Psychthing in July

  • Thread starter Thread starter rayc
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rayc

rayc

retroreprobate
Original
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CW69121N

NEW Mix (07 -07)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TBRAMCPC

NEWEST MIX (08-07)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D5F92YFG

MOST RECENT 11/07
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8TMURZCX

The above link will take you to the megaupload page to download Psychthing.
The MP3 is 8 meg.
So far it's just me & Roland the drum machine.
There are:
Bass (2 tracks comp'd to cover a few very obvious flaws)
DI Gtr 1 & gtr 2
DI Stereo FX'd gtr L & R
Even more DI stereo FX'd gtr L & R
& another DI stereo FX'd gtr.
Gtr into Pignose
Gtr into pignose and then Marshall superbass
Stereo drums - courtesy of the TR 505
Tambourine, crash & ride cymbals & thumb cymbals.
So far called psychthing because the A section is based on a D drone which is a bit spacerockish.
I have the lyrics but no melody or vocals as yet.

The Master’s Gone Away.
V1
The sheets were grey,
Where the body had lain,
And the room was filled with shadow.
The morning had come,
With the birth of the sun,
But the mind of the master lay fallow.

Ch 1
The evening had died,
But no mourner had cried,
At the coming of past day’s tomorrow.
Of the remnants remained,
On the sheet but a stain,
And the impression of leaving was shallow.

V2
But the master had gone,
Departed he with the Dawn,
And no-one cried save the sparrow.
For ne’er had it flown,
From its high leafy thrown,
Lest Death come on the wings of an arrow.

Ch 2
And the master, ‘twas said,
Of sparrow had fed,
Taking ill of its fears and its sorrow.
But from his death bed,
With wings he had fled,
And Death rode in the soul that was hollow.

RPT V1

Solo

And the bird took a place,
In past time and space,
Retribution for that which was borrowed…

Any suggestions re the mix - I bunged a limiter & Glaceverb on the mix which is naughty but does tie it together a little as the absence of vocal & solo are a bit obvious.
Oh, there may be some guitar & keyboard tracks coming.
 
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hey rayc,
it's very treble-y, almost harsh sounding. Too many FX on the guitars? I'd say more bass all around. I think that would do wonders to integrate the drums, which right now sound a bit decoupled from the rest. I have problems with the sound of the snare and the crash, do you have better samples? There's synths in there, I can tell. I like what they're doing but it's faint, they can come closer. You'll have to teach them to play nice with the guitars though. I think that's my primary concern: lots of things happening but when they all come together very little of it is discernible. Like when the song ends there's this dusty sounding drone that's left and I was wondering if that had just started or if it had been there all along. If it's option B I don't think that's a good thing. In my opinion this means that there's stuff that's supposed to play a part but what it's actually doing is muddy up the mix. I'd be interested in hearing the vocals.
 
singlespeak,
Thanks for the response. I'm listening to the MP3 as I type so as to determin if there was some damage done EQ wise in translation.
The drums are stright out of a stand alone drum machine - so the samples are what they are. I've no skill with program based drums but am occasionally luck enough to have a real drummer grace a tune.
One of the effects - the one that lingers & becomes the drone - is the highish sound that runs above the song - it's a guitar effect (no synths yet) and so takes on the characteristic of the guitar until it's left to drone out - with no treble excitment it becomes what bassier as you hear at the end. the other effect hangs in tehre for a little while.
One of the guitars has a bit of a high pass on it as it was making mid mud. the others are pretty much full sound. I did sculpt a bit out of a couple of them around 3Khz to make space for the definition peak on the bass.
The guitar sound you hear for the 1st 30 seconds (1st one then two) runs right through the song. The swells & howls (like the Martians in the war of the Worlds LP) are guitar effects. the FX'd guitars are actually only 2 guitars in total but stereo FX. I may have to high pass them to clean some of the thing up.
I have a tendency to build from very minimal beginning to a very thick, almost impasto, body then thin out again.
Too much treble but too much mud eh? Tha's going to make it a little difficult to clean up. I might have to take a notch out of all the guitars in the mud zone.
I've listened a couple of times while writing but don't hear the harshness you suggested. It may be my monitors downstairs & the headphones upstairs or my ears a fried. There's def. treble in the guitars & in parts of the FX. OK, I have some ideas to work with thanks. If someone else corroborates your listening then I'll know it's me.
Thanks mate - you've been a great help.
 
Yeah, more a glutinous congealing - though coalesce certainly reads better.
Thanks that makes it a bit easier to deal with. Not so much a built up of the mud part of the audio spectrum but a developing density that precludes clarity of the individual components.
Thanks mate! I'll get onto it tomorrow.
 
Wow, that is going to be a downer once you put those words to it...just looking at the last word of most lines...grey, shadow, fallow, died, cried shallow, sorrow & hollow...cheer up man :D.

So, I played this on WMP and the jangly intro guitar seems to have a strange distortion to it. There seemed to be a spike around maybe 2k that I associate with that sound and seemed to be in excess throughout the piece. I wonder if that is part of the harshness singlespeak heard?

I do like how you've piled the synth-like guitar sounds over one another...there is a cool wall of sound thing going and I am curious to see how it will work with vocals and/or some soloing over it.

Just playing around with the eq some and liked what a slight boost around 500hz did to some of the guitar sounds -accentuated one of the synth-like sounds nicely. Like a lot of your stuff - deceptively simple at first, but there are a lot of layers and things that only become apparent after a few listens...which is nice :).

Can you layer multiple drum sounds over one another with the 505? That is something I started to do with my dr 550 - layering multiple snare and kick sounds on top of one another to customize it a bit...the stock sounds always seemed liefless to me...just a thought...thanks for sharing.
 
Hello Heat,
Fresh ears this morning & I was able to hear what singlespeak was speaking of.
You're correct a major build up at 2K it ranged across 20 db too.
I've treated a mix for the 2K & 400 but hadn't thought of 500 I'll give that a go & post the results.
Downer lyrics - well yeah. I'm no good at the smile frequency.
Thanks for the time taken to address some of the probs.
Single Speak - yeah harsh!
 
Cool stuff Ray, I think the drums are a bit loud and agressive, I'd like a bit of percussive (latin instruments) perhaps it would suit it well.

I liked the chord structure and em atmospheric synths:cool:
 
Sounds cool Ray. The guitars are a little excessively jangly. Bordering on harsh, but I know you'll have all that sorted by the time this gets done.
 
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TBRAMCPC
This link has also been inserted at the top of the thread.
Thanks Greg. I'm onto the harshness now.
The above link goes to a mix that takes into account the observations of Singlespeak, Heatmiser & GregL.
That is I've pulled a chunk of 2K out, dropped some in the 400 range and added a little at 500.
I've also bunged it through a max to fatten up the rump as suggested by SS.
How does this version compare?
 
It's better Ray, but I suspect a re-track of the guitars would be a better fix than EQ work. Or is this another 1986 take that you want to preserve?
 
Yes, this is better in that I can now hear some guitar sounds pretty clearly that weren't even audible before. So, the separation is better, but you could probably still go further in this direction maybe.
 
Nak,
Thanks mate - I'll work on the drums - a little tug back and change the comp.
 
I've only listened to the second mix.

The jangly guitars just sound bad to me. They're thin, and they have a weird, digital-sounding distortion to them.

Why is the crash panned all the way right?

The drum sounds do seem to be a bit of a genre mismatch, but you've gotta work with what you have I suppose.

I do like the bass tone. That's solid.

The synthy, droning guitars sound very cool.

I think you just need to get the jangly guitars worked out, and it'll be decent.
 
Hey Ray, I personaly like the jangley guitars - sort of a signature sound I've become fond of. The rest of the mix is good too, but will might need a tweak here or there once you get the vocals done. Nice smooth progression which flows good from start to finish. Looking forward to the next version...with vocals...
 
woah yeah, that's definitely better. I knew I liked the synthy sounds, they're more prominent now, adds a lot to the atmosphere. You really managed to pull stuff apart a bit, nice. See I have to agree with VomitHatSteve on the jangly. Definitely sounds better now, but it's still very sharp and metallic. It's ok when they're counterbalanced with the bass, and it falls into place more at 0:46. When they're on their own they really sound suboptimal. Listening on headphones, fyi. Good work.
 
again not much to add, always the bridesmaid :o, I liked everything except the guitars....not sure enough to retrack them but they were the weakest part of a pretty solid tune...

agree with who ever mentioned the bass tone, I like it too :)


"suboptimal" thats my new word today....
 
A rework and remix.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D5F92YFG
I've replaced one of the guitars that was causing offense to folk. I recorded the same model of guitar, (Bruno Royal Artist with a plastic nut - the other tracks are with a RA that has a brass nut), through a little pignose with a 57 (after bagging Shure yesterday I thought I'd give it another go). AND then that same guitar through the Pignose as preamp into a Marshall Superbass MkII pretty much cracked to the max but with an attenuator (so I could survive) into an Etone 200W single cone into the 57 into a bluetube pre.
The Pignose to 57 is a straight replacement. It's on the left I think It comes in during the intro after a really high end jangle from another track.
The marshall comes in with the drums & sits fairly quietly through out until diving just as the outro begins. It fills in som mids I think.
I spent some time fiddling with everything else to try to carve some space for each to shine. Some of the percussion was moved to a more realistic placement in the stereo image as was suggested.
kcearl - do I need to swap some more guitars?
singlespeak - less harsh/metallic?
ido1957 - yeah, I ,like them & have just muted the main one - with a view to revisiting it for a personal mix. But the point of posting is to get and try suggestions so here we have a less jangly mix.
VomitHatSteve - the drum machine is all I have to work with at present. I did the intro rat a tat separately with a diff. compression & reverb. Does that part at least sound OK?
More suggestions please!
 
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The drums don't sound bad neccessarily. The samples just sounded like a different band or genre. Plus the crash way on the left is still kind of weird. :D

I like the new jangly tone you have in the left on the latest version. The old one on the right still isn't great, but as the rest of the instrumentation comes in while the song progresses, it gets less noticible.

Around 3:55 (and a couple other places) I heard one of those sort of distant, undistorted, feedbacky noises like what the Smashing Pumpkins used to use back in the Adore era. I like it!
 
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