Watch it Go Down Done NEW

[Jakearabble]

Watch It Go Down Studio Version PLEASE LISTEN

I posted a rough draft of this a week or so, here is the first final draft. Rip it to shreds, i did all the playing\singing except one harmony part, I wont get offended so fire away. Thanks So much in advance to anyone that listens to this and all replies

Tell me what you think

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=3436&alid=-1

Its called "Watch It Go Down"

Thanks again

-Jake

 

[JasonBird]

checking it out now....pretty catchy sound. Good vocals....the vocals are buried in the mix...nice keyboard playing. Good song arrangment. overall mix, sounds kind of muffled....starting to wonder about my ears.....
nice ending.
2nd listen...the drums are barely audible to me.....guitar sounds far away. Piano sounds good. great singing, just need to boost the vocals. harmony vocals are ok....nice song! very catchy tune.
just need to polish up the mix.



thanks for sharing it!!
Jason

 

[Jakearabble]

hey thanks alot man,
exactly kind of criticism im looking for
thanks so much
-Jake

 

[lynx]

I just have to post on this tune because I find that there is a VERY good song here, but the mix is all wrong to my ears.

- The Bassline will drive this tune off the chart and you just can't hear it. More volume.

- Either lose the distorted guitar or kept it panned far right, it doesn't fit, especially when it comes back in the middle of the mix

- The vox are hard to hear in some parts.

- The "doo-doo" part seems louder in one speaker than the other.

- The change around the 1:00 mark needs to be much tighter.

The piano playing is excellent, the piano sound is great and the tune is original. Just needs some mix and tightness work and this will be a great tune IMO. It'd be worth it.

 

[Jakearabble]

lynx,
thanks alot for listening,
I will remix it probably this weekend, because I have been getting alot of comments on problems with my mix. Any ideas for EQ on the bass because when I turn it up it seems to boost all the wrong frequencies. I will definately repost this when after I remix it
-Thanks alot for listening
-Jake

 

[Jakearabble]

any other tips on the mix??

Thanks
-Jake

 

[studioviols]

Awesome beginning. This is a very eclectic piece, it's like Coldplay, a string band, and a french quarter pianist ?

Broadway and Vaudville ?

Vox is mixed fairly well on top in the very beginning, but some of the instrument peaks are challenging.

The cumulative level of all the 'doot' tracks is mUcH louder than the lead vox ... Look at your meters, you paid for them.

By 1:08, the lead vox is totally buried, extreme challenges to the lead vox.

send all the instruments to one bus and compress that bus, then look at the meters, this will give you perspective on the instrument levels vs. the vox levels. Isolate the lead vox on it's own bus, and look at it's meter.

The drums are stepping on this INCREDIBLE ragtimish piano solo ... fire the drummer ... if that's you well than SHAME !

The lead vox is a delicate and fragile thing, don't ever forget this.

If you can't mix a lead vox properly, you simply cannot mix.

If you are willing to humiliate yourself to the lead vox, then you can learn to mix the rest of the stuff.

Cool effort at production ... remix and repost by cutting all instrument 6-9db, and developing plenty of HEADROOM to make some decisions with. Then you will have the headroom to craft the mix to closure, right now ... you have to go backwards, and that's not an effective way to mix.

This mix is an insult to the lead singer, it's good music, good writing ... I'm only talking about the mix.

Very good performances, good song ... cool stuff ... disorganized and weak mix.

Review others, read their threads, you are doing some things that I have recently harped on in a lot of threads, read the threads please sir.

 

[Jakearabble]

thanks studiovols as always
I am indeed the piano player\singer\drummer and engineer producer haha so they are all my problems
Thanks for all the input, you are always extremely helpful.
I'm not sure I completely understand what you mean by taking all the instruments and checking the meters on a compressor, can you explain this further.
Thanks again man
very helpful
I will remix this asap
-Jake

 

[CanopuS]

The distorted guitar that comes up over the verse-chorus needs to go down in the mix. Other than that and what the others say it sounds good. How did you mic the drums and piano? They sound great!

 

[TripleM]

Cool enough song. Nice arrangement. I like songs that feature harmonies. Nice piano playing. Guitar fills are nice. Some nice lines sprinkled in there.

I think though that the piano is covering the vocals during the verses. Just a bit.

The harmony parts are cool. There are a couple of execution things. I noticed some pitchiness in spots - both in the chorus' and bridge. Some of the balance of parts was a bit off to my ear (the low part was too prominent in spots IMO). Some small syncing issues near the begining.

Cool song.

 

[Jakearabble]

i was really hoping someone would ask about the mics i used haha
here is the big surprise
the oheads for my drums and the piano mics were both mxl v57m(40 bucks each) I also used an mxl 603 on the hat
that was it, I was realllllly impressed with these mics, and for the price, whew
Thanks for listening
-Jake

 

[Jakearabble]

thanks alot tripleM
I hear ya on the piano
I will try and fix it then repost the mix asap
Thanks for listening
-Jake

 

[CanopuS]

Oh wait, sounds like there are a few timing issues. The ones I noticed were at 1:08, and 1:53. The first one sounds like a snare too late to me, but not sure about the second.

 

[Jakearabble]

aha you're right about 1:08, i cant hear it so much at 1:53, what specifically?
-Jake

 

[CanopuS]

It's hard to explain, I'm not really sure myself I *think* that the drummer slows down for half a second after the loud cymbal on 1:53, but I'm probably just imagining it. I've listened like 20 times over I can't quite get what it is. Listen to the other drums after that cymbal (for half a second), seems as if they've kinda been pulled back, and suddenly they go again at 1:54. As if it's a dog being pulled back

Don't worry if you don't hear it

 

[studioviols]

Ya know, eventually you go bald from 'wearing all those hats' ... but ... you'll have the hats on so nobody will know .

Please make a quick post about your software and gear that you are using to mix with, just the mixing stuff, and I'll advise on instrument grouping 'by bus' , and 'bus submixing' , bus mastering , and isolating compression.

 

[CanopuS]

Uh-oh, he's threatening to get technical and incomprehensible on us

 

[skids]

Holy Ben Folds!

I think you have nice song here. Piano playing and sound is very nice. Try some EQ cuts in the piano to clear up that vocal some. Drums sound pretty good. A snare mic would have been nice, but still nice as is. A few timing issues. Doot doot doo's a little left heavy.

Nice work.

 

[Jakearabble]

studioviols- mackie 12 channel mixer, running into cubase sx via a delta 1010lt and 66, i use the preamps on the mackie but also have an additional 2 on the delta 1010 and another 2 on my roland mmp2. Thats pretty much it, i have no outboard effects processors or compressors. Mixing on some ok labtec computer speakers and randomly checking it on som samson headphones just for another point of view(?)


Thanks man I really appreciate you taking time to help me out



Skids- thanks alot for listening, i might end up retracking the drums with a snare mic, because you are definately right man.

ConopuS- thanks again, still cant hear it, but im gonna retrack the drums so hopefully that will fix it

thanks for listening
-Jake

 

[studioviols]

cubase sx will allow you to assign tracks to an 'auxiliary bus'.

For example, let's say you have an audio track with bass, and audio track with guitar, and an audio track with mandolin.

You could assign a reverb plug-in to each individual track, but that would be very wasteful with respect to CPU time.

In each track's view, you can select to send it to an auxiliary bus. You can feed all of those audio tracks to ONE BUS. And then assign a reverb plug-in to that one bus. It will then add reverb to ALL of the tracks, but only eat up the CPU cycles for one instance of the reverb plug-in.

This is called submixing to bus, or 'creating a bus submix'.

Send track to aux bus :

01. Open Track Mixer (Press F3)
02. Select track and click Edit Channel ("e")
03. Far right column = 8 Aux bus settings
04. Click "Standby" button to "send" track
05. Bar underneath sets track send level
06. Adjust level (drag left/right) - Play - Experiment

Once you do this, you will quickly see all the possibilities for adding a compressor to that single bus, or a delay unit to that single bus.

Once you have 'bussed' your instrument groups to submixes, you can look at the 'meters' for those busses and compare the levels.

It give you uniformity of sound over those audio tracks.

LOOK IN THE CUBASE HELP FILES. please

I want you to do this, and I KNOW, I will hear a HUGE difference in your mixes when you start doing this.