Kind of a different type of tune for me, but I had a good time with this one. I was kicking this tune around in my head for a couple weeks and finally got to develop it and record it today. I tweaked the mix a few times. Any advice would be appreciated!
Main idea…you win some, you lose some, sometimes you’re on the ball, sometimes you drop the ball, cut yourself some slack, cut everyone else some slack, brush the dirt off and keep on truckin!
Lyrics:
I’ll Try This Time
This time I’ll try
And no one can stop me this time
it is time for me to not give up
Even if I die
It’s probably worth it
‘Cause living for nothing
Is nothing at all
I know…
How to read all your minds but can’t finish this page
I’ll show…
The size of my shoes isn’t really my age…
This time I’ll try
And no one can stop me this time
it is time for me to not get up
Guess this is goodbye
It was a nice visit
With salt where exsanguinating
And sun in my eyes
I know…
How to read all your minds but can’t finish this page
I’ll show…
The size of my shoes isn’t really my age
Let go-o-o
You’re wrong but I’ll silently bury my rage
Who’s home?
The lights are all on and they’re spinning the gauge…what a waste
Because this time
Things are totally different
Just like they were last time
Just give me a minute
Press stop and rewind
This is the replay we’re watching
Of all of the times that we had to say sorry and just let it go-o-o
Build jumps, what goes up must come down
Trade for a board with those tiny wheels
Kick flips with my toes but not with my heels
Broken arms and just one rib
Bike was stolen by a stupid kid
I’ll never see it again
Like the day that I tripped and I fell and I lost almost everything
Ahh ah ah oh
Ahh ah ah oh
This time I’ll try
This time I’ll try
It’s all I can do
It’s all I can do
[quote=“flyguitarfish, post:1, topic:6623”]
Main idea…you win some, you lose some, sometimes you’re on the ball, sometimes you drop the ball, cut yourself some slack, cut everyone else some slack, brush the dirt off and keep on truckin!
Wow these are my thoughts I just mentioned on my post.
Not feeling good so I will revisit tomorrow. One oclock in the morning is not typical.
Love your voice and the whole song vibe. Also the change from power and then back to mellow works big time. Loved that outro also. Not sure your age, but it sounds very youthful. Well to a 74 year old anyway.
This is great, the performances are solid all-round and the arrangement seems perfect to me. The song says everything it needs to in a concise, hooky fashion. It’s like a Pixies, Weazer mashup in the best way possible.
There’s a lot of light and shade in this track, and the beefier sections in my opinion are being let down by a weak-ass, thin distorted guitar tone.
The distorted guitar needs to make a statement every time it hits, but in it’s current state it’s not giving the energy shift needed in those specific sections. Think “Say it ain’t so” as a perfect example of light and shade and use that as a reference.
Could be a real banger, just needs a little more fine tuning.
Awesome stuff.
Thanks! I know what you mean about the guitar, it was a fight between big guitar tone and intelligibility of the lyrics so I opted to let it just fill in the spectrum in the background rather than be huge. I promise it’s the low volume rather than the tone! That’s a dual rectifier on one ear and an Archon in the other. It could be huge if I turned it up. I did leave the acoustic guitar going in those sections. I could turn the acoustic down or off, trim a little highs in the electric guitar, and really bring up the volume? Thoughts?
Yep, just turn the guitars up and work through the consequences from their. All the vocal intelligibility in the world doesn’t really count for much if the backing music is weak, and lacks energy where it needs it most. it is rock /post-punk after all.
Haha! I was trying to keep it laid back with the acoustic…but we all know what we want! I’ll have some time this morning to mess with the mix. So stay tuned!
Hey by all means keep things laid back with the acoustic, I fully agree, it sounds perfect. But if you’re going to switch up a gear and have distorted guitar parts, there’s no point merely hinting at them or implying they’re there. Otherwise just make it an acoustic tune.
You know what they say, opinions are like assholes, and everyone’s got one and mine doesn’t really count for much. I’m just giving it anyway haha.
No, I totally get it. I was trying to make an acoustic tune…but then I start thinking “you know what would sound good is a little distortion here”. Then before you know it it’s a big rock song. I try to resist but it’s futile!
I definitely think I can bring up the guitars in those choruses…then later on something extra at the end when it really builds. Maybe a few little leads too.
Ok, brought up the guitars, layered in another rhythm guitar, brought the acoustic volume down a little in the choruses, added a lead guitar at the end. Play it loud and proud!
P.S. CPU is maxed out…any ideas for me? It’s an IBM Thinkpad X1. Nice laptop. Settings for recording vs mixing?
Yeah man, it’s sounds a LOT better. I would even go further with those distorted guitars to be honest, but I think you could stand to cut some of the high mids out of those gats right around 2.5K, which would give your vocals a bit more space around that area, as well as a healthy boost of those guitars at 1K to really beef up that mid range crunch and presence.
You’re onto a real winner here, I think it’s a fucking great song, seriously.
Can’t really help too much in regards to CPU overloads, it could be all manner of things specific to your DAW and system, but in my experience lack of RAM usually has quite a bit to do with it.
I doubled my RAM on my PC from 8 to 16 quite some time ago and it really helped in that regard, but some plugins are just assholes and don’t play nice regardless of computing power. Might be worth checking your 3rd party plugins for a CPU intensive culprit and possibly swapping out for a native option.
If you ever want to share these multi-tracks I’d love to have a crack at mixing this one, would be fun as hell.
I definitely noticed that about the guitars…a little too bitey. Bass is a bit much too. I’ll play w those more.
That would be awesome. I’ll try to figure out how to send full length stems. There are about 25 tracks. It would b a nightmare to try to line those up!
Took the bitey harshness out of the guitars, tamed the bass a bit, slightly raised the volume of the intro so it’s not such a jolt when the other instruments come in. Overall easier to listen to, I think…
Yeah man, you cleaned up that high-mid hiss in those guitars nicely, sounds very clean and balanced, and the vocals seem to have more breathing room. From a production standpoint I still think there’s more that could be done (mostly with automation) to help add impact to the distorted parts.
I’m just not feeling an energetic lift where you’d expect it to be, and really get the head nodding through those sections.
I think the songs too good to just leave it at 90%, even if you go and pay a mix engineer to add the final touches, it deserves it to be honest.
You should send it over to these guys (Audio Bros) for a critique, they’ll give you some good honest feedback and possibly remix it for you if you’re interested. If you get in now they should air it on tomorrow nights live stream (10PM EST).
That’s pretty cool, would be awesome to get some feedback on a music podcast. I’ll look into it. Looks like I would need to put it up on YouTube. I wonder if a bandcamp link would work. Looks fun!
I have been on this forum for many years and i have to say i have only thought maybe 10% of the songs posted are praiseworthy that have potential for salability.
This one qualifies very high on that 10% You can feel the excitement from those who have commented.
The vocal shines thru now. I first time I thought hanging on that single vox note was not enough to carry, but I now think it works very well. I worried at 1:42 is that you would lose the vibe with the quiet series. Seemed like it need a touch more of something to keep one’s foot tapping. Wrong again on my part.
I would normally say do your own mastering on your typical average track, but not so much on this one. congrats
Wow, high praise and much appreciated. I’ve learned a ton on here. It’s so hard to listen to your own music objectively, so it’s extra helpful to get outside advice. This forum has been so great in this regard.
I haven’t been around much lately, but I noticed this track and it is really cool. I’m a bit of a fan of the 90/00s style power pop of Weezer & Fountains of Wayne, and this really nails that vulnerable/raw vibe that makes those songs so appealing.
Having mixed a fair bit of this style of music in my time, I have a suggestion that might at first sound somewhat counter-intuitive when it comes to creating greater contrast between soft/clean and loud/distorted song sections without the distorted parts becoming too harsh and fatiguing…
It’s all in the bass. Try “multing” the bass DI through a really fat distortion for the heavy song sections. This will create a sense of thickness and loudness in the low mids that won’t fight with the vocal in the same way that distorted guitars do. You can get away with an amazing amount of distortion on bass, and its effect is almost subliminal.
A really obvious (and probably extreme) example of this is “Song 2” by Blur. Most casual listeners would assume the distorted parts come from the guitars, but the bass is providing probably most of the distortion here:
Here are two tracks I’ve mixed for other artists where distorted bass forms a big part of the chorus “big distorted guitar” sound:
This is a more straight ahead rock tune, rather than alternative/indie, but the guitars are being massively supported in the distorted dept. by the distorted bass:
In any case, just a suggestion - have a play around with it, and see what you come up with!
