My First Attempt - Comments welcome

  • Thread starter Thread starter alibish
  • Start date Start date
how does one go about hearing the song? i'm able to read the contents of the page, but it lacks a particularlly important component.

maybe it's my computer, or maybe i'm retarded.... either way.
 
Yo alibish,you need to go into your admin area and enable streams and downloads.;)
 
I too dislike the distorted piercing thing at the beginning, but not being one who listens to much stuff like yours What do I know, it may be a good idea ;) ?

Nice tune, To me the vocals sound a little to... what? compressed, maybe? but, they're up front, and I think you've got the mix close to done IMHO.

Great effort, expecially for your first. Cheers
Denis
 
sounds like you are developing a keen ear for production. The guitar sound you can give or take...personal opinion. I mainly disliked having the same sound take over (around :50) in MONO. Kinda like it collapsed into the middle and has less fidelity than the intro, and therefore is anticlimatic to me...when the song should still be building.

Nice vocal melody...and especially nice where you are accompianed by the acoustic guitars only where you fade the guitar tracks in and out, ending up with just the ac gtrs and vocals. The fuzz guitar I was not to fond of. Kinda thrashed away over in the left....

The mumbling going on....not sure what that represents...but interesting.

sorry for getting around so late...good job.
 
I haven't read all the comments--on purpose. So if i am redundant, so be it!

I liked that opening guitar riff--it has a weird process going on, but the part has this little odd time signature thing in it that is so cool--especially when the bass joins in. I thought the intor went on too long. After a while, i said--this must be an instrumental. NOPE! Finally, the vocals came chiming in. I didn't catch all the lyrics, so either bring the voice up or eq it so it cuts through the mix more.

i liked the odd talking stuff. I also liked the different sonic colors that you went through. It kept the song interesting to my ear. Just when I needed a climate change, I got one. Erichenryus did a nice job on the drums too.

If this is really your first attempt, then I am afraid--very afraid! You gonna be a monster!
 
Nice Job!

I haven't read all of the feedback here so I may repeat something that has already been said ...

You have a cool Pop vibe going on here. I like the chords you are using in this. I like the harmonies that come in during the second verse.

To me the drums seem like they could be mixed a little bit louder. They seemed a bit far back during the chorus -- imho --

I like the interplay between the electric and the acoustic coming in.

Nice job. The mix sounds pretty good on this machine other than the drums being just a tad too low.

Nice job on this one!
 
This has came a long way alibish since my first reply in the secon post of this thread.You've tamed that signature lick guitar a LOT and it sounds great to me.

Eric did a good job on the drums(Although your originl drums were not bad).
Those acoustic guitars still sound great and your vocal is unique with a good delivery.Compared to the first mix this one is a lot better.

Nice Job Alibish.
 
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to listen and comment:

modified dog - glad you like the tune. You're not alone in disliking my guitar tone! :( I've tamed it a lot since my first mix, but I can't bring my self to change it any more.

I agree about the vocal sound, but I'm not good enough to be sure what the problem is. I certainly have compressed the vocals, so it might just be that I've overdone it. They also sound "boxy" to me. I'd be grateful for any ideas on how to "open them up". I've already added a little air EQ, which helped, but they need something more.

mixmkr - thank you for your comments. Interesting point about the lead guitar changing from double-tracked hard-panned to mono. It was deliberate, and I felt it worked because it meant the guitar sound was taking up less space once the rest of the instruments came in. But you think maybe I should keep it double-tracked? I'll experiment with that idea...

Again, the noisy guitar on the left was meant so sound like that, but maybe it's a bit too noisy, with not enough definition? Or maybe it's just a bit cheesy :(

The mumbling (maybe I should turn it up a bit?) is three separate interviews with Lynn Redgrave, John Gielgud and William Burroughs, mixed low and panned across the stereo field. No particular meaning, I just thought the track needed "something extra" and this was odd but interesting. I like the fact that you can just about make out a few words here and there, but not enough to really make sense of any of it.

crawdad - having heard your stuff, I know your comments won't be redundant!

The opening guitar riff/sound really seems to polarise opinion. Glad you like it.

The weird time signature was one of those mistakes that worked - I put the "jangly" guitar bit half a bar too close to the noisy guitar riff by mistake, but by the time I noticed what I'd done, I'd got used to it and thought it sounded cool. I love music when that kind of thing happens.

A couple of folk thought the intro was too long, but I'm loathe to cut it short. Maybe I could have a wee announcement at the beginning saying "don't worry, the vocals will be here soon" ;)

I've brought the vocals up in level qutie a lot since my first mix. I'm not very confident about my sinnging, and I'm certainly no crawdad ;) so it's hard for me to expose the vocals as much as I already have, never mind turn them up even more! :)

I really appreciate that you liked the changes throughout the track - I wanted something new happening all the time, but not being too obtrusive or "busy sounding".

I really like Eric's drumming, and I think the fact that we can collaborate half way around the world is pretty amazing...

I've been playing in bands (intermittently) for years, and I've been writing for all that time too. I've done a few 4-track and 8-track tape demos at home, but this is the first time I've used SONAR in anger, and the first time I've had enough education (much of it from Homerecording.com) to actually "mix" and "produce" rather than just chuck everything down as a sonic scribble.

boydrj - I think the cymbals in particular are a bit quiet - you reckon the whole kit could come up a bit? I'll try it. Thanks for all your positive comments.

kramer - glad you like the like the guitar now. When I looked at the original mix with a decent averaging spectrum analyser, it was like "yuck - massive midrange/presence bump from about 1.5k to 4k". My ears must be very tolerant of midrange, or something. ;)

I really like Eric's drums - much more natural than my original drums.

Thanks for being the first to respond, and for keeping with it - I really appreciate your help along the way.

Cheers

Alastair
 
oh man oh man, this song sounds realyyyyyyyy farmiliar to something, but i cant think of it...! ha.

i wanna say something like oasis or the pixies...but i know its not oasis..could be something from the pixies?


if i figure it out, i'll tell you..ha

but nevertheless - i like it a lot, i'd say put the acoustic guitar up a bit when those are the only guitars playing in the mix...
 
I can't seem to find the "real drum" version of the song that eric did...

I would really like to hear it, could someone post it somewhere for me and let me know where?

-wes
 
shackrock, i'd say the lead guitar sound is pretty pixiesesque in general, the song altogether reminds me most of 'where is my mind' on prozac!

Cool song, I've listened to it on loop as long as it's taken me to read through this thread (a lot) and i like, it has a fresh feeling to it. I would make a more up to date comparison with Idlewild. Like the vocals, remind me a bit of Gary Lightbody's, of Glasgow-based band snowpatrol. I like the urgency that you create with the chorus vocals. Altogether well structured, sounds like you've benefited from the alterations that have been suggested. If i could make one criticism it'd be that imo the bass might benefit from a a bit of spicing up here and there, there were a few bits where i found myself playing alternatives in my head, which on reflection seemed to compliment and were influenced by the excellent guitar riff!

Nice work! Where abouts in glasgow are you?

Jags
 
shackrock - glad you like it. It's a fairly common chord progression, but it's not knowingly stolen from anything in particular.

I adore the Pixies, and Oasis' debut album was excellent, so they're probably influences...

wes - I think eric took down the version he did. The version I've currently got available uses the same drum pattern as eric (he sent me the MIDI file) but I've used the original drum sounds (soundfont) from my own version. eric's original drums sounds were a bit more "electronic" sounding. You could send eric a Personal Mail and ask him for his original version.

Jags (as in Partick Thistle?) - thanks for the comments.

I can hear the similarity to "Where is my Mind" - brilliant song. And Idlewild are my new favourite band (subtle Hives reference there ;) ). I loved "100 Broken Windows", and "The Remote Part" is starting to grow on me.

BTW, you should see the amount of compression on that album - the waveforms are basically solid rectangles! There's also a noticeable mid-range peak throughout, round about where everyone felt my original guitar tone was too painful. Hmm, maybe I've been listening to too much Idlewild before mixing?

I've only heard a couple of Snowpatrol's tracks, but I thought they were pretty good.

And I totally agree about the bass - I'm officially the world's worst bass player, ever. At the risk of creating a monster, I could post a version with no bass track, if you're interested in adding a part?

I'm in the West end, by the way - whereabouts are you?

Cheers

Alastair
 
Maybe best leaving the bass as it is for the moment, the changes i had in mind were fairly subtle anyway. Might be an idea opening it up to some of the more competant bassists in our midst though! I'm not exactly up to Flea standards, although i've been necessarily learning/practicing a bit more in order to be able to semi pull off the bass line for my newest song, yet to be completed, and there's a monster callous on my left index finger!

The name's not a thistle reference, no, i'm not sure how it came about exactly but it materialised mid way through school and stuck. Thought it'd be a cool pseudonym. Although if anyone asks me which team i support late at night up in town it's the Jags every time! ;)

Anyway, look forward to your future offerings!

Jamie (Jags)

ps I'm in the southside, on crookston road, near paisley road west
 
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