Please Critique

  • Thread starter Thread starter dewhitt
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Hi Everyone,

I've been traveling for work for the past couple of days, so it's been tough to reply, but man, great feedback from everyone. Thanks again, I'm so glad I posted this here!

@PoeticIntensity - That's awesome to hear man, it's so cool that in addition to the constructive criticism, this post is also potentially going to lead to some collaboration, which I never even thought of. I am in transit now, and won't be able to get back to music until later this weekend, but as soon as I can I will get you a mix sans drums and with the BPM (I'm pretty sure it's 180, but I need to double-check). Let me know if there's anything else that you need that would help, maybe an intro click or something similar, since the drums start at beat one?

Anyway, thanks again everyone, it's a great community here, and I appreciate everyone's input.

Dave DeWhitt
 
dewhitt said:
Let me know if there's anything else that you need that would help, maybe an intro click or something similar, since the drums start at beat one?

Anyway, thanks again everyone, it's a great community here, and I appreciate everyone's input.
Click to expand...

Don't ya love this community? It's helped me immensely. Anyway... I'm done with a rough version of your drum track. For some reason, this beat kind of threw me for a loop. I'm gonna keep playing it to keep improving my skills at this type of beat.

Let me know how would be the best way for me to get you the drum tracks.
 
Signs of life... very cool

Overall excellent tune and structure..

Glad to hear that the UX8 can produce this nice of quality..

I'll leave the de-essing and tinny comments to the cats that have more experience at this shit than me..

The tune is damn decent, you've got great pipes.. You have the goods to make some money at the game, but there are a shit load of people that do.. not anybody here :eek:.. OK,....maybe a few ;) ... now you just have to be at the right place at the right time..

Kick ass and take names.. Good Luck!
 
Added Real Drums - Please Critique Round 2

Hi All,

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to this, but traveling for my pesky job has been interfering with music lately :mad:

PoeticIntensity has been kind enough to provide an awesome drum track for my song Signs of Life, and I just got around to synching it up and putting together a rough mix. I think it's sounding pretty good, but I'm looking for some advice around the drum mix. The track I have from PoeticIntensity is a stereo track, so I don't believe I have any way to separate out the snare, kick, etc, for individual tweaking, but let me know if there are any tricks of the trade that might help with that which I might be missing.

Also, I haven't been able to re-record the guitar tracks, but I am trying to line up a session with some borrowed equipment from a friend to get a thicker guitar sound. More to come on that...

Here is the song with real drums: http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9023041

The original track with the software drums is still out there too if you want to compare. I think the live drums are way better (but of course!), but I think my drum mix is still a little weak.

Also, sibilance and an overuse of exciters, compressors, etc was mentioned in a few earlier posts. I have tackled that yet because I think getting rid of the software drums helps quite a bit with reducing the overall harshness, since the real hats and ride aren't as biting and harsh as the software ones. Is sibilance still an issue?

So, let me know what you think, and let me know what you would do with the drums....levels, EQ, etc.

And...I have to say thanks a million to PoeticIntensity. This has been really fun, and it's very cool to hear the song with a rocking drum track!

Thanks,

Dave
 
The drums don't stand up to the clarity of the rest of the instrumentation. PI is a great drummer and a swell guy, but the drum tracks sound lo-fi compared to the rest of the track. A modern rock radio song like this needs big, in your face, punchy drums. That requires at the very least individual tracks. You aint gonna get it with just a stereo drum pre-mix.
 
Hey...good job on this.

The live drums definitely sound better performance-wise (the cymbal work is so much better on this version as they really stood out with thr programmed drums), but sonically, the live drums seem a bit too dull and in the background. The snare could pop a lot more and I think it would be to your benefit.

I don't know how much tweaking you can do with the sound of the drums on this, but I hope you have some options, 'cause they sound like they could really work well with this song.
 
The brownshirt has spoken. And he's right.

A/B'd the 2 vertions: the mechanicals have a snappier snare, and the bassdrum is present enough to kick the round bass. You might want to try cloning the stereo drumtrack several times, and isolating the ranges of, say bd, snare, brass, etc, with EQ shelving and Q's...applying the changes, and further working the altered tracks with the highlighted parts with more processes....then mixing them together again. It'd be a great learning tool. But it's a lot of work, and there's no guarantee of suitable results...but the possibility of ending up with a great drumtrack is there.

Great song! Interesting in this tune, the way the arrangement is the largest dynamic red pill in the second half of the song. Love the way you stitched it together for interest.
 
Great songs man! I love this kind of stuff! We have a similar approach to songs with straightforward rock sounds and melodies. The exception is that your voice is approximately 36.5 times better than mine and your arrangements have a similar quality ratio and express a more modern decade compared to mine.

I have to ditto the drum comments. The live track had great vibe and technique, but the ole' drum machine had the sonic clarity.

Ditto the guitar 'nits' too. They sound great, better than mine, but if I knew how to make 'home tracked' guitars NOT sound like 'home tracked' guitars I guess I wouldn't need this HR board anymore. (BTW- is there a post/thread on improving home guitar around here? I'd like to find someone who has pulled off the elusive feat with audio evidence and recipes)

Bottom line: When you are done with this project, I WILL buy a copy.

PS - I would appreciate any advice you might have on my first post:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=302237
 
Sounded pretty good. Very good performances. Nice. song.

The guitars are a bit on the thin and fizzy side for this type of song. They sound "digital' - and a bit over distorted.

Bass might be a little too loud - check on a home stereo to be sure.

Little distortion on the word "bottles" at :25. There are a couple of other spots where I hear the same sort of distortion. Something a little strange sounding on the high end of the lead vocals. Vocals are much dryer than the other tracks.
 
Thanks for listening everyone. I think this is exactly the feedback I was expecting, so no real surprises, but a couple of good ideas here to maybe fix things. Jeff, I am going to try what you suggested with the cloning and isolating to see if that might yield a better result. Also, another thing that came to mind is using something like Drumagog or the soon to be released Slate Drum Trigger to try to do some replacing. I know I will need separate tracks for that though, so...PoeticIntensity, I don't know if you are out there watching this thread, but I'm wondering now if you might have the individual tracks that you could send over instead of the stereo mix? If not, I think I'm going to try to artificially clone and separate them with EQ.

Guitars...sigh...the more I listen to the track, the more they bug me...they sound kind of like a swarm of bees, which believe it or not, was not the sound I was going for :o

Jeff, I really appreciate the comment about the arrangement. That's one of my favorite parts of the songwriting process. I love it when the music and lyrics are pretty much done, and it's time to put it all together and try to make it just as interesting at the end of the song as it was at the beginning. It might take me a week or two to write music and lyrics for a whole song, but then I usually spend about a month or two living with the song, listening to it constantly, and trying to figure out how to build the arrangement. I think Signs turned out pretty well in that regard, and I'm glad that you like it. Even though the guitars sound like chain saws, I'm still proud of the song itself :)

Maximusbs, I appreciate the kind feedback. I will definitely check out your post and see if I can offer any suggestions. I'm still pretty new at this, so I'm a little reluctant to offer advice, but hey, you did ask... :)

Thanks everyone!

Dave
 
I simply love your stuff, Dave!
I could give comments about the quality of the recordings, but the quality of your songwriting and that wonderful voice overshadow any imperfections the recordings might have, at least to me, 'cos I always listen to the song first. Besides the guys have already given you a few good suggestions. Me I simply enjoyed listening to your songs.....;)

Joey :):):):)
 
Guitars...sigh...the more I listen to the track, the more they bug me...they sound kind of like a swarm of bees, which believe it or not, was not the sound I was going for

Did you check out the video at the link given by NewGuy?? I learned a whole lot about getting the tone right.

http://www.imperialmastering.com/guitartonevid/
 
just wanted to say that this sounds a lot like incubus.. very good..
 
vocals are excellent. I would clean up the bass to add more punch and bring up the backup vocals in a few spots. The vocal is cool dry but maybe add a touch of reverb...but not much. Just enought to bring out some breath in the vox

I like it a lot. Cranked is best!!!! lol
 
Guitar Sound Shootout - Lend Me Your Ears Please!!!

Edit: I'm going to start a new thread on this topic so that more people might see it and give a listen. Please ignore this post and check out the other new thread called "Guitar Sound Shootout - Which Sounds Best?" Thanks! - Dave


Hi All,

Thanks for the nice comments all...I appreciate the great feedback, and I'm working over this mix again. Step one, I borrowed a 1997 Les Paul Classic from a friend, and I'm starting to retrack the guitars. The only problem is, I think my ears are broken :o I've been sitting here for a couple of hours now with Pod Farm (I know I should be micing a real amp/cab, but this is all that I have to work with right now!), going through presets, tweaking things, less treble, more mids, less gain, more gain, etc, etc, etc, until everything is starting to sound the same and I'm about to lose it. So, I decided to make a few quick mixes of the LP through a range of some of the basic amps in Pod Farm to see if any of them sound good to me tomorrow with a fresh set of ears on. And then I thought, hey, this might be fun for the good people at homerecording.com to give a listen and weigh in.

So....if you have the time, and you are so inclined, give a listen to these short snippets from Signs of Life that I tracked with a few different modeled amps. The original track is in there too with the strat in all its bumblebee sounding glory :rolleyes: There are no tricks here, I promise, and I have a favorite right now, but I am doubting myself so much at this point that I'm wondering seriously if they all just don't suck horribly.

So, let me know what you think...I'll post the names of the models in a few days for those that are interested.







Thanks in advance!

Dave
 
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Wow... I can't believe I missed the posting of my drum track. As far as individual tracks go - I can get em' to ya in a jiffy. If you don't see anything from me in email or PM within the next few days, just send a friendly reminder. I'm interested to see how someone else mixes my drums.

Thanks a lot for the opportunity to play along with such a great tune!
 
Hey, thanks Jason! I was hoping that you were just busy and hadn't had a chance to logon for awhile :)

I'm looking forward to those individual tracks!

Thanks,

Dave
 
Okay... I finally had a chance to listen to your mix with my drum track, along with all the comments following. Here is my initial reaction:

1. The drums seem mixed pretty far back. I can understand why this was done, as the stereo mix I sent didn't have much presence mixed with the snare and kick, thus if the mix was put forward more, the overheads / cymbals would tend to take over. I'm assuming this would be taken care of after I send over the individual tracks.

2. The reverb put on the drums seems a bit much. My guess is that the drum track itself has reverb put on it, and because it's pretty wet, the snappiness and clarity of the drums are lost in the reverb. If this is correct, the snappiness can be retained through giving the reverb its own track, and making that track 100% wet, and the original drum track 100% dry, and mixing through wet-track volume, rather than percentage wet/dry on the same track... (hope that made sense)

Anyway... I'm mixing down each track now, and will be sending them over shortly.
 
New Guitars + Real Drums = Better Mix!!!

Hi All,

I finally had a chance to get back to this song and retrack all of the guitar tracks with a Les Paul and some (hopefully) improved tones. I also mixed in Jason Jones's drum tracks and ended up with what I think is a much better mix than the original that I posted. As always though, I've been listening to this one so much today that I can't tell if I on the mark or if I'm missing something, so I'm hoping you'll lend me your ears and provide any feedback on the mix.

Here is the new track (always lead with your best stuff, right :))
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9197122

And here is the original track with the programmed drums and the Fender Strat:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8843633

I really think the new one is much better. Hopefully I'm not alone in that!

Best Regards,

Dave DeWhitt
 
Kudos, Dave. Seriously... While listening to this, I kept having to bring myself back to reality that I actually took part in the production of this song. Feeling very humbled. Very well done. As cliche as it may be, I've gotta say that I'm honored to be a part of this.

Now, from as objective a viewpoint as I can muster, I must say - the overall drum sound of the new mix sounds 100% more organic than the original, and to my ears, that sound very, very pleasant. This is especially evident in the cymbals and hats.

The nits I'm finding are most likely due to my being a drummer, and I hope to not be offensive in saying this, but - from the very beginning of the song, it's obvious that this was mixed by a guitarist. There are places where the drums are all but totally covered by the great guitar action going on. I think this may be detrimental to the song, in that a lot of the energy which could be provided by a prominent drum track is lost in the wash of the guitars. I'd say this even if I had nothing to do with the drum track at all.

The guitar work is amazing, and should be the forefront of the song - but not at the expense of the other instruments in the tune.

That said, I have to give this song TWO THUMBS WAAAAAAAYYYY UP! Amazing work, Dave!

Again, thank you for allowing me to be a part of this song.

Please keep up the writing and recording!
 
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