critique/opinions on new recording

[jupe]

i'm fairly new to recording, but i've put together a very small home studio to record some of the groups i'm in. most of the research i've read online says when it comes to the quality of recording, use your ears. the biggest problem with that, as both a musician and being the one recording, is that your ears can lie to you

so, i've posted a couple of recordings, and i would just like to get the communities thoughts on them. (there are no bad words on these recordings, and they are just vocals and finger picked guitar.)

<a href='http://www.bmuze.com/cgi-bin/pmuze/index.pl' target='_blank'><font style='font-family: arial; color: light-blue;'><b><i>bMuze.com</i></b></a><br><b>Title:</b> Chipped Paint, <a href='http://www.bmuze.com/cgi-bin/pmuze/index.pl?search=Stephen Mathys&action=Search' target='_blank'>More by Stephen Mathys</a> </font><br><embed src='http://www.bmuze.com/pmuze/mp3player.swf' width='320' height='20' bgcolor='#FFFFFF' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer' flashvars='file=http://www.bmuze.com/pmuze/mp3player.swf&autostart=false&file=http://www.bmuze.com/pmuze/upload/jeremy/chippedpaint.mp3' scale='showall' name='index'></embed>

What i'm most interested in hearing about is:

* is my use of compression on the vocals and guitar appropriate? i used 3:1 on the guitar and 10:1 on the vocals, with -11db threshold.
* do the vocals and guitar sound like, well, good vocals and good guitar? the guy i recorded (it's not me in the recordings) was using a 000 body style santa cruz guitar, mic'ed with a r0de nt1000. i used a shure sm7 dynamic mic for the vocals.
* is there too much noise? when i normalized the individual tracks, did i bring it up too much?
* how's the eq? i was listening to some of these recordings in my wifes car today, and i thought it maybe could use an additional boost in some of the upper ranges. how does it sound to you guys? am i smoking crack?

thanks for takin a look, and i really look forward to hearing some feedback. cheers!

 

[TexRoadkill]

Not bad. My only real critique would be that some of the guitar bass notes pop out a bit too much and the mids are a little muddy. It has a nice feel to it though.

 

[danny.guitar]

I think it sounds pretty good. I agree with Tex though.

You should try posting in the MP3 Mixing Clinic as you'll get a lot more responses there.

 

[MickB]

It sounds very nice.

I was once told by someone that judging how good it sounds on record is relative to how it sounded at the venue, and that nobody who wasn't there will notice anything amiss unless asked to preceive some.

Dunno if he was right or not, though it made me feel better sometimes.

 

[Neeps]

I didn't know we could embed flash in this forum.

 

[Neeps]

I'd maybe take it the song down a few semitones and play it at a slightly lower pitch. Feel that you are a stretching for some of the higher notes and I detect a strain in your voice.

I enjoyed it but I wouldn't rush out and buy an album just yet. Keep it up!