Blackline Rock Ballad...Check it

[Bang]

This is probably my favorite rock ballad that I've ever written. I wrote most of it in one day and then tweaked the bridge the next day. We recorded it in about two weeks, most of the time spent on vocals.

Go to the following link and hit "hifi"

SoundClick artist: Blackline (Los Angeles) - Blackline is a powerful, intense, melodic, rock band

Hope you dig...

[spandexstallion]

drums, bass, and vocals are all recorded very well. the guitars seem to be a bit undefined, but it's a very clean mix. well done

[Gear Tramp]

What, did you record this on your new Mbox?!

TERRIBLE!

[Bang]

thanks! I kept the guitars a bit layed back because I didn't want them to take over the mix and make this a "hard" song, definitely kept the vocal as the feature. Thanks for listening.

[Unclenny]

Not terrible.

The guits are too indistinct.
I like the vocal.....layed out on the line like that. It needs to be tucked in a little.

Work the bass...needs more punch.

[Bang]

I'd think Geartramp was not serious in his "terrible" comment.

As for guitars, I tried very hard to NOT make this a guitar driven song, but rather the vox. We do have a guitar up mix which does make the guitars more distinct, they sound quite good, but we all agreed it brought the song down as a whole. Here is the sound we usually have:

www.blacklinerock.com/music/as.mp3

So you can hear why we are trying to differentiate this new track. I'll have to post it through a real mastering chain, the above link was done with the GClip plugin. Overall I think it came out well and I appreciate the comments.

[Gear Tramp]

[sarcasm off]

Sounds great!



How do you create your drum tracks for your band?

[Bang]

Jerry is a great drummer which makes it easy. He plays my Pearl Master's kit and I use a lot of Audix mics, I'll have a tutorial on my page soon which goes through the details.

For the mix, I blended in some of my drum collection to add some extra thickness to the snare and kick.

Here is a question for you guys: The guitar solo... when it gets to the Morello part.. too much?

[emkay]

Originally Posted by Bang

This is probably my favorite rock ballad that I've ever written. I wrote most of it in one day and then tweaked the bridge the next day. We recorded it in about two weeks, most of the time spent on vocals.

Go to the following link and hit "hifi"

SoundClick artist: Blackline (Los Angeles) - Blackline is a powerful, intense, melodic, rock band

Hope you dig...

I'm glad you really like your tune. One needs alot of confidence in this biz and also the ability to be able to objectively and realistically edit and critique one's work before everyone else does.....good luck

[Gear Tramp]

Originally Posted by Bang

Jerry is a great drummer which makes it easy. He plays my Pearl Master's kit and I use a lot of Audix mics, I'll have a tutorial on my page soon which goes through the details.

For the mix, I blended in some of my drum collection to add some extra thickness to the snare and kick.

Here is a question for you guys: The guitar solo... when it gets to the Morello part.. too much?

Good stuff. Incredible drum sound, in my opinion. Where are you tracking everything at?

Regarding the Morellosolo... I think the 1st half is fine, but the 2nd half (descending run) seems like maybe it's a bit much, or needs to be reworked.

(but you were already thinking that, or you wouldn't have asked right?)

[Bang]

thanks man, as you can probably tell, I'm quite the drum fanatic so I appreciate those comments.

I have a small tracking room attached to my mixing/mastering studio. Its just big enough to throw up some room mics and get some nice sound. But for this track I mixed in some ambience from my drum sample CD to add some real big room sound (the room on the sample CD is from the old Bang Recording room in Boston).

The samples used were snare4 and kick2, mixed in to the real drums to add to the thickness. We actually used the drum that was sampled for snare4 on this track so there is a double dose of that snare sound, ended up cool!

[drakewire]

This is Fantastic....
LOL NOT TERRIBLE....
The drums are a little masked but dont beat the winning horse....
I can definitely hear that you recorded this in LA...
This is a pro recording, with the exceptions of those drums... (although) I forget this is LA... that whole transparency stuff...

VERY GOOD TRACK... DONT CHANGE ANYTHING....
Seriously.....

[Bang]

Thanks man! If you hear most of the stuff I do, I usually have the drums pretty IN YOUR FACE!! check out Ambrosia and Loathe at:

epk

But for this song I WANTED those drums in the back, because this song is all about the vocal. But thanks a lot man, I'm glad you like it!

[stevie_vp]

hey man! sounds good! how did you record the guitars on the second mp3? and wich amp?

[Bang]

Ambrosia was a guitar split into three signals, one Dual Rec, one Marshall JCM 800, and then a clean amp, I think some kind of Fender. I combined all these great amps and got one big massive tone. Used 609s and 57s, now I use Audix i5s.

[redtuesday]

I really liked the song and production. Nice work. My only suggestion is losing the syncopated guitar at I think the second verse. It distracted from the vocal message.
All my best,
Brian Darnell, San Diego, CA

[RockDog]

love your vocal tone but verse's could be improved maybe, but good chorus an bridge

[Bang]

thanks very much for the comments, the more specific you can be the better... which guitars in the second verse, the little bit of acoustic or the gritty?

This track is already doing some great things for us but is not near done. We are redoing the strings, redoing the solo, and I'm going to do a final mix and master. So far I've heard nothing but good things from most about the vox, really most of the complaints I get are from the end of the solo not fitting in with the organic nature of the rest of the song.