Groucho & Sluice

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groucho

groucho

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So, I sent Sluice the basic rhythm track for this song and told him to play "like your hair's on fire". He totally delivered, as I think you'll agree. I was going for sort of a trashy garage rock sound on this, and I knew I could do the guitar & it might work out okay, but what I REALLY wanted was some crazed agressive Sluice-style guitar playing.

So Tom was cool enough to do this for me (thanks again, Tom!) and now I submit it to the clinic. Hopefully you guys can help me tweak the fine points because my ears are torched at this point.

"Disposable"


Chris
 
very nice leads by sluice........it does seem to give it a cross-genre vibe that the song might not have otherwise.......the leads trade off w/ the harmonica well..........great matching tones........

i like the lyrics.......nice song
 
Smokin'!!

The lead guitar, harp and vocals are on fire with passion and sound great.

The bass and drums are way behind in mix and need to come up to drive this track better. The acoustic guitar as well is being blown out of the mix by all the lead instruments.

Sluice's guitar sounds a bit thin to my ears on this, compared with the meaty sound of the harp and vocals which were killer. Add a bit of fat to the guitar around 250 hz and that should even it out in the power department with the harp.

Vocals were clear, well sung and fine in the mix. No complaints there.

Damn! you guys sound good together!

Cheers! :)
 
This mix is hot like 'The Ghost of FM', Groucho's vocal is hotter in the mids than any other recording I have heard of his vocal, and this is good ... Did we get a new mic ?

At 0:59, some crafting there, can deliver a cleaner entry on your vocal, draw the envelope a little earlier on the instruments ... tighten that hairpin sooner as we approach the vocal entry ... and pop that fader up on the vocal just before that entry, then ride it down if you think you need to ... envelope - fader ... whatevuh ...

Hey, she can come over here and do yoga ... :D

'eat over the sink' ... excellent, and you are only allowed to take one bite, two chews, and you have to swallow as quick as possible ... :D

I think the Harmonica is too edgy, I want to hear more music coming out of it, perhaps the real 'insane sound' should just be the guitar and you can further develop that, and your harmonica playing which is awesome, should be normal.
Perhaps the harmonica is mixed here to represent what you really, really want, from the guitar ...

... that would give us more contrast between the 'burning platic adhesion to our skin guitar' ... and the 'real authentic blue harp' ... IMHO. Back off on the harp, and maybe you can approach the guitar more irrationally :D

If you are trying to make us guess at 3:04 which is guitar and which is harp, you are getting close ... no telling what that shrieking monster is ...

At 3:40, the instruments in general are creeping up to levels that are competing with your voice.

At 4:00, this 'puffing on the harp', slap some meaningful delay on that sucker ? IMHO

Wild man, unique, original, awesome ... when you guys gonna get tired of being the stars around here huh ? ;-)
 
Wow

This combo really worked well with this tune.
Groucho & Sluice...............................................
You guys really did some good work here!!!!
I love how it fades at the end too.
Good work Gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Dan
 
Damn, very helpful comments so far. I just remixed doing almost exactly what you guys suggested.

GHOST:Great ears, man! You were right on about the rhythm section and sluice's guitar tone. I gave him back some low mids and brought the bass and drums up during the dynamic swings of the song (they had just been kind of muddling along at the same volume level before).

I think the rhythm section tweaks have vastly improved things. Thanks Ghost!

SV: Great comments as usual. In particular you pointed out where the vocal was getting stepped on here and there, which was very helpful. Oh: and no new mic. I've just pretty much stopped using reverb altogether and am almost totally relying on delay. I feel like I can get a lot more clarity and "space" without the mud. Maybe if I had a good hardware verb unit things would be different but I'm tired of dealing with crappy software reverbs. I don't think there's one out there that's worth a fuck.

Oops, there's my reverb rant.:)

HEVYY and POWDER: thanks for your ears, guys. It's good to hear the nice words.

The new mix is up where the old one was.

Oh: my server seems to be acting up, so let me know if you guys have trouble connecting and I'll throw it up on Nowhere instead.

Chris
 
groucho,

I checked out the new mix and things sound like they are shaping up a lot better now.

Glad to see that you and I were on the same wave-length on some of the mix issues.

There still some smoothing out that could be done on the track but perhaps it's best to come back to it tomorrow with some fresh ears.

The harp in spots is a little overwhelming in a couple of places, is one of the things that stood out on the second listen.

The panning you have between the harp and Sluice's guitar is nice but it needs a little more room to breed in the stereo field.

As his guitar is in the right chanel, it might be a nice addition to add a medium room verb to the left side on his guitar and do the opposite with your harp, with some verb to the right of it.

The drum kit is sitting better in the mix as is the bass. With the levels up on them now, they need some polishing too but, I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment.

The acoustic as well sound more in the mix and sounds fine eq wise. Nothing there much to worry about.

Anyway, these are only opinions and please feel free to mix as you please.

Cheers! :)
 
Harp and guitar both sounded good, with similar tones, but sat differently in the mix. This raises some interesting mix ideas. Having both the lead tracks sitting behind the band may be a cool effect. I'd say the quick fix is too reel in the harp a bit.

Bass could come up a bit, but that could be my headphones.

The part where the guitar and harp both play the same thing together is a tease, you wouldn't have to twist my arm to make me listen to more of that :).

Good raw bluesy tune, no wasted space.
 
That's a fine piece of songwriting groucho, I really like it. You two guys are dangerous together!


bd
 
Way cool. The harp sound is BIG...

As usual SLuiCe screws it all up....;) LOL

Nah, I'm kiddin'.

Bass should come up. Or more bass frequencies.

Love your voice, Groucho.
 
My expectations were high but you guys came through. Great stuff here. As others said, the guitar and harp work great together. And great tune as usual groucho. Great tone Tom (I don't know if you wanted that compliment with your amp search and all, but it's true.;))

Only 2 criticisms. First one - the server, as you said doesn't seem to work quite right. I can only seem to download it into my browser. I can't figure out how to save this. And I want to KEEP this one! I've always been able to save your tunes.

The other is during Tom's rhythm parts. The first time the drums seemed to pick up with Tom's parts which was good. When he did it later in the song the drums didn't. If you're at all into retracking you might want to try having the drums and bass join in on the momentum that Tom creates during the rhythm parts. (Sorry, can't quote the times this occurs because my browser doesn't show time elapsed).
 
why such a small file size? Maybe you should have just posted the wave file.. :)


good collabo here.. Tom played some great licks! The harp does sound great too.. I thought the vocals came in way too loud for my taste but seemed to even out as it went on.. Nice tone on the lead guit, although the harp seems bigger then the half stack, they sound pretty good together..


good lyrics.. no what backstage? :eek:



nice work!
 
Alright, you guys rock. I just replaced the old mix with a new one in which I gave the bass a little more presence and eased the harp off in some places. I think this mix is starting to gell, thanks to y'all.

Man, was this fun to mix. Sluice's guitar just blows my mind everytime I hear it. His playing has so much passion, and he does it without cramming hundreds of notes in there. It's not blues playing but it has the soulfulness and simplicity (and aggression) of good blues leads.

GHOST: the thing you're trying to put your finger on is that the drums are FAKE and therefore SUCK.:) Drums are always the weakest link for me. I nearly bailed on this tune in the early stages cause I couldn't get a drum part happening with any oomph to it. Thanks a ton for your comments. Very helpful.

DOUG: Yeah, I totally loved the parts where SLuice and I got to play sorta "twin leads'. I was totally playing off him, since the harp was recorded after he sent his part. Where it seemed applicable I doubled his part with the harp. Probably coulda used more of that.

BDBDBUCK: Thanks! Appreciate it!

PEDULLIST: You were right about the bass. I think it's better now, but the bass is always the bane of my existence. Thanks!

FPROD: I totally agree with the drums comments. I tried to remedy that a bit in this last mix. As far as the downloading thing - not sure. Works fine for me if I right click and "save as". Maybe the server had a hiccup? Let me know if you have more probs.

SABBATH: Ha, yeah, go on, gimme shit for my file sizes... I deserve it...:D. Thanks for your ears. I rode the fader a bit more on the vox this time around as well. It was a bitch deciding how loud to make them for this tune. On one hand, this style of music tends to have the vox mixed lower than other styles - but on the other hand it's kind of a lyrically-driven thing and I wanted it all to be clear. I'll probably fiddle with the various track volumes for another 2 weeks.:)

Chris
 
Grouch,
I don't think I have ever caught any of your stuff before for some reason, so I was unsure what to expect, especially with Tom at your side. This was cool. Your voice is perfect for this style. I guess I am hearing it after some remixes. Everything sounded pretty solid to me. Your vocals were way on top but I think it works because it's almost like a spoken word thing on top of this cool bed of sounds and a cool rhythm. The lyrics were cool. I thought the drums sounded great. Tom's guitars were sweet. He just keeps playing on the different songs/styles and it floors me. He really is a very good guitar player. Your harmonica was cool too. Nice playing. I like a good hamonica every once in a while. I can only take it in doses, but it was good medicine here. I actually can't imagine the song without it.

Great job!
 
guernica..... ...reeled over from exhaust..... .....beaten to death by huge file size.....:D

.nice tune here grouch.

..only nit is the voc level. I would like to hear those mixed further back into the mix.... ...totally preference.

Nice guits Tom:)
 
good job guys. cool song.

i have nothing to add that hasn't already been covered. :)
 
Hey this came out real cool, Chris! Big difference over the raw tracks I had. Digging that harp. Really cool stuff there. Love the way you doubled some of the guitar licks. Nice touch.

My mix requests would be just a small level reduction on the harp- 1-2dB's. And a little bit more bass line.

This came out really nice man. Thanks for letting me play on it. Some of the lines were popping in my head on the river this weekend.

Cheers!

Tom
 
This is one big download dudes. :) Just read Sam's comment... LOLed quite a while on that.

I thought this was lyrically quite good. Good interesting rhymes. Well written I thought. The guitars (all of them) sound really good. Good use reverb I thought. Good performances all around.

Vocal clicks (of varying severity) at :35, 3:27, 3:41. Possibly elsewhere.

Plosives through the section 1:47-1:52.

I thought you maybe been just a little too close to the mic. Good singing voice however.

Liked the line "the French don't like much" but didn't care for the delivery. I'd like the line to be sung just like the other lines in the song. Only an opinion.
 
Cool tune. Some nice dirty guitar playing. Very tasty. Not much to add that hasent been suggested. Definantly a keeper.....
Myx
 
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