Hi here's a new song straight off the production line. The aim was to give it a contemporary Americana songwriter feel so if you can evaluate it from that perspective that would be great. Also, given it's a road song of sorts I wanted to give it a driving feel. The intro section is part of the same 'brief'. Anyway, over to you guys. I want to enter it in a song comp in a couple of weeks so happy to tweak it to taste.
It's a Strange Ol Bug Eyed World
- Thread starter Matcham
- Start date
grn
Well-known member
I think the initial sound you have as the intro is cool, but it could be quieter or compressed a little. You could send the bass to a bus (or duplicate the track) and distort it and hi pass at around 1k, but take it down like 20 to 30 dB to add clarity - what you have does suit the genre though and this is more of a personal preference. I also think you could pull the vocal volume down too so it's not so much on top of the rest of the music, but sits inside it. You could bring up the acoustic a bit more too and take a touch of reverb out of it to get more rhythm. I'd be tempted to experiment with changing the formant on the vocal a little and maybe pulling 1.5 kHz down a little to make it sounds smoother and deeper for this song, but pulling the volume down a bit might have the same effect. I might also hard pan the organ left and right to make it feel wider if you recorded that in stereo. The bottom end sounds wonderful and the rest of the mix is very clear overall. Great song!
Thank you Brian and grn. Much appreciated. That's an interesting comment about the bass as the technique you describe has not occurred to me before. It sounds like a rock thing but I'll try it in the project to see how it flies. If not for this song I'll file it away for future ref.
I'd be interested to know what you were listening to the song on as my testing has the vocal forward or back in the mix depending on the sound system. It's peaking a good 3db lower than the drums and around the same peaks as the counter melody instruments. I find the vocal level very difficult to optimise.
It sounds like you'd prefer a warmer vocal sound and indeed my mic/preamp combo is big on presence. I'll play with it. B3 is stereo so I'll experiment with the imaging as you suggest. I've leaned it to the left to offset the pedal steel which plays through the same sections. Again, thanks for the tips!
I'd be interested to know what you were listening to the song on as my testing has the vocal forward or back in the mix depending on the sound system. It's peaking a good 3db lower than the drums and around the same peaks as the counter melody instruments. I find the vocal level very difficult to optimise.
It sounds like you'd prefer a warmer vocal sound and indeed my mic/preamp combo is big on presence. I'll play with it. B3 is stereo so I'll experiment with the imaging as you suggest. I've leaned it to the left to offset the pedal steel which plays through the same sections. Again, thanks for the tips!
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The intro/drone thing sounded cool.
Lead vocal is nice and clear. A little pointy thought. You might want to EQ out a notch in the mid 2K's. Nice resonance in the singing voice thought.
The low end on this is a little thick and a little messy. Moreso the bass than anything. Notes here and there really pop out. And the low end is too heavy for a song like this.
I like the organ, it was a nice addition.
Drums are a little programmy.
Lead vocal is nice and clear. A little pointy thought. You might want to EQ out a notch in the mid 2K's. Nice resonance in the singing voice thought.
The low end on this is a little thick and a little messy. Moreso the bass than anything. Notes here and there really pop out. And the low end is too heavy for a song like this.
I like the organ, it was a nice addition.
Drums are a little programmy.