New Song Demo!!

[jdjustice]

last night a good friend came over to my place and i recorded him playing and singing one of his original compositions.

i personally think the song is really good, but i would like to get feedback on it from you guys.
is the reverb too strong? does the guitar need eq? do you like the song, etc....


thanks a lot for listening!!


cheers.
~j.d.

[jdjustice]

bump?

[nyarlothothep]

Its well recorded, your avatar is cool

[peeder]

Hi j.d.,

It's a nice song!

I think the main problems with it have to do with technique. The guitar sounds played with the back of a fingernail, a bit unevenly. That can be OK, but it's kind of wilted. The vocalist sounds as if they have a frog in their throat...there is this grinding, stu\ttering sound on some of the lines that could be distortion in the chain or in the actual larynx. The opening line..."Hang around" demonstrates this really loudly. It kind of gets off on a bad foot that way. Gravel can be nice on a voice, but the gravel can't be cut too coarse...

As for recording, the guitar could have benefitted from being done in stereo. The guitar builds up in places at the resonant point of the body (A 220) but it doesn't maintain its girth evenly, so some passages are heavy and others are thin. I might be tempted to try multiband compression under those circumstances. The reverb on the vocal is fine.

The most distracting thing is the vocal sounds as if it was recorded line-by-line and comped. The singer's voice recovers unnaturally...it starts the next line as if it hadn't just sang the one before that. The singer might just be a funny duck that sings that way, I don't know. If it was comped, make sure the singer sings the prior line to get themself in the right state for a punch. I also might be hearing little clicks from the comping/punching...be sure to cut at zero crossings. If those are lip smacks you might snip them out.

Good work, the nits I pick don't get in the way of the delivery of the material...you just seem to want comments so here's what I can do.

[jdjustice]

Originally Posted by nyarlothothep

Its well recorded, your avatar is cool

thanks!

Originally Posted by peeder

Hi j.d.,

It's a nice song!

I think the main problems with it have to do with technique. The guitar sounds played with the back of a fingernail, a bit unevenly. That can be OK, but it's kind of wilted. The vocalist sounds as if they have a frog in their throat...there is this grinding, stu\ttering sound on some of the lines that could be distortion in the chain or in the actual larynx. The opening line..."Hang around" demonstrates this really loudly. It kind of gets off on a bad foot that way. Gravel can be nice on a voice, but the gravel can't be cut too coarse...

As for recording, the guitar could have benefitted from being done in stereo. The guitar builds up in places at the resonant point of the body (A 220) but it doesn't maintain its girth evenly, so some passages are heavy and others are thin. I might be tempted to try multiband compression under those circumstances. The reverb on the vocal is fine.

The most distracting thing is the vocal sounds as if it was recorded line-by-line and comped. The singer's voice recovers unnaturally...it starts the next line as if it hadn't just sang the one before that. The singer might just be a funny duck that sings that way, I don't know. If it was comped, make sure the singer sings the prior line to get themself in the right state for a punch. I also might be hearing little clicks from the comping/punching...be sure to cut at zero crossings. If those are lip smacks you might snip them out.

Good work, the nits I pick don't get in the way of the delivery of the material...you just seem to want comments so here's what I can do.

peeder, this is very helpful and you are a very good listener.
my friend has an unusual voice and many people have made the comment that he sounds like a cracked windowpane or a frog.
i don't believe there is distortion in the chain but rather this is the nature of his voice.

the vocal WAS comped; to be honest he was a bit 'affected' shall we say during the performance and was having difficulty breathing evenly and therefore was unable to deliver a 'live' performance. the lip-smacking was a part of this affectation.

the performer is a great friend of mine and likes recording to be as organic as possible and while he is indeed concerned with delivering a good take, he would just as soon leave in those lip smacks as long as they are not disturbing to the listener.
the fact that you pointed them out makes me see that i will probably need to remove them as they must be a bit distracting.

leaving in the clicks from the punches are not good though... that's unprofessional of me and although i consider myself a hobbyist (i don't earn my income through recording) i need to make sure i always take care of this.....

unfortunately i no longer have the PT session files or wave forms from this recording as the external hard drive that contained them has crashed.
so there is no way to go back and edit at this point.
i am happy with this as a demo of his songwriting abilities and vocal talents.

thank you SO very much for taking the time to carefully consider this recording and give me constructive feedback!
it will help me a lot and i greatly appreciate it!!


cheers.
~j.d.

[Mikem]

Hey j.d.,

I'm listening on cheapo PC speakers at work, so I'm not hearing all the little nuances, but the overall sound and vibe is nice. The EQing sits well on these speakers, so that's good news.

The frogginess in the voice is a bit distracting because it happens so much. I'm just thinking down the road if you were ever to record him again, try to get numerous takes so you can maybe cut that stuff down so it doesn't happen as often. A couple of times would be plenty.

Did he sing and play at the same time? If not, then it's obviously easier to get multiple vox takes to work with.

As for the guitar, I think it sounds nice, but if it has a pickup, you could always try recording the pickup along with one mic and panning the two feeds. I usually blend a little of the pickup to fill in a lot of the mids that seem lost when I only use a mic. Oh, and maybe the guitar could be a hair louder relative to the voice, but that might just be my particular preference.

Just some thoughts, but great stuff!

And I know it's not Radiohead, but I was sorta hoping you'd chime in on my Boston song thread:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/mp3-u...lp-boston.html

You've been so nice about making comments on my other song posts!

-Mike