emotional world

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fprod south

fprod south

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My last few posts have been pretty experimental. Before I get a reputation for being too weird, here's a normal one.

This is for an album the band I'm in is working on, so please be mean if you must.

My main concerns (but please criticize anything else):
Is the vocal overcompressed?
Are the lead guitars balanced?
Does the bass fit right?

"emotional world"
last one on the page
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2146&alid=-1

Thanks!
 
Cool tune bro-good overall feel-vocal melody is good and the performance is good. I like the guitar work how they kind of solo through the whole tune-I like the addition of the 3rd electric sounds like e-bow? The tune seems a tad long-I woulda streamlined it-for example the section from 1:22-1:40 and 4:10-4:30 are almost like dead-time-I understand its your song and its tracked already-just my humble opinion. How bout some backup vox? Lots of room for them. Are the guitars in tune? One sounds a tad out now and then. Not sure which....

As far as the mix-I'm not in my usual listening environment-but my impression is that the bass and the kick drum(is there one?) could both come up--the mix sounds like it needs more bottom overall-the vocals sounded just a little too out front-maybe the bass coming up would cure that though. I'm on crappy headphones so I could be way off here.

Very good tune overall-been looping for half an hour plus and I likes it.

Viva the real drums!!!
 
You've got here a dead on reproduction of the sound of the Velvet Underground's self titled album. Since that is a masterpiece of rock music its hard to say you have any problem here, though many modern listeners might comment on the drums being too low or the lead guitars coming up. I personally would have done something with the vocals as they are dryer and cleaner than the rest of the track and therefore stand out a tad. I really like what you did here. A good song and a wonderful retro sound. Bravo!
 
cool song.. I love the guitars..

the mix sounds strange to me.. the vocals are so in your face at times and the bass guitar and bass drum, actually all the drums sound further away then the vocals.. I'm not sure how this is supposed to sound, but my personal preference wanted to hear the vocals blend better with the music.. also the song is kinda long, but I guess it drives home the mood better.. cool song..

some early Hendrix sounded a bit like this mix wise.. (the vocals so far in front of the drums.) some stuff off of 'axis.'
 
Thanks guys!

Stratomaster,
You're right. The 3rd electric (actually 5th) is ebow. You're also right about the dead time. The way we record our tunes is have the singer lay down an acoustic and vocal track and we add parts from there. This dead time we try to avoid, but we get it a lot because he really has no idea what the song is going to sound like when he lays the first tracks down. Backup vox are a good call, but the album will be full of them and in context this song will probably be better without - but on it's own you're right. I'll look at drums and bass. I'm having a tough time getting to know my monitors for bass. BSabbath's comments are consistent with yours on this - you guys are probably right. I'm probably the guilty party as far as being out of tune.

ashulman,
I'm a huge VU fan and their self titled is my favorite. I wasn't going for that type of sound though but I guess listening to that album regularly for 15 years or so will do that though. I think I will take your advice on the more modern sound (even if you don't want me to :D). Thanks for checking it out!

BSabbath,
I like vocals buried in general and I try to lift them to the point that I don't like the level because I know people like to hear vocals loud and clear. I probably overcompensated. I noticed what you are talking about when I listened in the car and tried to tame them with compression (which I usually don't do). I'll try to tame them more. And I'm hearing that the drums and bass need to come up. The hard part about the drums is that the brush scraping on the snare can really take over, but I'll work on it. And Axis Bold as Love is one of my favorite albums too. I'm just waiting for someone to compare my playing to Jimi!
 
Hi there,

Nice tune!

I agree with previous comments regarding vox and drum levels. Some thoughts while listening -

- I think I can hear the snare skin ringing during the first 0:40 which kinda takes my attention away.
- I like the leads athe level they are -- sort of a lead pad :)
- Dead time is worth re-tracking to avoid
- Lead gtr sound @ 2:06ish I thought was too far away and perhaps too distorted.
- I like the panning on it and the inter-twiddles on gtr @ 2:30ish

Well done,

:) Q.
 
Hey fprod,
...very cool tune man. I like the way you panned the guits.... very nice. There are parts in this where a distant heavier rhythm guitar might sound cool for contrast (around 2:27, 2:55, ....I dunno, just a thought).
...really nice "tinkling" tone to the higher lead parts.
There's a hundred different places you could go in terms of production ideas. ....I got a heavy Velvet Underground feel from this as well.
g
 
I like the vocals and those little guitar licks, pretty sweet. The drums are way too far back, how are you micing them?
 
YES!!! For once the vox are loud enough!! YES!!!

Put those damn drums in the background where they belong! Let's hear the damn WORDS!

Okay, I'm calm now.

Great song - just what I needed to wash the idiocy out of my brain from the last few days here at the clinic. Yeah, good Velvets impression, sonically. I like it overall - I might do a little something eq-wise with the vox. Maybe roll off a little low end or brighten up the high end or, um... something. They have a *very* slight boominess to them.

Nice!!

Chris

(did I mention I like the vox LOUD?)
 
Yo fP

Sheesh........and they call ME Neil Young:)

with a touch of hendrix reverse guitars?
I like the idea of building the guitar parts up as
the song progresses!
Of course I grew up on LED Zep.

Only problem I have is the length of the song IMO

Nice production though, all in all.
 
I don't much mind the length of this tune, simply because I enjoyed listening as I read all the posts. Nice tune, vox were a little too much "on top" in the beginning IMHO, but got settled in as the song progressed. Nice clean recording! Guitar tones seemed to fit the piece very nicely. Overall a damn good job!

bd
 
Qwertty,
The snare scraping is proving to be problematic. It's keeping me from bringing the drum levels where they need to be because the overhead picked up so much of it. But I'll give another crack at it. As far as retracking, I agree, but this is part of a project I've been tracking over 2 years and I'm at the point where retracking just isn't gonna happen. More interesting things to move on to - but I do appreciate that comment in the bigger scheme of things working with this band 'cause there's lots more dead time in many of the other tunes. For the "too distorted" lead - you're dead on. What you're hearing is just a reverb return as my attempt to soften it up some. I think I can do more though. Good point.

Guernica,
I've actually got an electric rhythm guitar part buried pretty deep in those parts you referred to. I was thinking of bringing it up some and you've confirmed it.

Fatmusiek,
I'll work on the drum levels, but how they're miced is a big part of the problem. MXL 2001 (large diaphram) as an overhead. SM 58 on kick. Sm57 on snare. Garbage dynamic mics on toms. I've accumulated more mics as this project has progressed. Only had one condensor at the time I tracked these drums.

Groucho,
You're going against the grain here and confusing me! You're out voted on the drums and vocals, so unless you make up some new screen names to say "keep them where they are", I think I'm gonna address them. Actually the vocals are purposely too high for my taste so I think I'll lower them. You'll be happy to know that getting the drum levels up will be a struggle;).

Heavy,
The "reverse" guitar is ebow and a handful of effects. I don't know what effects. The other guitarist played that and he's got a whole bag fulla' pedals. And then all you're hearing on that part is the reverb return. And I agree on the length.

bdbdbuck (wow, that's a cool screen name),
I'm gonna address those vocals. But I'll keep in mind that you said they got more settled, that's helpful.

Great comments everyone. Thanks! I'll probably have a remix posted sometime this weekend.
 
just testing out my new username.. this is only a test..


b.sab
 
started out kind of interesting. kind of long for my taste, but i can't get past the three minute brick wall either so that's me.

only thing that really threw me was the brush pattern. it sounded odd to me for some reason.
 
Mix has a 60's feel to it. Vocal track doesn't sound too compressed to me. There's some low booming on it tho, probably from proximity. Lead guitars sound a touch naked to me out on the edges of the "stage".
It's hard to judge the fine points of the mix because of the bottom on the vocal track, but it sounds balanced and good.

The rythm and accoustic backbone sounded great.
 
Jus get us some more drums in there. I like the clean and clear you get on the tracks too man.
 
Didn't catch the first one, but this one sounds like a good clean recording to me. I liked the vox out front like they are in this..sounds good to me. This is a far cry from "kidnappings & amputations" lol! Haha, man i loved that one. Just a little noise up till the 6sec mark, don't know if you can get that out, but it didn't bother me any. Nice tune and mix man..has a real laidback feeling to it, thanks.
 
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