Have a listen and critique - Slow, mellow song

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Psycho Clown

Psycho Clown

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Hi all

I'm relatively new here, and have just about got enough posts to start posting links, so I thought I'd try this one to share and get opinions on. It's never going to be a great work of musical mastery (nothing I ever do is). But as a way of introduction as to where I get to when home recording, this is the best example I have to hand at the moment.
I am working on a few of my own songs (this one is a cover of a Steve Gibbons song), and may have one of those to share by the weekend.

Cheers. :listeningmusic:

Schoolboy by The Psycho Clown on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free
 
Welcome to the site.

I listened to Stand Up Wendy. I really liked the raunchy verbed out guitar sound.

Not too crazy about the drums though. They have this thin, crisp polite sort of sound to them that doesn't seem to suit the song so well, you know?

The vocals seem pretty well performed, but I'm hearing a lot of sibilance. Actually, the whole mix seems to suffer from an overabundance of whatever frequencies contain the cymbals and the "S"s in the vocal track. Good job though, and I really like that guitar sound that I don't hear too much anymore.
 
heatmiser said:
Welcome to the site.
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Thanks :)

heatmiser said:
I listened to Stand Up Wendy. I really liked the raunchy verbed out guitar sound.
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Thanks again. When I play live, I only ever use a slight 'slap back' echo on my guitar so I do like to play around and experiment with the sound and adding stuff when I'm recording. Sometimes it works and sometimes not so much.

heatmiser said:
Not too crazy about the drums though. They have this thin, crisp polite sort of sound to them that doesn't seem to suit the song so well, you know?
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Yes, I agree. Laziness on my part.
The drum loops were simply the ones that came ready installed on the Yamaha AW16g. I just laid down the drum track as it was and wrote the song around the beat (it was close enough for the kind of rythm I had in my head, though far from perfect).

heatmiser said:
The vocals seem pretty well performed, but I'm hearing a lot of sibilance.
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I use an AKG C3000 with a pop filter but get in real close (see below for my thoughts on sibilant frequencies).

heatmiser said:
Actually, the whole mix seems to suffer from an overabundance of whatever frequencies contain the cymbals and the "S"s in the vocal track.
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This is one of the problems I seem to have over and over and it would be great to learn how to 'fix' it (I mean apart from someone telling to ease off on the 2k and above frequencies :D).
Relating it directly to this recording, the problem I have is that I wrote and recorded the song in one evening and then immediately started work on mixing. I then spent nearly two days constantly listening to it and tweaking it. Now I know that human ears go a bit 'foggy' after long exposure to loud music and I think that what happens is that as I'm tweaking and trying stuff, over time my ears go dull and I just keep edging the 2k up a bit because it seems to make the recording clearer.
Then of course when I think I've finished it, it's got too much and after I've left the track for a week I'll return to it and be able to hear it's a bit thin and harsh for myself.

So now I can clearly hear that what is supposed to be a crash cymbal sounds more like a "pshhhhhhh" noise not dissimilar to the sound Bowie used on Sound & Vision.

heatmiser said:
Good job though, and I really like that guitar sound that I don't hear too much anymore.
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Well your feedback is appreciated thanks.
When I record at home, it's done as a way of just getting something that sounds half right so that I can play it for the band to see if they are interested in adding it to our set (and because I love making music). But it would be great to be able to improve my recordings and add that little bit extra to make them better.

The guitar is a Gretsch 6120, double tracked with distortion on the main (slightly off center) signal and then the second signal is the one dripping in very wide and slightly out of phase reverb, which is set at center so it's actually also out of line in the stereo spectrum with the original signal.
 
Nice song! I def agree about the the high frequency saturation. The guitar doesnt have this problem, and i think the sibilance on the voice is mostly natural. try a desser. the drums definitely seem like they are boosted a lot somewhere around 4K. So much that the snare doesnt sound like a snare haha. I wana hear some bass(stick) in those rim shots.

What did you use for the chorused guitar tone? guitar type, effect, ect.

Cheers!
 
puscookie said:
Nice song!
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Thanks. :)

puscookie said:
I def agree about the the high frequency saturation. The guitar doesnt have this problem, and i think the sibilance on the voice is mostly natural. try a desser. the drums definitely seem like they are boosted a lot somewhere around 4K. So much that the snare doesnt sound like a snare haha. I wana hear some bass(stick) in those rim shots.

What did you use for the chorused guitar tone? guitar type, effect, ect.
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Are you talking about the slow song 'Schoolboy?
That's the one with chorus on the guitar (for the other song I linked "Stand up Wendy" see above for guitar spec and set up).
For Schoolboy (I first recorded it a while ago now), the chorus guitar was a Sammick 335 copy. Sorry I can't remember what chorus I would have been using, most likely one that was in the AW16g which I originally recorded it on to.
The other mellow guitar playing the lead is my Gretsch, I re-recorded that part because when I heard how I'd played the part on the original (which I recorded at least 7 years ago), It wasn't up to much. :)

Yes, the same problem with that mix after listening to it again today in light of heatmiser's comments above.
I'll have to see if I can sort that this coming week and re upload it.
 
I've had another listen to Stand Up Wendy and re mixed it to get rid of all that nasty "pssshhhhhh" noise.

Sadly there's not a lot I can do to the drums to make them more appropriate for the song (unless anyone has any easy suggestions?), I'm stuck with what I have to hand and I'm not really a good drum programmer.

Having read several threads here, I've also started to experiment with hints and tips I'm picking up with regard to EQing etc.
So I think this re mix is a vast improvement on the last one.

My problem now is that I'm not sure if the vocal is too loud... What I tend to do after I export to iTunes is add it to my iPod and listen through the earphones, then from an audio dock, and several other places and on some devices the vocal sounds way too loud, but on others it's not.
I'm guessing it's because some of the speakers I listen through are particularly reactive to the frequencies in the vocal and therefore exaggerate it? (because it's usually smaller speaks that do this).

Hopefully I'll get a chance to try and improve 'Schoolboy' at some point this week.

Stand Up Wendy ReMix by The Psycho Clown on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free
 
That sounds a lot better overall. Still not liking the cymbal sound, but at least it isn't as overbearing now. Definitely an improvement.

I think the vocal level is good. I like the slapback delay kinda thingy going on there.
 
I suppose I could always re do the drum track without the cymbal and then try and find a better sounding sample, because the cymbal was the only one available at the time, I just used it (laziness :o). It's also not very accurately done timing wise because I added it to the drum track using the little pads on the AW16g. If I just did it in Garageband, I could at least place it accurately where it was needed.

The other thing I'm going to look at is chopping up the guitar part at the end and editing a lot of it out to make the track shorter.

Thanks again, after over 20 years of home recording I've already learned a lot here in my short time. :)
 
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