Two songs. Lend me your ears!

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ihateyourhat

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Lend me your ears!

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=592273
The song is "head for the setting sun".

I've lurked here on and off for a few years, and even posted a few times under a different name, but never felt I had anything to contribute or anything worth critiquing (although I did post one song a long time ago). As a result of this, I never really got into the whole recording community thing. Sure I've learned things from lurking around the forums, but without something to apply this knowledge to, it was pointless for me to waste time on it.

Although I've loved recording almost as long as I've been playing music, I never had the right equipment; thus, shitty sounding songs and no where to go with them (can't polish a turd right?). Well, as it turns out I've been fortunate enough to finally have enough money to buy some decent recording equipment. Decent equipment equals decent sounding recordings, right? I really don't know, but that's the goal here.

Why the bullshit background info, you ask? Perhaps I don't want to come off as that guy who posts his songs as a thinly veiled attempt at advertising his new tunes who you then never hear from again. I'm here to learn to make better recordings. I'm more after criticisms about the sound of the recordings rather than the quality of the songs themselves, although comments about either are certainly welcome. So, please, have a listen.

Edit: Per bigbubba's recommendation, I cut the focus down to one song.
 
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First Recommendation: Post one song at a time. This allows people to comment on the same track and allows you as much time as you need to work on it.

Otherwise, some will talk about song #1 and some about song #2. In the end you will probably agree with all but it might get confusing applying changes and coming back asking for opinions. Some will review the updated mixes and others will be posting for the first time about the other track. :)

I'll listen in a little bit comment on the song, too. :) Gotta keep trying to make them better. :)
 
I Love the name of your band ...

My 2c for whatever it's worth ..... (on the second song)

I had all of my volume knobs at half, (that is, my master fader, the volume on my headphone amp AND the one on the website's player) and only then was it comfortable to listen to ... I also (not coincidentally) noticed a fair amount of distortion (the kind you get from clipping and/or over-limiting).

All-in-all, I thought that it was captured fairly well though IMHO, I suggest rolling off a bit of the low end on the bass guitar to let it's harmonics through - then you can raise it's volume in the mix to help it stand out. This will also help the high end some. Right now the bass just sort of rumbles around and will either be way too boomy on systems with subs or a ghost on systems with poorer bass response.

the drummer made a few oopsy doodles ... Other performances were well done ...
peace
Rs
 
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head for the setting sun

The guitar playing is pretty nice. The song structure is pretty nice. The volumes are too high.

It's a little shrill. Don't worry, so are mine almost always. I would probably give Dogman's favorite answer: Use a multiband compressor. :)

The guitars are crunchy and tone-wise good sounding.

The mixing is pretty cool.

The bass doesn't shine thru as much. Maybe EQ the bass a little nicely.

Cool song overall. :)
 
RedStone said:
I Love the name of your band ...

My 2c for whatever it's worth ..... (on the second song)

I had all of my volume knobs at half, (that is, my master fader, the volume on my headphone amp AND the one on the website's player) and only then was it comfortable to listen to ... I also (not coincidentally) noticed a fair amount of distortion (the kind you get from clipping and/or over-limiting).

All-in-all, I thought that it was captured fairly well though IMHO, I suggest rolling off a bit of the low end on the bass guitar to let it's harmonics through - then you can raise it's volume in the mix to help it stand out. This will also help the high end some. Right now the bass just sort of rumbles around and will either be way too boomy on systems with subs or a ghost on systems with poorer bass response.

the drummer made a few oopsy doodles ... Other performances were well done ...
peace
Rs
Click to expand...

Bigbubba was right, posting two songs gets confusing. I'm not sure if you're talking about "wish upon a gnome" or "head for the setting sun". From your sugestions it sounds like you're talking about "gnome", but you mentioned the second song which is "sun".
 
puddytay said:
I liked the first one, but your vocals seem to be muffled... Sounds kind of cloudy.

I can't really comment on the second one because I can't stand songs in which people scream in them.
Click to expand...

Any tips on improving the clarity of the vocals? My signal chain for the vocals was basically sm57 > preamp > comp > recording interface
 
bigbubba said:
head for the setting sun

The guitar playing is pretty nice. The song structure is pretty nice. The volumes are too high.

It's a little shrill. Don't worry, so are mine almost always. I would probably give Dogman's favorite answer: Use a multiband compressor. :)

The guitars are crunchy and tone-wise good sounding.

The mixing is pretty cool.

The bass doesn't shine thru as much. Maybe EQ the bass a little nicely.

Cool song overall. :)
Click to expand...

That's two for "too freaking loud!" I have to admit I was aiming for commercial recording loudness here. It seems that that's frowned upon around here, but, well...I got no excuses :o

Multiband compression is something I'll have to look into. I'll be honest I don't have much experience with compression, eq'ing, and all the other wonderful things that help us make our recordings sound better, but that's what I'm here for, to learn.

I've never really achieved a bass tone that I was happy with. It's usually buried in the mix or there is too much emphasis on the lows. Any suggestions on eq'ing the bass?
 
I liked the first one. The bass is a little boomy. The drums sound good. The vox are trampled on a bit.

The second song is harsh to me frequency wise. The doubled vox on the screaming sounds a bit strange to me. I'm not all that familiar with the genre so maybe that's normal but it just seems strange to double screaming to me.

Not a big fan of the second song but the first one is pretty cool music wise. Not bad for a song with only a small handful of lyrics.
 
ihateyourhat said:
That's two for "too freaking loud!" I have to admit I was aiming for commercial recording loudness here.
Click to expand...

It's a bad idea to aim for commercial loudness; that's not your job. Good mastering engineers acheive that (whether or not they should is a big debate in itself) by very carefully utilizing super expensive equipment. Good mix engineers never try to acheive that. You have clips in there that probably do not show up on your DAW as a clip but they do take away fidelity and add unpleasant distortion. There are transients that are super fast and peak well above the peak that your DAW may register. This whole thing sounds too hot to me but I only hear slight distortion here and there. These other guys sound like they have better ears than me so...
 
the inhabitant said:
I liked the first one. The bass is a little boomy. The drums sound good. The vox are trampled on a bit.

The second song is harsh to me frequency wise. The doubled vox on the screaming sounds a bit strange to me. I'm not all that familiar with the genre so maybe that's normal but it just seems strange to double screaming to me.

Not a big fan of the second song but the first one is pretty cool music wise. Not bad for a song with only a small handful of lyrics.
Click to expand...

Could "sun" sound harsh because it's lacking the boominess of "gnome"? Perhaps if "gnome" lacked its boominess in the bass department it would sound harsh as well? The reason I ask is both songs were essentially recorded the same way with not many differences other than levels. Of course ,I did mess around in ozone some which probably did more to hurt the mix than sweeten it up due to my inexperience.

In regards to the doubled screaming vocals, now that I think about it, out of the few metal bands I listen to, I can't think of too many instances of doubled screams. In my defense, I don't normally do much screaming, so I thought doubling might make up for my shortcomings. One thing I may have done wrong was I panned each track a bit. I could always try centering the tracks and lowering the levels on one of them. Any suggestions in this matter are of course welcome.

the inhabitant said:
It's a bad idea to aim for commercial loudness; that's not your job. Good mastering engineers acheive that (whether or not they should is a big debate in itself) by very carefully utilizing super expensive equipment. Good mix engineers never try to acheive that. You have clips in there that probably do not show up on your DAW as a clip but they do take away fidelity and add unpleasant distortion. There are transients that are super fast and peak well above the peak that your DAW may register. This whole thing sounds too hot to me but I only hear slight distortion here and there. These other guys sound like they have better ears than me so...
Click to expand...

In a perfect world I'd be able to get my stuff professionally mastered (and for free to boot!), but isn't there some sort of compromise for the weekend warrior types like myself? Is it really futile for me to try to bring overall loudness up without killing the mix?
 
ihateyourhat said:
Is it really futile for me to try to bring overall loudness up without killing the mix?
Click to expand...

I'm afraid it is. You can certainly boost some volume with a little limiting or whatever, but you can't expect to match the volume of your commercial CD's. Neither you nor I have the capability to do that. If you're using a 57 to record vocals, then that tells me you probably don't own a $50,000 stereo bus compressor or accurate meters that can register fast transients that clip etc. Commercial CD's are being pushed to limits these days that regular guys like you and me can never hope to achieve. :(

And BTW, I thought both songs were harsh I should have mentioned that about the first one. I'm listening again and while the first one is harsh, the bass is also pushing my woofers pretty hard; I bet it would distort my car speakers...

I'm not trying to sound like an expert or anything, I'm just throwing out my opinions because I think it helps to get as much feedback as possible. I have learned a lot of lessons recently about too much limiting, laying stuff down too hot, etc and I still have a lot to learn I'm sure, but I know from recent experience that my recordings sound dramatically better now that I'm no longer trying to make them so loud. The quickest sign of an amature recording is that it's too hot... (so now I've just got to figure out what else is making my recordings sound amature LOL).
 
First off. Mixing and Mastering are two different stages. Sometimes, it sounds like Mastering is just more Mixing. But generally Mastering will put one final touch on the finished Mix. It's normally done on the entire album to also make sure volumes are consistent and mood is consistent and so on. Mastering is done on individual tracks also.

Anyhoo, a good idea is to get Mixing down first. Then worry about mastering. Many studio will offer Mastering so you can take your final mixes to them for mastering and so on.

Loudness per se, is not frowned upon. But realize that making it loud doesn't any purpose. 'Coz someone can just turn the volume up.
 
More Bass. Crisp up the guitars. DRums, bring up the foot, eq the snane till there's less 'pop' and more 'thack'. Bring the cymbals.Maybe some wider panning. IMO.
 
I was talking about "heading for the Sun"
gnome was a good tune as well - though it was sort of muffled as a whole

You just hit the limiter too hard - you can back off several dB and it will sill be "loud" loud, but not "obviously distorted and weird sounding" loud
 
Thanks to everyone who commented. I'll try to get an update posted this weekend.
 
I like the 1st song - good - the vocals are a little down but I actually like em where they are. the melody is ever so slightly beatlesque.
The song's quite good & the playing seems that too BUT I really don't like the guitar sounds sorry.
 
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