Counting The Days - Critique please...

  • Thread starter Thread starter murphyd311
  • Start date Start date
M

murphyd311

New member
This song is the first one that I've conceived for the band that I've been in for about a year now. We're mostly hard rock, but this is more of our 'artistic departure from the norm' song. I've been seriously recording and mixing for about 8 months now, most of my knowledge of Recording/Mixing comes from this forum, 'Home Recording for Dummies', and youtube videos.

I'm working with mostly, used, budget gear, Old Mackie(?) mixer to a delta 1010lt, with Pro Tools 8. Shure SM57 on snare, CAD PRO-7 drum kit mics for the rest. 2 SM57's on bass, recorded into a single stereo track, MXL 990 for vocals, and the SM57 along with a Nady RSM-5 ribbon mic for the guitar. I used Slate triggers on the kick and snare in parallel with the actual tracks (kick needed a bit more boom, snare needed more 'crack').

We recently had our 2nd guitar player quit, so I replaced him with a piano part. I added strings to taste. I can actually play piano, but I just used midi for the strings and piano track. The Piano I have is digital anyway... This is the first time I've used midi tracks, so I hope I got it right.

I'm the bass player which is why the bass really carries the theme of the song. The arrangement is kind of a pyramid, it starts soft, peaks in the middle, and ends soft. Not your typical "Intro - Verse - Chorus - Verse - Chorus - Bridge - End" (or whatever) structure.

I have a couple of reservations about the track, but I will keep them to myself so as not to color any ones perceptions.

Please let me know what you think of the mix, the arrangement, and the actual song itself.

Thanks.

View attachment Counting the Days V3.mp3
 
lol you made a mistake of mixing from a bassists perspective. You want to mix from a listener or mixing engineers perspective. :)

G
 
This is exactly the feedback I was hoping for. Thanks dude. I don't think I was mixing from the bassist perspective, but the bass carries the theme so it had a lot of focus.

Maybe it's the system(s) I listen on, but the bass seems boomy to me. Then again almost all of the stereo's I use to "test" the mix have subwoofers. So when you say it has no presence, I'm wondering what to do about that.

I also forgot to mention that I bounced the track and "mastered" it in wavelab elements 7. I Did scoop the mids on the whole mix, so I guess I need to revisit that based on your feedback.

I've listened to your clip and will be leaving feedback in your thread.

Thanks again.

-Dan
 
Ahh ok, do not bother Mastering your own Mix. Any EQ and separate compression should be fixed at the Mix stage and not at the Mastering stage.
The only things you want to do after you have Mixed your song is to use compression on the master (if needed) and a limiter to bring the mix up to commercial levels of volume.

I would like to hear the Mix before you massacred it with mastering :)

Cheers,
G
 
The drums are doing wierd things at the beginning they are not in time. Again at the 1:20-1:30 mark the drums are off. As mentioned the eq on the whole mix gives an unnatural sound. The guitar line during the chorus ends kinda funny alot of the time, like out of rhythm. The bass is lost in the mix-it needs some high end IMO. The piano is confusing at the beginning-between that and the drums it's hard to find the pulse of the song until the singer comes in. I'm surprised your drummer is ok with this. The chorus melody is catchy at least, if it's original you got something worth working with. Good singer too, he sounds just like someone I don't like, but he's on pitch at least.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top