Crop Circles. Drums by ibleedburgundy.

R

Robus

Well-known member
A collaboration with ibleedburgundy who recorded the drums. No samples on this one!

I posted an early version of this song on the Songwriting & Composition forum last June. It was the first music I posted on the forum. I got great criticism from gecko, Armistice, famousbeagle, and others. Thanks!

I'm not experienced mixing real drums, so any suggestions to get ibleedburgundy's drums sounding the way they deserve would be much appreciated.




Crop Circles

Into the heart of stone
There’s a stone left to turn
There are no laws tonight but the law of life
Passion sparks and burns
And all very simple things

These fields are dark and wide
Draw us to the other side
Then we touch and fall entwined
We are young
We are young
And we touch and fall entwined

Across the sky
Speed of light
A spark lights up the land
And falls upon the planet face
And everywhere a trace
In every field
On every face
A design
And the seed you carry now
Yours and mine
The seed you carry now
Yours and mine

And the skill of my hands
The work of my mind
The skipping heart, a smile
These things belong to you
While I am
And maybe we are
And maybe we shall be

Into these fields
Trampled down by frost
We watch the skies with every lover’s eye
This child we made
A thought engraved
Into the great design
And for all the world a sign
We were here
We were here
And for all the world a sign
We were here.

(Words and Music by Ray Taylor 2016)
 
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Hey,
the drums do sound nice, the guitars too. I thought the drums are somewhat too upfront at the beginning in relation to the guitars. Later on the balance is good imo. It does sound like the drums are in a different space/room/ambience though; but it's subtil and maybe it's just me. The vocals do sound like you don't have much confidence in your voice? Technically/pitchwise, the singing is good though imo.
Nice song and playing btw. But there are not enough harsh mids!
 
Thanks--and sorry about that! ;)

I agree drums are too forward in the beginning. The overheads may want to come down a little, do you think?
 
Maybe
In the context of the song, very dead and soft sounding drums with no ambience could be the ticket, like tea-towel-dead. Like on old King Crimson (Cadence and Cascade, for example) stuff. But that's not really a mixing issue, i guess. Just how i'm hearing things. Either way, the drums do sound nice.
 
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Maybe I was listening to mixes that were too loud. But I had to turn things up a bit. It sounds a bit quiet.

I like the way the drums and bass groove together. Snare has a nice sound. You could add a bit of reverb to it. Just a dash. Cymbals are pretty swirly in spots. Could be SC doing it.

Nice clean guitar tone on all the parts. I'd nudge down the reverb on them. Just a bit.

I'd compress the vocal just a bit harder. Syllables here and there get a little lost. You should try to double track your part. I'd like to hear what that sounds like some time. I think it might help fill in the vocal.
 
Thanks TM. Level wise, my mixes tend to be softer than just about anybody's posting on the Clinic these days. I don't attempt any kind of mastering, just a little bit of parallel compression on the master bus. I'd like to boost the overall level a bit, but I'm not liking the sonic fingerprint that comes from boosting and limiting on the master bus--at least with the plugins I have. You know the fingerprint I mean--a slight brittleness in the upper midrange is the dead giveaway. It just sounds unmusical to my ears. So I'm in a quandary here! Getting a mix that is louder without that fingerprint just seems to be beyond my current skills.

I agree on the lead vocal, needs more compression. My limitations as a vocalist are always an issue, of course. I've actually done a lot of double-tracking on lead vocals on some of the songs I've posted. However, the results haven't been great. It's another area where I need to improve.

Interesting that Soundcloud swirls the cymbals on real drums too. I had been assuming that it was an issue mostly with sampled drums. Seems that isn't the case. I'm hoping ibleedburgundy will chime in with some suggestions on improving the drum mix. He and I discussed the ambiance on the drums. I wound up leaving them pretty dry on this first mix, maybe too much so.
 
Another excellent song - well designed and performed.

The vocals are a little iffy in the first part and this quality of song deserves something...
Just curious - how many takes do you do when you record vocals? Do you record the whole song end to end vocally or do you break it into parts?
It sounds like there's more strength towards the end so your voice seems "warmed up" towards the latter section. Do you comp your vocal tracks?

Mix is great - add some reverb to the drums maybe because they are a little away from the nice ambience of the rest of it.
I know what you mean about the crush of a limiter but for me it adds a little "bite".
 
Nicely done Ray. I dig the overall mix.

I am getting crackling on the cymbals. Soundscloud must be doing that because the google drive version you sent doesn't do it at all. Hmmm makes me have second thoughts about sound cloud.

I agree with the others, maybe a touch of verb on the drums would glue it in a little better. You could bus them all to an aux and put reverb on the aux and then just nudge it right where to you can just detect it.

At times the cymbals seem to be above the mix. Lately I've been using less overhead and more of the close mic tracks in my mixes. There are a couple times in the song where I am riding the ride cymbal and sticking some hit hat closes in there - they seem to be a little to out front. That would be primarily on the KM184 L overhead. There are some great other things going on there - in particular the bass and bass drum have some nice synchronizations going on. I think a less OH heavy mix may bring those synchs out - play to the strengths. Here's the thing about that KM184 track: You don't have to gain match it to the other OH because the other overhead is an AT4040 - a darker mic by miles. The KM184 has high transients that will come through but not necessarily show on the meter.

There are a few awesome lead guitar riffs that I am wondering why you don't have more forward. There is a descending bend at 1:09 and 4:40. It's an awesome lead, is there a reason why it isn't more out front? (it is actually more out front at 4:40 than 1:09 I think). On second thought the one at 4:40 is fine. The one at 1:09 kind of takes the lead over from the delay guitar sound. It is a cool hand-off. Let it be the star there!
 
Nice drumming IBB. I actually remember this song from that post, or from SC in general. Good tune. Great guitar work, as usual. Not too much mix-wise from me. I didn't think the drum ambiance was too different from the rest of the track. I did notice it slightly, but not a deterrent to me. I think the volume control on the fillers is my bigger concern...some of the g fills really pop out in one ear, more loudly than expected. good work all around guys
 
hey guys. the mix sounds good. i don't hear any problem.
performance wise, the vocal in the first verse is weak, and composition wise the song is pretty long without much change or a build up. i hope the feedback helps. i like that your final mixes are low, robus. i always do that, too. so many are way too loud. i'd rather reach for volume that have my eardrums blown out so thanks.
 
I pretty much echo miro and Nola's comments on this one. I think the drums could have a little more ambience to match the other instrumentation, though you might have to nudge them up a hair to compensate. Apart from that the mix sounds decent to me, especially the guitars.

I find your lyrics to come off a little less self-conscious here than they have in the past. Might have something to do with the refreshing absence of proper names, making them a little more universally relatable.

Vox, ever your Achilles Heel, still the major culprit here. I can tell that mic is not your friend, even if only cuz you don't want it to be. But I think that's where you should be concentrating your efforts for the biggest payoff. You've just got to put it out there.. wait til the missus is out, sip some booze, whatever it takes for you. A more confident take will poke through the mix more effortlessly.
 
Chorus really grabs me. The drums sound great, really on point. I really like the little touches with the acoustic guitars. It's usually SoundCloud's fault but the drums sound pretty mp3-ey if you know what I mean. I don't have anything to pick on about the mix, it sounds good to me. I might add some delay to the vox in the chorus to make them bigger but that's all that comes to mind. Great track guys!
 
fat_fleet said:
I find your lyrics to come off a little less self-conscious here than they have in the past. Might have something to do with the refreshing absence of proper names, making them a little more universally relatable.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I appreciate that. I don't get many comments on lyrics, although they are the most difficult part of songwriting, by far. I do have a fondness for proper names in my lyrics. It has to be kept in check sometimes.

Sometimes not. The next one will have a lot of place names. ;)
 
hey robus,
nice tune here..
i like the mellow vocal delivery,
it kinda reminds me al stewart a bit,
but the first verse into chorus is a bit weak,
so you might want to try doing 4 or 5 takes back to back,
then keeping the 5th one, as by then, you should be grabbing the words and enunciation better,
making it more intense.

maybe you already do that, but once you get further into the song, it all comes together,
making me think the first part of the song was a bit tentative, performance wise.


the mix sounds a bit lo fi.. not muddy, but a bit flat.

this can't be just soundcloud issues, because just about everybody uses it, and not everybody's songs sound like this.
 
Cool little tune. I think people are right. the drums seem to pop out a touch. perhaps some reverb on them to kind of "smear" them in a bit?
 
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