New song - Unnoticable You

Whatmysay

Whatmysay

New member
I would appreciate thoughts on my latest song

Unnoticable you

SoundClick really brightens them up - don't know if its the compression or 'friendly' EQing? Been reading Bob Katz and all the issues about mastering for on-line consumption - any suggestions about what EQ I should dip to compensate for uploading?

Cheers

Burt
 
Hi Burt,

I just gave it a listen and those are some great vocals, is that you singing? Very nice!

I agree, there are definitely some problems with the frequencies, especially in the mid-high to high end. So much so, in fact, that it was almost painful at times listening at a moderate level through my monitors. The highs were really too much for me. I don't know if you have anything applied to the overall mix in terms of EQ, compression, etc, but I'd maybe start there and strip some things out to see if you can tame those highs. I'd also take a look at the guitar tracks, because it seemed to me that a lot of the bite and high pressure was coming from the guitars, which are pretty constant throughout the song. Not to beat a dead horse, but the cymbals and high hats were the same. I'd roll off some of the highs on those to make it less biting. Oh, and one more thing, if you are using effects on many or all of the tracks, check your tone controls in the effects settings and roll off some highs, or at the very least, make sure you aren't emphasizing the high frequencies in your reverbs, delays, etc.

The only other thing I'd recommend is to do some panning away from the center. Spread those guitars out to give your vocals some space!

For what it's worth, I've been using soundclick.com for several months and I don't notice much change, if any, in the way my music sounds streaming from that site than when I'm listening to it directly from Logic on my Mac. Are you worried about the conversion to .mp3 or something about uploading it to their site and the way they play it back?

Best Regards,

Dave DeWhitt
 
Good song. Pleasant voice. Gotta lose the toy drums though, it diminishes from the whole. I love the variety of instruments though. Wow, that circus sounding break was kinda cool - caught me by surprise!

:)
 
Nice singing. I like the singer's voice. Very expressive.

The mandolin (or what ever it is) is REALLY wet. Much reverbier than the rest of the tracks.

You could probably nudge up the harmony vocal.

Didn't understand what the into was for. It didn't seem to add anything to the song.

Tempo gets a little sloppy around :20 - :22. Again around :38.
 
Thank you all for your thoughts

Dewhitt - I think I have over EQ'ed using both the Pultec and Ozone 'Analogue' EQ on track.

I experimented last night and knocked out Ozone EQ, and the top bands of Pultec. I then added an Altec EQ emulation just to give it a bit of air. I pulled back on cymbals, hi-hat, shaker, and mandolin, as they were irritating and tried to shape & level the acoustic a bit more. Its OK but it gone a bit muddy.

maxi - do you mean the 'chessy' drums at end - which are intentional or the drums in the main? I not happy with the sound of the snare hits, but the foot I choose for the 'boomy' quality.

Intro/outro is an experiment just to give the song the sense that it arrives and leaves in relationship to the listener in the 'sound field' of the effect. I wanted to have the effect at the end of the band marching by leaving the original players to finish.

When you say 'Wet' do you mean bad or in the Wet/Dry sense of reverb - I thinking I got quite a bit of 'room' when I recorded it so could pull back on artificial verb - perhaps EQ of verb bus is highlighting the fundamentals of the instruments as well.

Cheers

Burt
 
Burt,
I meant the drums for the whole track :o This is such an original tune, that those "stock" midi drums just aren't whats needed imo. I don't know what IS needed, so you might check a few similar artists for reference - I don't even know who that might be, but I'm sure you know.
:D
 
I thought the mix sounded a little harsh, so I put this into logic and did a freq analysis of the mix, and to my ears and eyes there's way too much high end. I don't know how you EQ'd but it sounds like you added a high shelf boost from about 4700 Hz on up. In your attempt to "add air" it's just making the mix sound fizzy, especially the cymbals and ac. guit. The cymbal crashes show a large spike at around 12000 Hz. If you have a high shelf boost on it, I'd remove it. If not, I'd roll the whole mix off starting at about 4700. I think it would sound a lot richer and fuller. The EQ curve looks pretty un-natural.
 
try uploading your mix to a 320kpbs site.....you shouldnt be EQing mixes for an upload...all they do is compress the mix down and higher frequencies can suffer, especially cymbals


dropbox is a good one there are other sites that folks use here
 
Thank you for clarification on reverb and drums

Yes have been EQ the top down but will try your specific settings. Cheers GZero

Have read about higher res websites on here before, will give it a try - but after advice here I think it has more to do with my mix than compression into MP3 or upload.

Will post new mix soon for deliberation

Thank you all
 
Thank you I have it at the start and end of my Master Bus - for comparison. It is about matching the visual to the sound, as this is a skill I have only started to work on.

Ozone has a great EQ match function on it which I want to try out - you print EQ of track then save it to apply to your own mixes. I have about 10 more tracks to record/re-record and I am mixing as I go. When I get to the end and have an album worth (and finish the Bob Katz book) I really going to look at mastering very closely. (Monitor set up/listening space - getting other to master I think might be part of the solution as well)

That said the hands on advise here is always fantastic

Cheers

Burt
 
maximusbs said:
Burt,
I meant the drums for the whole track :o This is such an original tune, that those "stock" midi drums just aren't whats needed imo. I don't know what IS needed, so you might check a few similar artists for reference - I don't even know who that might be, but I'm sure you know.
:D
Click to expand...

Drums were my first instrument and I have trigger pads/kit (tacky Yamaha thing) so I'm not worried about live playing - but I think your talking about the quality of the sound?

This may cause offence to a Drummer , but do you have any recommendations of samples - I've got iDrum and all the logic 9 kits/samples - any other suggestions.
 
Latest Version here

Re-EQ'ed and also pull back 'higher' elements in the mix

If your a real sucker for punishment I posted this a while ago here and have now re-mixed again feedback deeply appreciated.

Cheers

Burt
 
Props on capturing the vocals. Also props on the melody, vocal themselves, harmonies and banjo.

The only thing that really bothers me after listening to your latest (I guess is called miner on the moon now since its not unnoticeable anymore :) ) is the drums being off-beat at the beginning.

I find myself nodding along with your song and on those off-beats parts nodding more as in like my nodding would fix it.

More especifically is that hi-hat (or snare?) all the way up until 1:00 and then it seems that you have it under control again...

but starts again at around 2:20... :(
 
From a mix standpoint, the second one is way better, but I would also do a couple of other things.
1) The tambourine is too loud. That's the spike at 12 kHz, not the cymbal as I thought initially. Turn it down a bit, so you can still hear it, but its not like an ice pick in the ear.
2) Use low pass filters on all individual elements. Vocals don't need anything above 10k, bass you can cut everything above 6k, maybe 5k, the high mando around 14k, the lower strummed mando around 8k etc. Get rid of all the higher freq stuff you don't need from each track. If you're not sure where to cut it off, just put a low pass filter on it and gradually turn down the freq until it just starts to sound bad, then inch it up just a titch.
3) High pass filter the bass at 60 Hz. None of your bass notes are below that freq, and all that low end rumble below that is using up headroom you could be using on the other parts of the mix.

Filters are your friend. Do some of this and the mix will gel even better.
 
Whatmysay said:
Drums were my first instrument and I have trigger pads/kit (tacky Yamaha thing) so I'm not worried about live playing - but I think your talking about the quality of the sound?

This may cause offence to a Drummer , but do you have any recommendations of samples - I've got iDrum and all the logic 9 kits/samples - any other suggestions.
Click to expand...

I don't mean any offense at all :). I'm sorry if I did. However, the quality of the samples just made me think of a hand-held Casio keyboard! I'm not a drummer and I've got the rhythm sense of a drunk middle-aged male pole dancer! But, I was just getting a big-band/Sinatra kinda vibe from this song and wanted to hear a more brushy kit or whatever kinda drums big-bands use. I'm an aging hair-metalist, what the hell do I know about big-bands anyway! :drunk:
 
I think the new mix is much better in terms of the highs. I still think the guitars in particular sound a little harsh, but it's better now, so good job.

I'd still love to hear it with things spread out a little more. I think the acoustic guitars could go out wide left and right and that would open up the middle some, which sounds a bit cluttered to me right now.

Also, the bottom end sounds a little muddy, I'm not sure if it's the bass drum that's a little bit buried, or something else. I'm not great with drum sounds or particularly qualified to give advice on getting good ones, but I totally agree that EQ shelving would help this mix a lot. One thing I like to do is to high pass filter almost everything, bass guitar and kick drum included. There is so much low energy down below 100 - 200 Hz that is typically not heard, but still accumulates to muddy things up, especially if you have a lot of tracks. Maybe try rolling off as much as you can on every track down in that area...you may not hear a difference on each individual track, but it all adds up, and your final mix should sound much clearer after doing that.

The more I listen to this tune the more I dig it. I really like the marching band outro. I don't know if you have ever listened to a band called Jellyfish (great, great compositions and arrangements!), but if not I'd highly recommend checking them out. They have a song called "Brighter Day" on an album called Spilt Milk that has a very similar type of section and might give you a nice mix comparison (their mixes are unbelievably great).

Best of luck!

Dave DeWhitt

http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt
 
I just listened again. I heard more David Bowie this time. The drum sounds are better, but I'm still yearning for something more original than boom -- tat --boom --tat. I don't know - I'm on crack and it's still a good song - so there it is....:confused:
 
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