Negative Attention

  • Thread starter Thread starter antichef
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antichef

antichef

pornk rock
I've been working on this one for months - a little here, a little there. I sort of plateaued (probably until I find a singer and then I can rearrange it with some lyrics or something).

Any nits or comments on the mix are appreciated:



I'm not sensitive. I'm even insensitive.
 
I like what I'm listening to.

There's worth to what you've done.
 
k

guitars are too loud, drums are too quiet

reverb on one bit of the slide is a bit much

mostly the drums need to be brought up a lot
 
What's that thing that comes in at :45 seconds? The timing gets a little weird right there too.

I really think the balance is pretty cool before the electrics come in...I mean, if there's a snare in there, I can't hear it, but it works with kind of a driving kick doing half notes.

But after the electrics come in, the drums need to come up a lot...

Good luck with this...mixing is frustrating, but it's WAAAAY less of a pain in the ass than being a heroin addict. Wow, I got random there.
 
chrisharris said:
What's that thing that comes in at :45 seconds?
Click to expand...
I heard that also, but it wasn't a big deal or an issue IMO.

antichef has something good going on here that he (she) can expand on.

I think the tune has definite possibilities and there isn't enough recorded material to make mix judgements just yet.
 
I think with some vocals this could become really cool. I like what you have so far.
 
The distorted thing at 45 is OK.
The mix seems a little left centric to my head(phones).
I like the levels etc all through.
 
Thanks everyone! I'll go back in and assess the drums and make a version .10. Guitar-player-me is definitely getting all up in the mix, and finger-tap-drummer-me got dissed. Bass-player-me will have to arbitrate. I'll look at the left bias thing, too.

Most of the weird sounds are throwbacks to my cartoon/industrial phase of home recording back in the early 90's. I accumulated a bunch of samples back then via recording with an 8 bit soundblaster and a Shure Unisphere 588A, converting binary files of all sorts to wave files using a program called Trixwave, and snarfing what I could off local BBSs - I think that distorted sound falls into the second category. Anyway, when I resumed home recording after my (widely celebrated) 15 year hiatus, that's what I had lying around so I figured I should try and use'em where I could. But hey, maybe not -- I tried to use that very sound as a cymbal in the electric guitar portion, and even I couldn't help but think there was something wrong with my monitors when it kicked in.

If you can stand it, the distorted sound appears along with a recorded shotgun cocking at 7:50 on http://www.myspace.com/melvinchuckwagon - heh, 7:50 - I don't think you can fastforward on myspace and let's just say that most people don't make it that far. Few songs can claim a slight improvement in quality when uploaded to myspace - this is one of them. That sound serves as a surrogate for discharging the shotgun, which wasn't really practical at the time. I later wired it into custom Doom2 levels to replace the sound of the rocket launcher - that worked well.


Probably obviously, the drums in the song below are midi/samplebanks - to the extent that anyone thinks I can improve things by swapping out the bank (to some known set), please lay it on me.
 
Antichef
I liked it even with it's flaws and wierd samples. This thing's got groove and I likes groove!
 
Yep it's a cool tune, well arranged... The electric part seems a lot louder than the first part. Any way to even that out a bit so the song retains the power shift but not the dramatic volume rise?
 
I did turn down the rhythm electric guitar at the end a little (and sloped down a few dbs in the 10-20k range, and put a shallow peak at 500k -- a little less harsh and more audible now), as well as the lead, and boosted the ending drums, too (had to compress a little to avoid clipping). I like it better, because there's some good rhythmic interaction between the snare (who knew that thing was there?) and the guitar that's heavily obscured in the version I posted first. I also tweaked the weird sounds -- I made the Boooge last longer and fade out (I had meant to do that originally) and tamped down the gain on the first Skoooge so that it doesn't take as big a bite out of the foreshadowing guitar line.

here's v10:


Thanks everyone!!! I'm now going to sit on this one until I make some huge changes (like vocals)

edit: there was indeed about a 1db RMS left channel bias on the main acoustic guitar part - probably due to improper mic placement (or improper guitar placement :) ) - I hopefully punched that out.
 
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nice!

I like this song a lot. I can't say crap about the mix, as that's not my strength, but I like the structure, the way the lead changes from one thing to the next, so you don't know what to expect. I also like the dissonance in the acoustic part. If you keep it changing it often enough, this kind of thing does fine as an instrumental. I used to do stuff like this in the long periods between being able to write lyrics, and this song is inspiring me to get back into that kind of thing. The only suggestion I can think of would be to try to vary the drums a little, so they change like the lead does. I also couldn't get v10 to work, though, so maybe you've already done that some.
 
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