Shopping this song - wiggle room on the guitars?

[Dubnick]

This is a song I'm hoping to get placed somewhere, so I mixed it pretty vocal forward, but I'm thinking of either bringing up the distorted rhythm guitars overall or at least in the chorus just a tad. Should I leave them as is, since it's a song demo and the vocals should be way up front, or do I have some wiggle room (seems like the choruses could use a little more oomph)? Also, any feedback on the song, mix, arrangement, etc. is appreciated. Thanks everyone!

http://www.thedubnicks.com/AllIveGotIs.htm

[Elvis]

its very close. bump them up slightly in chorus to give that larger than life sound. sounds like radio potential to me

[Dubnick]

You think just on the choruses or just overall? Also, you think I should just bump up subtley or go a full 3db up?

[Elvis]

just a thought but an additional harmony on parts like, "finish line", "fall in line" could be nice to keep attention and transition.

[Elvis]

just choruses. that way it will have maximum impact when the chorus comes in. and in songs like these, its really all about the hook imo. regarding level - +2 or 3 should do the trick.

[primitive]

As you have your emphasis is on the vocals i have to admit that I can hear autotune quite a lot. I know its also feaured on some "hit" records but never so obviously. Maybe you can do it a little less?
The music sounds fine, another layer in the chorus woudn't hurt tho.
greeetings

[Dubnick]

Yeah - the vocals are actually from a really long time ago and at the time, there was a real rush to just get a quick and dirty demo done and out the door. The vocalist actually did a tremendous job of learning the song on the fly, especially considering the time limitations at the time. Unfortunately, due to the amount of vocals and the limited time, some of the vocal editing suffered a little (I can't recall whether I had done the tuning or if the tracking engineer did), and I didn't really revisit anything tuning wise except for a couple of spots where there were some pretty bad artifacts. Could have gone back and redone the tuning on all the tracks, but I just want to get it done and out there to hopefully place with an artist, so I just decided to spend a minimal time on that aspect. Thanks for the feedback though!

[Dubnick]

If anyone cares, I actually went back and tweaked the stuff I was contemplating - if you go back to the page and refresh, you can check out the new version and tell me if I ruined it:

http://www.thedubnicks.com/AllIveGotIs.htm

I've actually handed it over to a friend whose shopping it around for me, so I'll probably take the page down soon. I'd love to get any feedback on the changes before I pull the page down. Thanks!

[gundling]

fwiw - the drums are huge on this thing.. stand out huge - is that a BFD / Toontrack kit?

guitars sound good... especially for a song to shop..

hope it hits somewhere, man...

[Dubnick]

Originally Posted by gundling

fwiw - the drums are huge on this thing.. stand out huge - is that a BFD / Toontrack kit?

Thanks man - the raw drums sounds are from the Reason Drumkit Refill 2 but mixed entirely in Logic (didn't use any of the Combinator things - just the straight multi-mik'd kit tracked into PT). That refill actually has the best set of multi-mic'd drum samples out there, but lack of any ability to set parameters for fade transition between hi-hat hits make it an unreal pita to use them. I'm really looking forward to the sounds in Superior 2.0 - from the demos I've heard and judging by the EZdrummer sounds, it will really close to the Reason Drumkit Refills, but without the hi-hat programming hassles.

Originally Posted by gundling

guitars sound good... especially for a song to shop..

hope it hits somewhere, man...

Thanks again - all the electrics (and the bass) are just DI'd and I used Line 6 Gearbox plug for the sounds. The acoustic is from the original sketch demo I did for the song, and it's pretty thin and shitty, but it actually fits the vibe and, well, I'm lazy.