Then you speak of another:

"Someones taken their life"

Suddenly its "we" :

"Maybe if we'd listen"

The point of view seems to shift all over the place. You start out in third person and I think thats the POV that will best get your message across. Keep yourself out of it and let the listener feel the feelings without being told what to feel and I think you can nail your subject much better. If you stuck to one story, I think it would be clearer, get your point across and engage the listener better. As it is now, its confusing to follow.

You may, of course, tell me to shove off! But since you asked for brutal, I give you my honest opinion. The melody and feel is right there--its just the lyric that needs the work. I can tell you obviously feel what you are saying. You just need to present your idea in a manner so that people that don't have your view are allowed to "see in" to the story.
 
Thanks guys.

The honesty is appreciated. Nobody improves or learns when you only get "pussy foot" back-slapping comments.... although they are nice too when it is warranted.

As I said, the song is not mine, so i can't control things like lyrics, and obviously the artist had a big say in the overall mix. I had the violins down, but he wanted them up because they create the main tension. The huge reverb on the drums was also his wish, and would have worked better If the track was mixed in the last couple of weeks because I've just purchased the Waves Gold Bundle. The Digidesign D-Verb just doesn't really cut it. (This track is a couple of months old now, I'll post some of my own and more recent stuff soon.)

The EQ comments will be very helpfull because this is the main area where I lack experience. Does anyone have a link to any literature that would give general guidelines on what frequencies generally help or hinder different instruments? I know every track will be different, but it's nice to know where to start.

The bass I had problems with for a couple of reasons. Firstly he played it very smoothly with very little attack, so therefore it was hard to get it to project through such a very full mix.

The kick.... well.... there is one of my other main problem areas. How the get a full and punchy kick sound. I'm still experimenting there.

Thanks again for the comments so far, I'll pass the composition comments on to the artist who is a friend of mine.

More crits most welcome.

Mark
 
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