Looking for you overall take on this track. also looking for someone to sing!
Not really my style of music, but I’m familiar with the aesthetic…
Overall it seems pretty well put together. The arrangement is a bit difficult to judge without any vocals.
The drums sound good tone-wise, but the fast rolls riff parts sound a little too mechanical & “all 127 velocity” machine-gunny. I know there is more tolerance for “sample-y sounding” stuff in the style, but a few spots really stick out (eg: the roll at 2:12 - 2:13)
I think you could improve the guitar tone by backing off the gain a little. The tight chugs seem to be all high end without and “beef” to them, which kind of makes them sound a bit wimpy. I’m guessing you might have high passed the rhythm guitars to open up space in the low end of the mix. That’s all well and good, but you might want to try “multing” out the rhythm guitar tracks to treat the “chugs” differently to the other rhythm parts and restore some low end to them. Using multiband comp to tighten and enhance the low end of chugs is also another method you might want to try.
Also, the guitars are pretty piercing in the high-mids - I’m guessing around the 3-4k region. You might want to work on using eq boosts in different areas for the different guitar parts. It sounds like the guitars might have all been boosted similarly in that hi-mid region, so it becomes pretty crowded and fatiguing there after a while.
Bass wise, there is a fairly healthy sub content happening around 2:20, which mostly sounds ok (bass drops?), but some of the double kick sections sound overpowering and a little out of control & muddy in the low end (eg. @ 2:28)
This is a pretty challenging genre to get sounding good, but I think a lot of the hard work can be expedited somewhat by choosing source tones and arrangements carefully. All the best with your search for a vocalist.
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I appreciate the song musically. It has a lot of fine detail that churns out a concerted melody line, for instance, the bass is either playing note for note along with the guitar/s or is not there at all. It is a powerful sound that might benefit from some editing to change things up on occasion, not constantly overpowering. I would probably wait until I had some vocals in the mix before fiddling too much.
I am thinking you want a traditional growling or screaming angst-filled vocalist. That’s not me! I would try but not fit that bill. Still I’m interested in the lyrics you might have.
Do you have lyrics for this song, or will the vocalist have to write them ?
I don’t have any lyrics. I’m more so right music and a ton of it. Hoping to find someone that can scream and sing but maybe two people if I can’t find that. I’m just tired of sitting on all of this music and having no vocals for anything. LOL I don’t write just heavy music but I’m really interested in seeing what happens with this one at the moment
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I really dig where this is going song-wise… it’s a good foundation that will be great with some vocals.
I started typing out my usual long-winded comments, then I read the comment from @ColdRoomStudio and realized it was almost exactly what I going to type. So, instead of re-writing all that, I’ll add some…
- for the drums, definitely spend some time programming so they sound less machine-gun-y. Tonally, I thought they were a bit weak for this genre. The snare was too thin… this style of music generally has monstrous snare drums, almost to the point where it’s too much (and often is!). You can play with layering samples and EQ and room samples blah blah blah… it’ll really help drive the track forward. Same goes with the kick, I think more kick punch would help get that heavy massive drum sound. Using the right samples is a big part of it too… what sampler did you use?
- the low end definitely needs some love, there’s a lot of things fighting for that frequency range. Some things to think about (which you may have implemented) are high-passing guitars (although this should be done with some care!), side-chaining the bass to duck slightly when the kick hits, automating a small bass cut on the kick during double-bass sections, separating instruments through EQ etc…
As I said though, this is definitely a good foundation to build on! Please post updates, I’m interested to hear where this goes!
Cheers!
Blair
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I like the song would like to hear it with some vocals sorry don’t know anybody tho…
As for the mix @coldroomstudio and blairhall1974 covered things well. The chug gt parts you could try a Multiband or a parallel dynamic equalizer is what I would try first if you can grab nova it’s free if you like it get the Ge version has a few more bells and whistles .Also some tight cuts in that 1 to 4 range on the gt sound which was mentioned.
Good luck looking forward to the finished song.
A great listen just from the laptop direct to headphones after the initial jolt and my ears adjusted.
There are way more qualified than me to comment on mix and mastering so I ain’t gonna.
I wish I could lay these vocals down but I don’t think I could hit what you might anticipate for them.
Overall, I can’t wait to hear it finalized.
Cheers.
I can rightly imagine a Cory Taylor -esque vocal on this, taking advantage of melodic vocals with some more aggressive accents.
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Maybe a little too scooped? I prefer a fair amount of mids. I could be wrong.
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