I just gave it another few listens on headphones, through my laptop. Everything sounds quite good as is. Aside from the little nitpicks that I mentioned above I can maybe add one more small nitpick. Though the bass sounds pretty good as it is here, I felt it needed a little bit of mid range and maybe a slight bit of higher end EQ to make it cut more. The bottom end feels really full but maybe some mids and/ or upper mids would help the attack of the notes come through a bit more. The bottom end is really full and round but maybe a little bit of overdrive or something to make it bite a bit more could be a good thing. It’s really just a personal taste thing.
I really like the quick start of the song and the delay on the guitar. It feels good.
It’s nice to have access to a good drummer that does a great job of tracking. There are drummers that are quite good in a Live setting but have difficulty creating and recording in a studio setting…Also it’s hard to find a drummer that has a decent room and setup to get those acoustic sounds recorded. I’d bet that most typical bar band drummers would have difficulty staying locked to a click. It’s a whole other skill that the “studio drummer” has to learn. I’ve noticed that the drummer you use for recordings adds a lot of flavour and nuances. That adds a lot of value to your recordings. I find that as a guitarist and home studio musician, recording and playing drums is a very big task that requires me to make a very extreme change in mindset when it comes to creating drum parts AND recording them. Particularly acoustic drums! That’s a whole other ball of wax! Oh, and the drummer has to stay focused on the click…or things get can get real dicey! My older brother is a drummer but he’s not the type of guy who you can keep in the studio for too long because he doesn’t have the patience or discipline to see a project through at this point in his life. It really sucks because both him and I have a ton of songs that we wrote together and separately, and these songs could use his drumming chops and input. On the other hand, although I find recording drums by myself to be a PITA, I get some satisfaction out of trying to improve my drum playing and recording chops.
I’m curious to know a bit more about the drummer that plays on your recordings. Is he from the same town as you and do you rehearse your songs together before recording, or do you send him the WAVs/ stems online and do it virtually? Can I ask you how much he charges? I hope it isn’t bad etiquette asking that question, but it might be something that I look into pursuing at some point in the future.
I’m still really liking this sparse version but I’m interested to see what you got up your sleeve for additional embellishments. Might be better to have 2 different versions anyway. Good stuff !
Well, it does have a chorus - 3 of them, in fact! Sorry they are not bigger All the best with your mowing!
Haha, dunno about that… sounds like you nailed it, though!
Thanks for that. The bass tone is the same one I dialled in on the demo. I haven’t really changed it since then, but I’ll take a look at it and see if I can tweak it in final mix.
Haha, funny you should say that, I have something planned for the intro… stay tuned!
I’ve heard your drumming, and you sound like you are a skilled drummer. But as you observed: playing, recording and mixing them from start to finish is another story.
I like playing drums, I have a couple of kits, and I can play some beats, but I’m far from any sort of drummer… Put it this way… the ambition of my productions far outstrips my ability to provide an organic drum groove that matches it.
Nope, he’s in Canada! It’s all done online. I send him my mp3 demos with some instructions in both “full mix” and “no drums” formats, and he lays down the drums in his home studio and sends me the raw multi-tracks (usually around 14 tracks). Turnaround time is about 3-5 days, depending on how busy he is.
Sure, its $50 (US) for a song of 5 minutes or less. Now you know all my secrets. Go forth and produce!
No worries Paul. I get it - you’re impulsive, and you comment in a kind of “stream of consciousness” way… I’d have to be pretty thin-skinned to take offence at that!..
I just really didn’t understand what you meant, so I wanted to understand what you are getting at. Sometimes I find that, if I really pay attention, often people say some really insightful things with “throwaway” comments. That’s why I always dig deeper.
I had to pay extra attention to the lyrics on a second listen, Andrew, as your song ideas are sometimes surprising, before I understood the “live behind the gloss” line was Australian for “glass”, and made for a great rhyme for “farce”. It is so pervasive a change in human social interaction it is easy to not even see. We want to rebel somehow, but can we?
Emotionally it ends optimistically. In actuality it all too often seems vascillating with abject hopelessness, at minimum elements of serious doubt. And even though I think your range sounds very good as is, you are so talented I wouldn’t be surprised if you pulled that off.
Whenever I see an Andrew mix, I gotta check it out. This one doesn’t disappoint.
Instrumentation is nicely done. Guitars are wonderful. Are these amped or did you DI and ampsim them? If so, what did you use?
What makes this song for me is the wonderful low end. Love the kick with the gentle subs. Such perfect separation from everything else.
Nice playing on the EGs. Smooth. Interesting.
I know you’re not done with this (hah! If I could mix and record like this, I’d call it done!), but there are some “Fs” and hard “Cs” that need some love in the vocals. But that’s all I got for you.
Thanks Steve! Yes, the lyrics mine the part of the human psyche that I think is the most interesting, and most realistic - the feelings in between. I personally find music that tells me only one thing pretty boring.
As for the accent, well that’s who I am
I agree, that is why he has played the drums for all 10 songs on the album.
Thanks Tes - They are all amps…I posted all the detail about the guitar signal chain here.
Thanks, I’ll check that when I come to the final mix. Cheers!
Haha, it might appear that way, but it is just a combination of the culmination of the last two and a half years of (very slow moving) work on demos, production/recording - along with the fact that I have some time off from work, (we have something called “Long Service Leave” in Oz) during which I am madly trying to finish as much of the album as I can…
For the next few weeks (at least), I will surely “keep 'em coming”.
I love that thick electric guitar tone! I think it’s a strong chorus too. The one thing I might tweak is that the 4 different phrases in the chorus have almost the same melody. It can be really nice to change it up a bit on the third one. What I I might do here is to try adding something to connect the third and 4th phrase. You know what I mean?
I guess we know it’s all a crazy farce
(9-10 syllables, almost the same melody as above)
But we feel it’s all out of our hands
Just an idea! The other thing I notice is that the tambourine can be a little distracting at times… I wonder if the timing needs to be tweaked here and there. It’s tedious, but I do that a lot to get timing really tight on things. I think what I’m learning is that if the timing is just right, those elements blend in more (in a good way.) Kind of like if you’re practicing guitar and there’s a metronome, and you’re playing perfectly on time, you can’t hear the metronome. I always think that’s neat.
Anyway, great tune! I look forward to hearing it with the harmonies because I think that will add a lot too!
Ooh I like this song Andrew!
Am a bit late to the party, but as you describe it as a preliminary rough mix, nothing critical at all to add. Just a sense of anticipation as I await the building up in places where I am hearing the ebbs and flows. Right from the beginning, well, first chorus at around 40 secs, I was caught… beat, tune and lyrics caught me up and felt somehow familiar, like a coat I was shrugging myself into with winter delight. My hands and feet moved to the groove and it just has a great naturally progressing vibe to it all. Tasty guitar solo, nice spaces in the storytelling… niiiice work!
Thanks! I’m experimenting with all these ideas to see which works best. I must admit, I was kind of attached to the chorus melody, as I wanted to vary the verse melody more and make the chorus more familiar. You’ll notice in the final chorus, I play with the melody there, but I’m certainly not averse to changing it up if it works better. I think I have a good idea there…
Haha, that was a bit of a “whoops” moment on my part… I meant to mute that, as it was played to the demo drums, which had a slightly different feel. I’ll probably play a different part there altogether, if I end up using a Tambo at all.
Thanks for your suggestions!
Cool! Thank you, Emma. I’m changing it quite a bit, based on the suggestions received here, so I hope I don’t completely stuff it up!
I don’t think Michelle commented on this song - do you mean Cristina (Riley)? I might have reading it wrong, but as I understand it, she was saying there was a lack of differentiation within the chorus.
I agree, that is traditionally the case, but there are many popular songs that are exceptions (2 that come to mind out of the blue for no other reason than that I have heard them recently are “Hash Pipe” by Weezer and “Why Can’t This Be Love” by Van Halen).
In any case, if you read through the thread you’ll see that I am working on changing to a more “traditional” sound at present.
You see… now… You lost me… I really have no idea what you’re getting at here… I’m just a dumb Aussie. I played basketball for fun during lunchtime at school (and was terrible at it). I know there is some lesson being taught to me by the basketball analogy, but it is going right over my head. I can’t pretend I know what you’re talking about, because…well… I don’t! Sorry - you’ll have to explain it to me as if I was 5.
I am not wired right you must know that by now. Ok I just hit the wrong key and wiped out four paragraphs trying to explain.
You are extremely talented and comments from a very old man should be totally ignored. There are many here that give you great advice. Carry on
In basketball, a press is a defensive tactic where the defenders get right in the face of anyone with the ball on offense, to crowd the player and force him into making mistakes resulting in turnovers to the pressing team. The idea is that the pressing team will get more possessions of the ball, allowing them to make up the deficit. When it is a “full court press”, that indicates the defense is applying pressure all over the court, as opposed to only on the defensive side. The downside is the defense can run out of gas from playing aggressively over the entire court, as opposed to dropping into a zone defense where each defender basically defends a smaller area of their end of the court.
If the offensive team is skilled in “breaking” a press by passing effectively, they will end up with layups and easy baskets because the defense is forced to over commit in small areas of the court.
What Paul is essentially saying is his team had a lead big enough to force the other team to gamble on defense, since they could not make up the 15 points without Paul’s team making mistakes. Knowing this, Paul’s coach probably had a practiced strategy for breaking the press, which worked just well enough to win by 4 points, or two offensive possessions, when at one point they were ahead by 15 points, or 7 offensive possessions.
Hope that makes more sense, since my fingers just went through a full court press to type this. Your assignment is to now explain cricket to me. I understand rugby, which is similar to our football, with the exception of not wearing helmets while you run over similarly ill equipped opposing teams.
Whoah! Sometimes we overthink music, but this is taking overthinking to a whole new level!
Some things are best left a mystery. An American understanding cricket would just be unnatural!
Rugby Union or Rugby League? They are extremely different codes which really only share the “Rugby” prefix, an oval ball, and huge Neanderthals crushing each other to a pulp… Let’s not forget Australian Rules…but that’s a whole 'nother story.
All the best with your mowing!
Go forth and produce!
