When You're Bad - Joe Johnstun

J

joejohnstun

New member
Hi! I posted this song here in its rough form and got some great critiques from some musical minds. You guys gave me some great advice on the kick, the excessive EQ scooping, the vox level, and the song structure.*About two years later, here it is in its almost-finished form, thanks greatly to your help.

I wanted to give it one more pass here since you all gave me such great tips the first time around.

Thank you!


https://soundcloud.com/joejohnstun/when-youre-bad



When You're Bad

You're beautiful when you're bad
You push me to the edge
You have it all when you're bad
Your lipstick left on a cigarette
You dance on the table, dressed like a lady,
Drinking and driving me crazy
You're beautiful

Vodka
In a shot cup
With the sound up
And the Do Not Disturb us on the door
You're an artist
In the darkness
I am breathless
And the bedsheets beg me, beg for more

You're beautiful when you're bad
You push me to the edge
You have it all when you're bad
Leave your lipstick red on a cigarette
You dance on the table, dressed like a lady,
Drinking and driving me crazy
You're beautiful
When you're bad

In a second
We're suspended
As she dances
With her French Connection on the floor
We leapt in
To the deep end
She's a legend
And I'm letting her think that she's in control, you're in control
 
I like the song. One arrangement suggestion might be to add an instrumental part. It's all singing from start to finish. The mix seems fine to me and fits the genre.
 
there's no gaps in the singing, that's my main critisism with it, mix is ok, but not perfect, the main thing that stands out is the bass drum has a weird frequency sticking out in the low mids and midrange that is masking everything else, hope that helps.
 
I think the singer has a nice sounding voice. It sounds over EQ'd and has too much reverb on it. Or at least a strange sounding reverb.

The bass is really tubby. For a song like this, I think there needs to be a lite bass.

Fake drums are fake sounding.

Pretty melody.
 
Can't accuse you of not having the vocals on top of the instruments. Maybe a better snare choice is order on the choruses, Agree with other posters re: no instrumental breaks. Could be easy enough to do - just have a few passages, sans vox.
 
btyre2013: Thanks, that is exactly what I need to hear. I will hunt that weird frequency down!


triplem: I *was* leaning more toward EDM-sounding than live-sounding drums, but I wanted a touch of live-sounding in there too, because it's not an EDM song. They are real samples, however, and loops played by real drummers with a few tweaks.


crazyluke: Yeah, that was a main criticism the first time around - that I had buried the vox. So I really tried to have them stand out in this incarnation.
It's hard to choose between ideal song length, ideal repetitions, and ideal amount of instrumental breaks; because you can't have it all. In the end I went with standard pop repetition/length, and I'll have more music in other songs.



Joe.
 
Really unique, I love the song!

Something feels like constrained to me, maybe it's the compression/eq used. The vocal sounds very natural, combined with the dancey bass/drum, it's a really cool effect. But maybe loosening up on the eq and compression would let everything really breathe. That's really all I got, vague suggestions I know, the mix sounds really good to me!
 
To me the song has a "creepy" vibe instead of "sexy" vibe, lyrically...it makes listening to the music really difficult. The mix is solid, but is it me or is the voice way louder when it comes in vs later in the song? Also, the voice is thin sounding -- maybe try proximity effect next time. About the only thing that I thought was musically interesting was the beat. The vocal timing with the beat seems slightly off and gives a dragging feeling.
 
Nola said:
To me the song has a "creepy" vibe instead of "sexy" vibe, lyrically...it makes listening to the music really difficult. The mix is solid, but is it me or is the voice way louder when it comes in vs later in the song? Also, the voice is thin sounding -- maybe try proximity effect next time. About the only thing that I thought was musically interesting was the beat. The vocal timing with the beat seems slightly off and gives a dragging feeling.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way too, because there's no gaps in the singing, it's as if the music is secondary.
 
The blend sounds nice on my system. Has good head room.

The acoustic strumming is more percussion than tone. I have the same thing happen when I record steel string.
 
Hi guys, thanks so much for your critiques! The main constructive feedback I received was that the switch from high to low vocals was a bit jarring. I thought it might be a formatting issue, so I made a reprise version of the song. This new version clears out the whole boring buildup and weird twists and turns and doublebacks, exchanging them for a more normal, coherent format like a regular, sane pop song. Check it out!

Here are the two versions so you can tell me which you like better. Thanks!


When You're Bad 2.0 (new reprise version):
https://soundcloud.com/joejohnstun/when-youre-bad20


When You're Bad (original):
https://soundcloud.com/joejohnstun/when-youre-bad
 
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