Hi. It's me again.

[ErichArndt]

Hi - I listened to Addictive Personality and Touch (clean mix). Liked them both very much. I almost never have much to say about the actual mixing part because I am still new at it myself. Plus I listen to all the songs straight out of my computer with no additional speakers, so my perception could be totally off anyway.

On Touch, I really liked the changes you made to the vocal sounds. It was cool. I liked the singer very much. At first I was wondering if her voice was too pretty for the song, but it ended up working really well for me. I liked the harmonies. Everything was great!

Same with Addictive Personality. Although Touch was more to my liking, I enjoyed listening to this one as well. Great musicianship all around and the mix sounded great to me.

Thanks for posting your songs! Talented group!

Jen

Thank you, but I should be clear that this is my solo project. With the exception of the vocals in "Touch", everything you hear is me.

"Addictive Personality" is one of my main worry-songs, because I've got some disturbing criticisms on it. When Jaime, the singer on "Touch" heard it, her first reaction was, "I love the lyrics, but I'm not crazy about the vocals"... and she almost never says anything bad about anything I do. Usually, listening to her talk, you'd think I was the second coming of Mozart. Then, my best friend and former drummer said, in reaction to the song, something to the effect of, "I'm not sure when, but at some point you started singing sort of... I don't wanna say Weird-Al-ish... but that's the best way I can describe it". And finally... a member of the other board I post at, one that I usually trust the criticism of, basically said that my vocals lacked emotion... that they were boring. He then applied that to pretty much all of my songs except the two most recent ones, where I was thinking about what he said as I recorded them. He even said "Touch" was kind of flat and monotone sounding... which if it's true, it's my fault because in a lot of places I directed Jaime to tone down the emotion she was putting into it... like in the verses, I specifically told her to try to sound kind of spaced out, almost half-asleep... like she's super depressed and just isn't feeling much of anything, if that makes any sense.

More on Jaime, because she's really just so awesome I can't say enough about her. When she was here in my living room recording this with me... as soon as I hit the music started her eyes would close and she'd just go off into another world... if you stood too close to her while she's singing, you'd probably get a black eye because her arms and hands are all over the place and she's kind of swaying and just totally into it...

And she's the best double-singer you'll ever run into. If I say something like, "I really like the way you pushed out this syllable a little harder and then shortened this one here and ended it with a quiet sigh, but draw out this other word a little longer... "... she can do it again, exactly the same way, over and over. She totally knows exactly what you're talking about and can apply it to what she's doing, perfectly, every time. Even at the very end of the song.... she hold out the last word, "toniiiiiiight"... and as a joke, I had her kind of emphasize that last "T" sound... kind of out there in the middle of nowhere. She had a total of four voices singing that same line in the recording, and for each one of them, over several different takes each... she landed that randomly placed "T" sound at exactly the same spot. It totally blew my mind. She had nothing to go by, no click track or anything. She just totally hit it. Sadly, the effect was pretty much lost in mixing though.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words. I'm really feeling a lot more confident about what I do now. Hopefully it'll stick.