my first one

[groucho]

Hey all:

Wow, *finally* I've found a song critique area where people are both posting good stuff *and* making constructive comments. Glad to be here and looking forward to hearing everyone's songs.

Anyway, here's a recent one of mine (I promise to get some comments out to others right away):

A quick warning: for those with dial-ups, streaming might not work so well, but it kind of depends on the time of day. Anyway, let me know if there's too many problems & I'll do the nowhereradio thing.

thanks much,
Chris

 

[wes480]

hey man, this is great. i love it. the songwriting is really unique, the whole vibe of the song is kind of mezmorizing...i really like the sound.

perfectly fits the mood I am in right now...so, I will probably listen to it for a few hours, maybe post any mix ideas in the morning..

but i dig it and I love your voice. very much looking forward to hearing more of your stuff.

-wes

 

[macle]

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Have you ever heard Leon Russell? A little Tom Waits, too, maybe. Real nice. The vocal has an interesting air about it. What's your chain on that? Also, what'd you use for the piano?

All around, real nice music.

Macle

 

[A1A2]

still waiting on the downlaod. The connection speed is good, but the file might be a little too big for 56k people. The most common kbps is 128, maybe you should reconsider that to make it easier for the others.

Anyways, wow, the quality of this recording is really great. Very nice mood, too. The only thing I would change would be the panning on the guitar. Maybe a little more to the side, but that's just my taste. Yeah, the piano and vocal sound really good!

AL

 

[Track Rat]

The piano sounds very good. Real or synth? Definately has a Tom Waits sound. I love Leon but don't hear that. The guitar is sweet as well. Sounds like a Tele. I likes it.

 

[groucho]

Hey, thanks a bunch for the nice words so far folks. By the way, I put up a 128 mp3 at:

I always hate using 128 since I can really hear the sound loss, but it's probably not fair to dial-upers to use the bigger file.

As far as the gear goes, it was all tracked on a little Boss BR-532 & mixed with Cool Edit Pro (& assorted plug-ins). Piano is a Technics digital piano. Kind of cool that it wasn't immediately obvious that it wasn't a real piano (must be doing something right...)

Guitar is this silly old Charvel metal-shredder thing I borrowed from a friend (like that Tele comment!). Vocals with an SM57. As I recall, they were very close to totally dry - I was going for a kind of "roomy" feel, so I did the vocal tracking in this enclosed tiled sunporch that has very cool natural echo. I most likely added a touch of reverb at some point in the mixing process, but I don't think any other verb/delay effects.

Yeah, I get that Waits comment a lot. That guy just has the market cornered for songwriter types with thrashed voices.

Thanks again,
Chris