I have an artist name, I think - Touch the Ghost. Unless I come up with something better. Or loads of people tell me it’s bad.
The song - Place to Hide Away. It’s a bit of a departure in terms of the dynamics and song structure from what I’d normally do, I wanted to reflect a theme in the lyrics of abandonment etc by breaking the song down, building it up, but then not doing a big final chorus.
Took a few attempts to get the drums somewhere I was happy with. Now, please bash away! There’s still time to make changes.
wow Im lovin the drum sound. It really sounds perfect for the song. I love the chorus man. I really sways the listener.
Its produced very well and I think being nitpicky would be the only to way to bash this one.
All that I could think of is maybe the vocals on the verses sound too dry. a reverb/ delay Like ambient sounding vocal would give it more “character”. the vocals on the choruses are perfect sounding for me.
Thanks for letting us listen and I hope this helps. CHEERS!
The mix sounds fine. I probably would have made the drums a little louder, but what you have here isn’t outside the range of normal. Actually, never mind, the drums are plenty loud.
In the intro, the wide panning on the guitars does sound a bit strange on headphones. Even just centering the low freqs will help this out quite a bit. Once everything picks up, it doesn’t bother me any more. It’s just the first minute, and even then it’s really just the first 20 seconds.
Hi Cirrus, I really like the composition on this one. The quiet part in the middle and the quiet ending: nice! Love the guitar riff there.The mix is fantastic in my ears (jealousy?), even so some minor remarks: I agree with Boz about the panning. In the intro the lead guitar is very dominant in my left headphone and when it dies away at 0:22 it sounds quite abrupt and a bit unnatural. When it comes back at 0:40 same thing: just a tad too dominant and too far left. Maybe it would help if you placed the lead a bit further back with less presence and maybe some reverb?
Sounding great Josh! I agree with Boz about centering the low freqs on the guitars, that’s a great suggestion. Perhaps narrow the pan on a low-mid band as well–not centered but just narrower. But leave the mids & highs of the guitars wide.
I really like the composition and structure of the tune as well. My only nitpick on the ending is how the sharp, staccato tremolo/sliced electric just stops abruptly while the rest fades out gradually. I’d go for a more gradual decline on that as well. But that’s a stylistic nit to be sure.
And really splendid performances across the proverbial board. (The board! Har! I’m a riot sometimes.)
Maybe I could try something “My Morning Jacket”-esque. I’ll give it some though!
I’m forever doing “bold” panning things. For a while I was mixing the album with some kind of crazy idea that I could position parts in relation to some kind of political spectrum - so in the songs that deal with disinterest/ demonisation of immigrants, I could have compassionate sounding parts on the left and angry parts on the right. But, that was demonstrably stupid (and also intellectually simplistic) so I dropped it straight away. The hard panning at the start might be a hold-over from that.
I’ll see if I can get things better in-frame as the song starts.
I… I think I love you.
Good idea, will try! Actually, especially that part that comes back in at 0:40, I might want to remove or simplify altogether. Just because there’s already a reasonable amount going on with the off-kilter drums, organ, synth, tremolo guitar, harmonics guitar, tambourine, bass and vocal. I wonder if there’s a part that would slot in more neatly.
That was a bit of a challenge, because of the tom-part in the chorus - trying to get the bass, kick and toms to not step on each other. The bass just kinda ended up with quite a lot of energy at a certain point of the spectrum because without that, the toms were left thumping about on their own and it didn’t land right.
I’m glad you noticed that! I wanted to make it jarring - like a life support machine being turned off, a cable being ripped out, or on some metaphorical level like something being snuffed out, because the track that comes after it is pretty stark. I wonder if I need to make it even louder, just so there’s no doubt it’s intentional.
Thanks all, really really appreciate all the comments!
I like the song, I think this mix is good, I also think that it would sound better with less compression, but that’s part of what gives it a modern sound, I understand, its just a personal preference.
If I could make a sugestion that could help improve upon your work here is that the weakest part of the performance is in the vocal, and that’s something that jumps out at me as a listener especially since everything else is very well performed.
It feels like the singer is good enough but the performance captured is a bit uneven, there are some easy fixes, for example notice how the singer decays his voice at 1:15, it shounds like he ran out of breath or just pulled back in a moment where he should have dug in and ended with his voice at full power, you could try automating the volume at points like this one so it sounds more confident.
The quieter parts are the ones that sound a little weak, perhaps using even more compression and maybe burying the vocals a bit with the use of some reverb would also make it that much more dramatic when the singer belts out, which sounds much more even, confident and powerful.
Its a great mix, my critique really has more to do with the vocal performance and ways to address it in the mix, great job!
Someone already said it, but I think the vocals are a little dry. They’re not bad, but seem to be missing a little something, maybe some subtle reverb or super fast delay to add some space to it.
