New song - please critique

[leahkim]

Hello all,
Well I FINALLY finished doing a new song (last one was about a year ago). Had sold my old soundcard and had to wait to save up for my new Aardvark Q10. The song sounds balanced on my monitors (Event PS6's), but playing back through the computer speakers w/a subwoofer the bass sounds way too boomy. Any comments? Hope you all enjoy. Oh, and now Sonar is giving me some crazy error about not finding my plug-ins, so it's going to be hard to remix until I figure the error out.. (suggestions on that error are also welcome)

Here is the link

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/?aid=1306/singles

Hope you enjoy

- Leahkim

 

[leahkim]

Crap - forgot to list the song title! It's Alien Girl.

 

[bdbdbuck]

Sounds pretty clean, the drums are a little thin and the bass needs to go down just a tad and the piano needs to come up a tad....everything else I think is where it belongs in the mix. Good tune, damn decent vocals but you might want to consider some b/g vox. I didn't hear the boominess unless it was that bass kickin a little too much. This is just my observation, I'm not of a mixer though so maybe get a few more opinions!


bd

 

[amazing_critic]

Hello all,
Well I FINALLY finished doing a new song (last one was about a year ago). Had sold my old soundcard and had to wait to save up for my new Aardvark Q10. The song sounds balanced on my monitors (Event PS6's), but playing back through the computer speakers w/a subwoofer the bass sounds way too boomy. Any comments? Hope you all enjoy. Oh, and now Sonar is giving me some crazy error about not finding my plug-ins, so it's going to be hard to remix until I figure the error out.. (suggestions on that error are also welcome)

Here is the link

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/?aid=1306/singles

Hope you enjoy

- Leahkim

"she's got two little pony tails sticking out of the sides of her head"... ha ha ha ha ha ha

 

[Kramer]

Excellent tune.Songwriting and performance is top notch.Those "discrete drums" sound real!The mix sounds good to me on headphones.....nothing is popping out as being too loud or too low.

I dig this song.I read your bio.....ELO is in the top 5 of my all time favorite groups.Jeff Lynne doesnt get half the credit he deserves for the work he's done.

 

[leahkim]

Thanks for listening and for the comments -- I just posted a slightly newer version based on bdbdbuck's comments and the fact that I re-installed Sonar to fix the error I was having!

bdbdbuck, I took the bass down a bit and raised the piano. I also raised the b/g vox during the chorus, but haven't recorded any b/g vox for other parts of the song. I can hear some in my head, but the part I hear is too high for my range! I guess I need some guest vocalists...

critic, I take your comment to mean you liked my tongue-in-cheek lyrics! I forgot to mention this song came to me a few years ago when my daughter was really young and we had her in 3 pigtails - two out the sides, and one on top! She looked like a little alien, so that's where I came up with the song idea.

kramer, thanks for the great comments! I like the discrete drums set. I had to tweak the loops a bit in order to change the tempo (I think the recorded tempo is slower from what I remember) but I'm glad to hear they have a "real" sound -- that was my ultimate goal in purchasing the disks.

And Jeff Lynne is my all-time favorite composer! Nice to hear good comments about him for a change...

-leahkim

 

[wfaraoni]

cool song, I'd bring the guitar up front a bit more. Yeah, I agree nice drums. What did you use for the drums?
Im gonna give my wife a listen to this one


Peace
Bill

 

[bdbdbuck]

Hey this has got to be another first! I never give mix advice here in the clinic........for once I did, and someone actually tried it! You really went out on a limb there my man! Thing is, I think it sounds 100% better! Awesome job, now that you have your puter up again I'll be looking forward to hearin more stuff from you.


bd

 

[Toki987]

good recording.Good writing. all the parts were clear and distinct. Those drums sound nice, Bass is not muddy. piano sounds good to me. The guitar is played well. I`d like to hear some more chinkchank rythym on the guitar to balance the piano rythym a little more. The guitar could be a touch fatter on the low end, tube fat. Enjoyed this man.

 

[smellyfuzz]

NICE VOX !!!


Bravo !


Sean

 

[macle]

Hi leahkim, how are you?

Fun tune. Reminds me of that band, The Spin Doctors. I don't know if I'm listening to your remix or not, but on my monitors, I think some level adjusting would improve this greatly. I don't really know how, though. I think since the piano is the rythym (sp? I can never spell that word, I keep changing the letters around, and none of them look right), it should come up, and maybe be a little brighter, and maybe have a little ambience around it, and the drums should come down, they seem pretty loud, and the bass does seem a little boomy, it could lock in with the drums better. Just seems you could get a tighter balance between bass, drums, and piano, and then float the guitar and vocal just on top, maybe with a little more ambience on them, and a little delay, and then compress the whole thing to glue it all together. I don't really know what I'm talking about here,...but that's what I would try and do . Oh, and that backing that comes in, seems like a vocoder or something, can't really hear it.

Those drums sound pretty great, I don't know why I torture myself with trying to record real ones. Your voice is really good, too.

Say hi to your wife!

elcam

 

[muzeman]

Cool tune!
Great upbeat vibe.
I dig the witty lyrics,is she four foot two?

The only thing I heard was the high vocal part at 2:50 could use some harmonies,it would really bring it out.
JMHOP


Fine stuff,
Pete

 

[leahkim]

Hey everyone -- thanks for the feedback!
I'm currently out of town (until around July 4) so I won't be able to make any song changes yet, but will attempt to make some changes after I return.

wfaraoni - I don't quite remember which track it was, but I took the discrete drum tracks (it comes as separate tracks, bass snare, toms, overheads, etc) and mixed them together first. Then I used Sonar to "acidize" each individual loop, then arranged the loops. SLOW process and it sort of defeats the "discrete" part of it since I can't remix the drums later without redoing the whole thing again! I think the newest version of discrete drums is already ready for tempo changing.

bdbdbuck - thanks for the suggestions! Heck, if people don't want to implement feedback from members here, why even bother putting up the song for critique, right?

Toki, I'll look at adjusting the eq for the guitar, put up a touch of low end.

smellyfuzz - thanks for the nice comment. I don't have much confidence in my singing voice, so it's nice to hear positive comments...

macle - how are you doing? great to hear from you! Man, you give some good comments, I hope I can attempt to implement them. On the piano, I did add some high end, but I will look at making it a bit brighter. I didn't touch the vocals with anything other than a little compression, mainly since I kept getting weird errors with Sonar when I tried adding effects. I did want to make the vocal sound a little 'fatter' so I will try some delay and a touch of reverb. What do you use on your vocals? I also didn't compress the whole mix at all, I will try some overall compression and see if that helps glue it together. Maybe I can compress the drum and bass tracks together and see if that helps?? Thanks for the positive vox comment also! Motivates me to do some more songs. I will tell my wife you said hi! She is looking forward to more of your music. Thanks for your feedback!

muzeman - Glad you like the lyrics! Writing the lyrics was the most fun about doing this song.

Thanks again for the comments; I'll try to post a revised version sometime after July 4 weekend.

 

[jake-owa]

Not bad, good little production.

Some of the BG vox seem swishy but it could be the mp3ing.

Kinda wants to be a funny Santana type thing...I guess i just say that because the lead pops up every spare second.

Ok the little alien girl thing repeats a few too many times IMO.

Cute.

 

[okobd]

good job

Great job! I'd have to say I agree with Toki on the guitar, (as far as additional rythym guitar), the rest of the stuff he said: I have no idea what it means.
The song is great though, and I've got two different girls at home that both just got a new nickname.
-ok