New CD's Out

n-Track Studio music
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I’m finally finished

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Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. I’ve been busy with finishing up two projects and school has started.

My first project is a collection of songs that I’ve written over the past three years, and I finally recorded them over this past summer. It’s a 5 song demo (named Dreaming of Tomorrow) and I’m really just looking for comments and constructive criticizm from you all because I wrote, recorded, and performed almost all of it, so it was a very subjective experience. Not many people collaborated on this, so I’m hoping that it doesn’t come across as too one-dimensional.

You can listen to the mp3’s here: Tunes from Dreaming of Tomorrow

Or, you can send me a PM with your mailing address, and I’ll send you a disc (complete with cover art). If you have a disc of your own music, I’d love to swap CD’s.

My other project is a full-length album from my band, Shaded Enmity (www.shadedenmity.com). We are sending our CD’s to a duplication house to get them pressed, but when they come back, we’ll be selling them for $7 each. There are three demo tunes on the website that you can download (in the ‘Multimedia’ section) to get a taste of the full album.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to listen to the tunes and for your feedback!

Drummer

[side note]Let me know if any of the links don’t work[/side note]

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Great stuff man.

Outstanding mixes overall. Seems like the vocals are a little less out front than I would like to see on Rain Fell and The Dream, but not bad.

“Invention” has some changes that are certainly not expected.

Keep it up.

What type of gear you using?

Chopper

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Great stuff man.
Thank you!

Outstanding mixes overall. Seems like the vocals are a little less out front than I would like to see on Rain Fell and The Dream, but not bad.
Again, thank you! Do you mean that the vocals have too much reverb or that the actual decibel level is too low?

"Invention" has some changes that are certainly not expected.
I've received this comment from several people. It was comprised of ideas that were floating around in my head. I was kind of playing with different textures and feels. It begins with a latin feel, with a lighter texture, and higher register sounds (i.e. shaker, drums, agogo bells). The segue was certainly an experiment in several textures with the guitar, the shaker and the bass dropping out (a lot of stuff happening :p . The final part was just a riff that I made up and then wrote a bass part and drum part.

What type of gear you using?
-HP Pavilion desktop P4 2.53GHz, 512Mb SDRAM, 80Gb internal HD, 120Gb external FantomDrives HD
-Layla24 24/96 recording system

Drums:
-Custom built kit with Evans heads
-Zildjian and Sabian cymbals
-cheapest sticks I can find that won't break :D

Microphones (some of these I have to borrow):
Peavey Diamond Series PVM 46 (4)
Shure SM58 (6)
Shure SM57
Avlex C135
Oktava MK-219
MXL V57m LD condenser (2)
MXL 603s SD condenser (2)
MXL 600 SD condenser

Peavey RQ 2310 Mixing Console

Preamps
M-Audio DMP3 Dual Microphone Preamp
Studio Projects VTB-1 Tube Preamp
*Behringer ADA8000 8-Channel mic preamp

Software:
n-Track Studio v3.3
Sonar 3 Producer Edition
Various Plugins (free, Cakewalk, *PSP, *WaveArts)

*aquired after the CD was finished

Thanks again, chopper, for you comments and criticism; I appreciate it.
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Thanks for the gear info.

As for the vocals, they seem just a hidden from a decibel perspective.

Again, good stuff.

Chopper

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Hi Drummer,
This is great stuff! I like some of the time changes and the way " Invention" suddenly surprises you when it slips out of Latin mode. My only minor beef would be that I find the vox a little soft but the songs suit the vocal style so it’s a very minor complaint.
I will mail you for a copy of the disc, and maybe send you one of mine but not many original songs on it I’m afraid, I’m just a singer and not a great one.
Keep up the good work,
Take care,
Bruffie.

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Thanks for the gear info.
No problem, bro.

As for the vocals, they seem just a hidden from a decibel perspective.
Thanks for the clarification.

Again, good stuff.
Thanks again.

Hi Drummer,
This is great stuff! I like some of the time changes and the way " Invention" suddenly surprises you when it slips out of Latin mode.
Thanks for your kind words, Bruffie.

My only minor beef would be that I find the vox a little soft but the songs suit the vocal style so it's a very minor complaint.
I'm seeing a theme in this thread . . . :D
I guess the fact that I'm self-conscious about my voice is coming throught the mix. Strictly from an engineer's perspective, I don't really like the sound of my voice. It just lacks power and conviction. I'm sure that if I were to train my voice I would improve, but I just don't have the time right now. I'm thinking about writing some more songs and redoing the songs on this demo with other people (person) singing next summer. I would like it to be a more collaborative process.

I will mail you for a copy of the disc, and maybe send you one of mine but not many original songs on it I'm afraid
That would be great! I certainly don't mind listening to a disc that doesn't have originals on it. It's music, isn't it? :)

I'm just a singer and not a great one.
You can't be any worse than I am :p and I've listened to the mp3s on your website. Your voice sounds just fine, bro.

Thanks again, guys, for taking the time out to write replies and check out the tunes!
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Over all, good. The vocals as you mentioned, do lack conviction and “umph” for lack of a better word and there are some slightly pitchy places. You also should maybe play with back vocals more and fill some space. For instance See You Again doesn’t really start to build until late in the song when one might lose interest in the first 1:30. Some back vocals earlier or maybe basic percussion, something would help just to tease the listener to want to listen longer. See You Again is a bit flat to me too. Not a ton of space there. Tomorrow has much more space and movement with the guitar and strings. However, I would build a bit more in the chorus. Just a shaker or tambourine would do it. You really need to punctuate song sections and play with the listener to make them get more frenzied as the song goes and drop them off a few cliffs. Otherwise stuff feels to static.

Invention… good space around the drum kit. Good movement on the main riff. There could probably be a bit of variation in the drums in the stops around 1:10 and 1:40.

Rain Fell has some cool sounds with the Mellotron or whatever it is.

The Dream… okay, now we have some new sounds. It needs to build or change sooner. Around 1:17 I am ready for a chorus or some change, but it still is the same basic theme.

Overall, I would say good. I would work on building arrangments and songs. First, hooks are everything. I found myself looking for the hook a lot. Also, I found some of the arrangments a bit static and not adding energy or new sounds to keep me engauged or they would dwell on a cadence for too long. For instance in The Dream, around 2:34 it doesn’t go any where for too long, almost 30 seconds with no change. In a 3 or 4 minute song you don’t have time to waste keeping the listener interested or they will change the station/CD. So moving forward I would really work on getting definate hooks out there. You had hooks, it just took me a while to latch on to them and I think that is a punctuation thing. Do something in the arrangement that says “This is the hook, listen up!” Also, work on arrangments that change or move. Static arrangements will kill an otherwise brilliant song. Just my 2 cents. I don’t know what your goals are, so I may be way off base. :)

EDIT: I shoul dmention, your drum sounds are pretty great. Maybe lacking some stereo spread, but overal, good solid drum recording.

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Thanks for your detailed reply Bubba! My two main goals with this demo were 1. Layering (playing with textures) and 2. Lyrical interest. However, you are certainly not off-base when critiquing my arrangements. This is, of course, my first offering in which I’ve written the tunes and lyrics. I still have quite a long way to go.

The most obvious example of playing with textures would be either Invention or The Dream because those have several layers of texture. In Invention, the texture changes a few times and new instruments are added.

Lyrics have been difficult for me to write, as compared to the music. I probably spent the most time on the lyrics than in composing any of the music. It never really feels like I’ve said everything that I planned to say within the given structure of the songs, even after playing with word order and spending hours in a thesaurus :)

After finishing this disc and contemplating your comments (as well as others), I’ve come to the conclusion that this disc sounds very “live,” in that it sounds like something a band would do live (elongated passages and vamping on certain chordal and/or rhythmic structures). This most likely comes from my live experience because it outweighs my writing and studio experience by several years.

I’m thinking about re-recording the tunes next summer with the changes that have been suggested so far, as well as with a new vocalist (I really don’t like the way my voice sounds in these tunes).

Thanks again for your comments Bubba, and I appreciate the time you took to listen to my stuff.

RE: to EDIT:
Thanks! The only thing that I did that really bothered me was that I put a highpass filter on the tom track (don’t ask me why I did that; I don’t know what possessed me), so they don’t have as much oomph as I would like.

As a side note, how do you go about placing your drums into a “room.” In other words, when I place drums in the simulated “room” that I’m hearing in my head, I accomplish it by putting a combination of different reverbs on the kit. I put reverb on the entire kit, just to give it some air; then, I put a combination of room reverb (that I used on the entire kit) and another reverb to bring out the snare. I might even do the same thing to a kick.

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I woul dsuggest you disect the snot out of others in the genre you are trying to hit and look at what makes them successful and what makes them tick. Disect, look for the formula. Everyone says there is no formula, but there are. THere are all sorts of compositional things you can do. Every cheesey teeney bobber pop song when they end repeat the chorus about 100 times. (Listen to Brittany or NSync, its true)To make it build after the second time through the endless chorus to a fade out they modulate up a step. There is the old Blue Oyster Cult trick to add a cow bell in parts to push the song. Maybe over lay a high strung part over acoustic rhythm tracks in bridges to make them stand out. Little percussion things, making the verse more sparse to make the chorus sound bigger, there are a million tricks. Just disect stuff and see what they have done to make it work, to frame things, to make it sound “famous”.