Only So Much Time In The World

S

Seventh Arrow

New member
Hello folks, I'm a bit of a recording neophyte so I'd like to get what suggestions I can:



It's just a straight-ahead rock tune, nothing too fancy. I wrote the song and played guitar and bass, everything else is performed by people more talented than I. Thanks in advance!
 
Is the extreme stereo sep intentional? Having the snare really loud in the left and the hi hat in the right seems unnatural.
Can't understand some of the words for the mix.
The rhodes is a bit loud.
Good tone on the bass (is that a Yamaha? Has that tone).
The guitar is getting eaten up.
Good performances on the instruments.
Bring the vocal out a little more (needs some eq space)

All in all, very good for a rough draft! :D
 
The extreme stereo separation isn't intentional...I think people are hearing things I'm not, I'll have to check the way that the audio interface is set up. I did feel like the rhodes and the guitar are competing for space somewhat...this could be related to the aforementioned interface issues, but maybe I could re-record the guitar with some chord voicings higher up on the neck.

The bass is a Gibson with really bright stainless steel strings.

I agree about not being able to make out some of the words...not sure how to change it. Just for kicks, I tried adding a tape saturation effect on the vocals, maybe I'll try turning it off and reevaluating.

Thanks for the critique!
 
:) Glad to be of ser-vice
How is your room treated?
How much do you know about "Subtracive EQ" (google and experiment!)
Happy Recording! :D
 
Something is wrong with your panning, the mix is lopsided. You need to figure out why that's happening and re-mix your tune. Something in your chain is funky, if your not hearing how unbalanced it is. Maybe get someone to help you go through your system and make sure everything is panning and monitoring exactly right. Its very important that what you create in your studio translates correctly to the outside listener(s).

Love the song, reminds me a little of Jefferson Airplane.
 
I'd like to hear the bass really hit the beat on the transitions between sections. I feel you are missing the accents and a little bit of the swing on what is otherwise an almost perfectly composed bass part. If you can re-track this bass with a real focus on swing and leading the band and defining the transitions using accents then you are getting closer. It's a killer little tune.

Others have said -- vocals --- BUMP them up -- I had (and still have) similar issues with my own vocals - especially at the beginning of phrases -- you can hardly hear the first few words out of my mouth. In Reaper what I did was play with envelopes (instead of normalizing). This way I automated my trim just for the areas I needed to boost the vocals that were hard to hear -- then I eq'd them and added my effects when the levels were all more correct. I'd suggest doing that.

I'd also like to hear more shimmer and richness in the EQ for the vocals - I think you can add some juice to them and give them more of a pop as well.

I'll also speak to the vocal cut --- The singer is a little bit timid so you can hear where she's holding back and being cautious. This affects her tone but also the delivery of the lines - it loses the drama of the vocal. Some of this might come from the fact that the swing of the song is slightly lacking so she doesn't have a real anchor the dig into and get in the pocket or it could just be nerves. On my vocals I've been tracking in my condo so I bring that same timidity to the table and can hear it in my own mixes. With a re-recorded bass track, and a little direction while she cuts the track I think you could get a better vocal performance from her. Especially again on the transitions where she opens and closes a section. Missing a few vocal opportunities there to really nail the drama.

At .40 --- .46 I would rewrite the bass part - your singer is kinda naked here and the chordal transitions are not well defined and supporting her. My ear is searching for a bass that is sliding up and down into chord & note figures here.

Guitar solo -- I like what you played but you are very timid in how you played. I'd practice this over and over until you have a full confident command of it because you've got some great natural musical moments that you are failing to capitalize on because you are just trying to play correct notes. I can hear you are worrying about playing correctly so you are not stepping into the spotlight, it's more like you were playing and suddenly the spotlight is on you and you are saying "oh shit - better not mess this up". Can you break it down into phrases? or at least two sections and practice each independently --- then re-track? When I'm trying to nail parts I try to break them into phrases (if not sentences at least paragraphs) and I really focus on the transitions - ends and beginnings of phrases and how I move between them. You nail those and people don't see or hear the middle so much. On another thread I talked about Jimmy page -- slip sliding around, but as long as he nails the finish or the first and last note we don't really notice the slip sliding.

Lyrics: the repetition of that same phrase "there's only so much time in the world" -- do you have another line that you could work there as well -- can you open up the lyric more? My thoughts are that this song could be another minute long provided we opened up that verse a little more lyrically. Can you post the lyrics and structure as is for us to see?

I'm working on an original right now with a similar issue --- I've got the title of the song in the verses -- but I'm struggling with the fact that it means the title of the song has repeated too many times (in a song with relatively sparse lyrics). I don't know exactly how I'm going to deal with it yet - I'm at the stage where the lyric and the melody might all get reworked entirely (bye bye scratch tracks).... It wasn't something I wanted to do.

Anyway -- cool cool tune - something really fun about the whole project. I can hear a real good Acid Jazz band knocking this outta the park live and imagine the crowd just eating it up - it's that cool of a song. Definite 70's throwback. Loved it
 
BroKen_H said:
:) Glad to be of ser-vice
How is your room treated?
Click to expand...

Sadly, it's not...I live in an apartment with a big glass door that leads to a busy street in downtown Toronto :( Most of the things I record are direct, though - the bass and guitar are direct input, the keyboard is done via midi, and I hauled my stuff to a recording studio for the drums. The vocals are recorded with a mic in my apartment, but she's just singing directly into an SM57.

How much do you know about "Subtracive EQ" (google and experiment!)
Click to expand...

Not as much as I should! Since I'm a bassist, I was able to EQ the bass guitar - I mostly cut a lot of stuff below 100Hz and then tried shaping the frequencies between 125 and 630. It would probably help the vocals to be able to EQ them as well, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I will however take your suggestion to google it and maybe even play around with some presets.

PDP said:
Something is wrong with your panning, the mix is lopsided. You need to figure out why that's happening and re-mix your tune. Something in your chain is funky, if your not hearing how unbalanced it is. Maybe get someone to help you go through your system and make sure everything is panning and monitoring exactly right. Its very important that what you create in your studio translates correctly to the outside listener(s).
Click to expand...

I copied the file over to my ipod, and the panning is definitely lopsided. I think I'll need to uninstall and reinstall the drivers for my M-Audio device because I don't hear any separation either within Cubase or when I play back the file.

Love the song, reminds me a little of Jefferson Airplane.
Click to expand...

Thanks much!

DogsoverLava said:
I'd like to hear the bass really hit the beat on the transitions between sections. I feel you are missing the accents and a little bit of the swing on what is otherwise an almost perfectly composed bass part. If you can re-track this bass with a real focus on swing and leading the band and defining the transitions using accents then you are getting closer. It's a killer little tune.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting point, I'll see what I can do. I might make the transitions follow the syncopation a bit more.

I'll also speak to the vocal cut --- The singer is a little bit timid so you can hear where she's holding back and being cautious. This affects her tone but also the delivery of the lines - it loses the drama of the vocal. Some of this might come from the fact that the swing of the song is slightly lacking so she doesn't have a real anchor the dig into and get in the pocket or it could just be nerves. On my vocals I've been tracking in my condo so I bring that same timidity to the table and can hear it in my own mixes. With a re-recorded bass track, and a little direction while she cuts the track I think you could get a better vocal performance from her. Especially again on the transitions where she opens and closes a section. Missing a few vocal opportunities there to really nail the drama.
Click to expand...

I think I might get her to redo it, yes. After listening to the takes, I realized that I should have been a bit more fussy.

At .40 --- .46 I would rewrite the bass part - your singer is kinda naked here and the chordal transitions are not well defined and supporting her. My ear is searching for a bass that is sliding up and down into chord & note figures here.
Click to expand...

The chords in that section were take from Bach - blame him! :D

Lyrics: the repetition of that same phrase "there's only so much time in the world" -- do you have another line that you could work there as well -- can you open up the lyric more? My thoughts are that this song could be another minute long provided we opened up that verse a little more lyrically. Can you post the lyrics and structure as is for us to see?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was kind of unsure about that, thanks for bringing that up. I'll have to mull it over and see if there's another good phrase that fits the same rhythm.

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody! I'll do some troubleshooting with the panning and see what I come up with.
 
Ok, so I managed to (I think) get rid of most of the panning issues. I also re-recorded the guitar part after putting new strings on my axe, I re-recorded the bass part and took the tape saturation effect off of the vocals (as well as boosting them a bit). Here we go:



Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I'll see if I can also spruce up the lyrics.
 
The main problem for me is there is no low end. I mean you can hear the kick and the bass but they sound almost lo-fi. There's no BOOM or RUMBLE to them at all. I would address that.
 
0.22 I heard some distortion or clipping, not sure but you can hear it there and 0.16. probably other places where there is a vocal peak. Vocals don't really mesh with the mix. Bring her down a bit since you have some distortion in the vocals anyway. And there is no bottom as stated above. I feel pretty confident if you get some bass in there the mix start to come to life.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, I hadn't even thought of that! I boosted some of the bass guitar frequencies and made the kick drum more prominent in the mix...hopefully it helps.

 
Much better! There are a few phrases when the vocal comes in so quiet you can't hear what's being sung. :32 & 1:43. Kick the vocals a bit at those points and this is gonna start shining. :D
 
The drums sound like they were recorded with mics at a distance, and thus capturing too much of the room, and not enough of the beef of the instruments. Try close mic-ing the kick, snare, hihat and toms. If you only have a two-in two-out interface, you might want to experiment with a submix of the drums.
 
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