Brand new track all done and dusted. Even made a simple lyric vid while the homie was mixing, because why the hell not.
Thanks again to everyone who gave advice, feedback and input along the way, I truly valued it, and took it all on board.
Peace \m/
Final Version:
Sounds great, all elements seem to fit and are balanced. Helps me to understand what you had in mind. Being a guitarist I might have messed with the solo a bit but highly unlikely I could have improved it, you know how that goes 
Thanks @ingolee, yes I think the balance is pretty good, and the mix seems to convey the intent of my original vision.
Yes i know all too well haha.
For once (maybe ever) thereās nothing I really want to change about this track, and am fairly well happy to actually call it āfinishedā.
Cheers mate.
Wow, you blew this up into a monster track exactly the way I was hoping you would. The singer is a gemā¦hold onto him for dear life!
All the parts work and sound great. Love the lead guitar tone and the playing. The acoustic stuff fit really well and was a nice touch. This song moves the listener in a lot of different directions which is good. It also keeps interest throughout. Iād buy an album of this stuff in a heartbeat.
You really did well on everything. Nothing sticks out to me to where Iād say āoh man, why on earth did he do that!?ā Iām also not as critical on things as I used to be because 3 things we have to keep in mind areā¦this aināt our baby, youāre totally happy with it and its done.
Accepting what you did here is accepting your art. Thatās what makes it beautiful. Iād be doing you a disservice trying to inject my vision into yours at this point. You should be really proud of this track. You can hear and feel all the work that went into it.
It was also nice to hear how you built this in the other thread adding things a little at a time. The vocals were really good but whewā¦in this final version, you guys totally nailed everything! I know the vocal snip you shared before was in the early stages. It was still good. But wow what you turned it intoā¦amazing work all across the board, Terry. Iām truly impressed and am glad you shared this.
Haha, yeah it sure took a left turn from where Iād initially envisioned but I think the destination was a pleasant surprise.
In regards to Brad the vocalist, yeah heās a super talented cat, and really easy to work with so it makes the process pretty smooth.
As long as heās happy to continue working together, Iāll keep employing his services thatās for sure.
To be honest it doesnāt bother me all that much hearing criticism, even after the fact, actually from a personal perspective I believe it helps me grow more as a writer and producer hearing productive input that is more on the critical side as opposed to people holding back for fear of hurting your feelings.
Actually after sitting back and listening with a more critical ear thereās a section at around 1:08 where the distorted guitars come back in, and theyāre ever so slightly behind the beat and itās annoying the shit out of me, and Iām not sure how the hell I missed it 
Thereās a few tom hits that are quite buried in the mix too, which Iād remedy given another chance.
Thereās a lesson kids, listen, listen and then listen again before you give final approval to your mix engineer. Patience was never one of my strengths unfortunately 
I donāt get too precious about the whole process, at the end of the day itās just a shitty song that i wrote 10 years ago that ended up on the shelf, and I decided to pull it back off again and attempt to make it a little less shitty 
But i do appreciate your kind words, I am proud that with the help of some amazing players we managed to finally get it over the finish line after all this time.
Always feels good to āfinishā a tune, for sure.
Thanks again Danny, it was great to get your feedback along the way, as well as you taking the time to share your thoughts at the end, itās much appreciated brother.
Not a problem, Terry! Ah, allow me to elaborate on the criticism thing as I feel you may have misunderstood some of what I meant.
If you were to ask us to listen and give our take, Iād prefer to answer something like that BEFORE the song is done. To me personally, (and I speak for myself only and am not silently thinking of anyone) when someone tells me something is done, Iād rather share in their happiness and take in their art the way they intended it. Make more sense now? Itās like telling Rembrandt āI would have used a different red thereā instead of just enjoying the red he chose.
What I also meant by less critical, was the longer youāre in this field, the more you open yourself up to things that may just have a little dirt under the nails. Truth be told, the engineering field has hurt my listening experience as much as itās helped me.
Itās like, doesnāt it suck to be so critical of everything you hear that you sometimes lose sight of actually being a f$%^ing music lover? Do you ever get tired of listening for sounds or wind up hating songs that are good because the production annoys you? Lmao!
I canāt see any of us that take this field seriously not feeling that way. I could be wrongā¦but man, sometimes I just want to listen to music and embrace the whole package. Itās nice to shut the critical brain down and live the music the way the artist intended instead of creating a vision of your own.
It was nice to just enjoy your song without being the anal retentive, subjective engineer prick I can be. So ya see what I meant now? Lol! We sometimes listen to criticism where itās really just subjective opinion more times than not.
I get what you mean also with crits. Sometimes they CAN make you grow. Other times, they can just plain rain on your parade when they donāt have to. āConsider the sourceā has always been my rule of thumb there.
Iām hearing ya, 1000%
Man at the end of the day, objectively, if nothing poked out to you in a negative way, thatās good enough for me, and Iāll take that all day long that the job was accomplished sufficiently.
Absolutely agree. I welcome it all, but being able to discern where itās coming from is most definitely key to whether you implement or discard.
Thanks again mate.
The Monster is alive, great job. Anyone nitpicking this is really trying too hard to get their subjectivity involved, which is, as Danny said, a side effect of being in the music business at any and all levels.
I honestly think if you can get yourself into ācasual listener modeā whenever youāre making decisions about your own stuff it really helps. You are still going to obsess over details no casual listener will notice, but you might also give yourself a little slack when youāve reached the point that any further attempt at improving a finished track is superfluous.
To me, you kept my interest for almost 5 minutes in a genre that isnāt in my wheelhouse, and there are a number of very bright flashes throughout the composition that show a professionalism that is really hard to find on anything but big time productions. You deserve a lot of credit.
Yep true, and as you say we ALL do it. And as musicians and producers in particular, our ears hear things in a different way, and thatās not always a good thing.
I do attempt the ācasual listener trickā, and Iāll stand up or walk around in the studio while the trackās playing, but I do find it quite difficult to disassociate myself, especially when the track is still fresh in your producer-brain.
Which is why I find places like this and the talented folk within so invaluable.
Walking away is sometimes the best thing to do. I actually remember listening to the dude from Kush Audio talking about this, and he said once heās finished a track heāll literally remove it from his files and give the masters to a friend or something to take away the temptation to go back in and start fucking with things at a later date.
Well I appreciate that man, especially considering it IS rather long and it isnāt typically your type of genre.
Thanks a lot Bob.