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Seventh Arrow

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Hello home recording friends,

The last time I posted a mix here, I got some great feedback; thanks for that! So I decided I would post another song here to see if anything needs to be touched up. This is a bit longer of a piece, but here are some things I'm concerned about:

  • I didn't put any reverb or delay on the singer's voice, but I think it sounds ok. Is it always necessary to add this kind of stuff on vocals?
  • The nylon-string guitar seems to sound kind of flat (not "flat" in terms of pitch, but "flat" in terms of blah
  • I got what I think is a nice, punchy sound out of the fretless bass but is it pushed up in the mix a bit too much?
  • I like the dreamlike feel that the rhodes keyboard provides, but I'm wondering if it dominates the mix a bit too much
I think that's it, but there could be lots of stuff that I'm overlooking. Link is below. Thanks in advance for any tips!

 
1 Neither reverb nor delay are necessary, and if you think it sounds ok, then it's fine. Emiliana Torrini has very dry vocals, and it suits how she is singing and what she is singing about.

2 Perversely, the nylon guitar sounds blah because it has neither reverb nor delay. It's a very lifeless sound. Instruments are tricky, because we rarely hear them isolated from their environment except when close-miked. And it is their environment that is really part of the instrument's sound. Flutes and violins, for example, sound blah in a lifeless room.

3 You have got a nice punchy sound from the fretless. You have sacrificed a bit of its bottom end to do so. In the second half of the song, you can hear a bit of the lowness (But not enough for my taste). You've probably pushed it a whisker too far up.

4 The dream like feel works . . . try it at a level that seems more ambient and see if it works.

Other thoughts:

5 There are timing problems through out the song. In particular, the bass is not always hitting the beats (see for example at 27 to 28 seconds in). If you can fix that, it would make the song sound more clean and a lot more pleasant to listen to.

6 Irrespective of point number 1, the nature of this track is that it gets big and dramatic, and the singer is following that feel as the song develops. The dryness of her vocal (and other instruments) sits uncomfortably with that feel. I think you would get a better sense of drama by splashing the reverb about a bit. See if you can find similar songs and see the treatment they are given.

7 When I got to about the halfway point and the anthemic build-up started, I said to myself "here comes the anthemic build-up" and I was right. That means it was predictable, and I prefer musical surprises. When I figured out what was going to happen, my interest in the song waned. I would have been musically satisified if it had finished at 2.37.
 
Thanks for the suggestions!

gecko zzed said:
2 Perversely, the nylon guitar sounds blah because it has neither reverb nor delay. It's a very lifeless sound. Instruments are tricky, because we rarely hear them isolated from their environment except when close-miked. And it is their environment that is really part of the instrument's sound. Flutes and violins, for example, sound blah in a lifeless room.
Click to expand...

Yes I might have to give this a try. Since the guitar is playing eighth notes, I didn't want a delay obfuscating the rhythm. Nevertheless, I can try something with a quick attack to it.

3 You have got a nice punchy sound from the fretless. You have sacrificed a bit of its bottom end to do so. In the second half of the song, you can hear a bit of the lowness (But not enough for my taste). You've probably pushed it a whisker too far up.
Click to expand...

I did snip off some of the sub-100Hz frequencies. Fortunately, they're easy to bring back or even enhance. It's also easy to pull it back in the mix, volume-wise.

5 There are timing problems through out the song. In particular, the bass is not always hitting the beats (see for example at 27 to 28 seconds in). If you can fix that, it would make the song sound more clean and a lot more pleasant to listen to.
Click to expand...

I thought if anything, the nylon-string guitar would be out, since I'm not much of a guitarist. I'll give it another listen, though...bass is probably the easiest thing to re-record.

6 Irrespective of point number 1, the nature of this track is that it gets big and dramatic, and the singer is following that feel as the song develops. The dryness of her vocal (and other instruments) sits uncomfortably with that feel. I think you would get a better sense of drama by splashing the reverb about a bit. See if you can find similar songs and see the treatment they are given.
Click to expand...

You may be right. I'll see what I can do...I think that something subtle might work best, though.

7 When I got to about the halfway point and the anthemic build-up started, I said to myself "here comes the anthemic build-up" and I was right. That means it was predictable, and I prefer musical surprises. When I figured out what was going to happen, my interest in the song waned. I would have been musically satisified if it had finished at 2.37.
Click to expand...

You may be right; on the other hand, that's kind of the nature of anthemic songs. It might be a bit like complaining that when listening to a blues song, you could predict that it was going to use a 12-bar format :) Nevertheless, you've provided lots of good tips, it definitely gives me a lot to go back to - thanks!
 
Seventh Arrow said:
It might be a bit like complaining that when listening to a blues song, you could predict that it was going to use a 12-bar format
Click to expand...
Actually, I do complain. The weird thing about 12 bars is that I don't mind playing the blues, but I don't like listening to it much. The exception is when it goes somewhere different.

I've also done the big build up songs . . . sometimes that is just what the song needs to be.

It is just a personal taste thing.

Now to some other things.

Nylon guitar playing eighth notes? Then either use a timed delay, or don't use delay. Instead use a spacious reverb.

Replacing the sub-100 on the bass would be good.

As for timing issues, it is not necessarily only the bass. That was the bit that stuck out. But the nature of looseness (specially in the first half) leads me to think you recorded this without a click track. Not that there is anything inherently bad about no click, it just makes getting things to sit nicely together a lot harder.

Subtlety in reverb? Maybe. Then again it might be more a case of picking the right sort of reverb. Try a very big room. I'm thinking of,say, Evanescence, where reverb is quite lavish. People (specially these days) often say that if you can hear it, it's too much. But reverb is used much more than you would expect.
 
The bass is definitely off. It's coming in early most of the time.
I wonder if you could remedy this by just literally picking up the whole track and dragging it to the right by a few milliseconds...
Or you could re-record it.
The lead guitar was also off.

The tone on the really distorted lead guitar is really, really harsh, probably over-compressed and a lot of high-mids.. You could also make it sound a lot better by putting vibrato on the notes, especially since they are all held for so long.

The voice is very nice. I wish that the strings were louder.

I agree with gecko that the arrangement could have been kept a bit shorter or the solo made more dramatic.
 
The vocal sounds a bit too upfront, seems like there are timing issues, it could be the delay of the interface causing you some issues. It is very slight, and not a musical delay (sometimes instruments lead or lag because that is the groove). Check the shakers to see if it is making the other things sound out.

Overall, good tune, I didn't hear anything that was bad, just some adjustments here and there.
 
Thanks for the comments everybody. I could probably just quantize the fretless bass part, but I think I'll just re-record it. I think playing fills & stuff was causing me to get ahead of myself.

The distorted guitars did seem a bit off to me...I was trying to get rid of bad frequencies but it seems like I centered on the wrong ones.

I can bring up the strings a bit more in the bridge. I find that in my recordings, the keyboards and guitar are always fighting each other. I'm not sure if it's just a loudness thing, or if they're in each other's range...anyways, something I'll have to think about.
 
Ok, updated!



So far I have:

  • Re-recorded the fretless bass, paying more attention to time. I bumped up the lower frequencies as well
  • Put some reverb on the nylon-string guitar and vocal
  • Boosted the strings during the bridge a bit
  • Tried to make the fuzz guitars less nasty sounding. I'm still new to EQ'ing though, so I'm not sure if I pulled it off
Thanks for the feedback, the suggestions have been super helpful.
 
The shakers seems to be throwing things off still. Maybe less is more.

My two cents.
 
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