Some demos from my new band - DER NEUE WEG

[Ian M.]

So some backstory - A friend and I used to be in a punk band about 10 years ago. Then we went off to college and the band dissolved and our tastes in music changed. I got into metal and powerpop and indie and he got into indie and electronic music. One day he came over with a cheap keyboard and drum machine and I got out my guitar and we jammed. He came up with a beat and I laid down a guitar line on top of it, after which we began recording and building from there. So far we have one completed original and we have solid foundations for 3-4 more songs.

One of our goals with this project is to see if we can make good songs with whatever we have, embracing DIY ethics. As far as recording I have Garageband 10 and all the guitars and keyboard parts were recorded with the plug directly into the laptop.

This is our first original song, "Interconfessional": https://soundcloud.com/der-neue-weg-1/interconfessional

This is our second song, with about 95% of the instrumentation done by me to re-familiarize myself with Garageband. And yes, it's a Drake cover: https://soundcloud.com/der-neue-weg-1/hold-on-were-goin-home

So there are 2 things I wanna know:

1) How does it sound? Think this is suitable quality for a demo to be transferred to CD and sold/given out at potential gigs?

2) Do you like the songs themselves?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[DM60]

Ian - First song - Needs to spread itself out, the repetition part, you're not dong anything with and since there is nothing new going on, get pretty taxing after about 4-6 bars. Try to add some flavor. Revisit your mix, seems rather lifeless.

Second song, highs are up there on the vocals, lots of verb, see if you can get your vocals and the reverb to work better in your mix. Reverb is a difficult effect to get correct. I know it is used a lot in German/European music, but they just don't throw a lot of it out there and leave it at that. So work on the verb. Also, see if you can get the other instruments to work better in the mix. I try to get my instruments near where I want them then blend the vocals.

Good start, I wouldn't hand these out just yet. If you are using headphones, you may want to render your songs and play them on various sound systems to hear what you are mixing. Other than that, you have to start looking at monitors, room treatment, etc. I don't think you are ready to go to that level. If you are, read the many other post that discuss this topic. It has been discussed many, many times.