Commercial rock tune - would like some feedback please

[watson_studios]

Here is a song I composed and produced for our band. I recorded and mixed all ITB using Cubase SX3. I wanted to get some feedback on my recording & mixing abilities. I'll appreciate it. Thanks.

http://www.watsonstudios.com/music/friday4.mp3

(bear with the intro - it's not too long)

[SteveE9C6]

I think this is an excellent job, playing, singing, mixing... For some reason, and this dates me... I am reminded of Cheap Trick. Great stuff. 2 thumbs up.

[TheRigaletto]

sounds great! reminds me of marvelous 3!

[roxxon]

In a word...
AWESOME!
You have major talent and it shows!
Great mix, great song!
Deadly execution and arrangement.
The vocals are outstanding!
So far this is the best thing I have heard on this thread besides some of the slick pros!
If you keep writing, playing and producing...
One day you could be a great one!

You made my day!

KUDOS!
YOU ROCK!



Cheers,
Roxxon

[Gradation]

Even the slightest comparison to Cheap Trick should be considered a compliment.

[SRS]

Sounds great. How bout some recording/mixing/mastering details????

[watson_studios]

Thanks for all the positive feedback so far - I was almost sure I would get ripped apart by somebody - but the day is still young. I thought I had a good mix at one point then ended up tweeking it 20 more times after listening in 2 different cars, home stereo, boombox etc. I think it's time to just be happy with it.

Everything happened ITB using SX3 - The best pre I have is a Presonus Eureka
which I only used for lead vocals. Also Rode NT2 for lead vox and a $60 cheap MXL for backing vox. All guitars & bass were through a Boss GS10 into my Behringer ADA8000 8 ch. ADAT interface into a Event EZ8 PCI adat card. That's pretty much my front end right now. I also own a Joemeek VC1Q but did not use it for this. I'm in the process of shopping around for a better front end, better pre's etc.

The drums are all DFH Superior, I input the drums playing through my Roland TD-20
Then cleaning up the midi tracks in SX3.

I played All guitars and bass except the guitar solo - I arranged it then hired a great guitarist to play it. The lead vocals were done by our guitarist/vocalist and then I sang all the harmony parts - Coming up with harmonies for the chorus was not easy. The harmonies you think would have worked with the lead vocal did not work with the underlying guitars so it took me awhile to craft those.

The 2 things that got tweeked the most were the midrange and bottom end. One technique I used for the bass was duplicating the track, adding massive compression,slight overdrive from Nigel (strange guitar sim by the way, for the life of me, I couln't find a knob labeled "gain") then mixing it in with the main bass track. The duplicate bass track was to add bite and edge to the bass - mainly for the 2nd verse so it wouldn't sound empty with just bass & drums. A lot of times it's better to blend duplicate tracks, one main and one effected, than to throw everything on one track.

The same with the vocals. Duplicate - extreme compress & excite - then blend with main vocal track(refered to as the "exciting compressor" by some people). There is also a seperate lead vocal take that was brought in for doubletracking on the pre-chorus. Then another take for the lo-fi delayed vocal responses thoughout.

One other technique I came up with - and let me know if any of you have tried it - Is beefing up the kick drum with reverb. I'm not talking traditional reverb, that would be silly. If your kick just doesn't have the lowend you need or can't eq it successfully - I create a reverb send just for the kick, you create a very short reverb( maybe 100 -300ms) Throw on an eq cutting everything above 70 boost at 40 the throwing on top of that MaxxBass. This creates a very low resonance for the kick you can mix in to taste. Almost sounds like natural kick drum resonance instead of reverb. It must be very short to keep it tight.

For mastering, I used the URS FullTec EQ for midrange finessing, Eqium EQ for LF rolloff, Ozone for a tad of stereo width, and a little T-racks for leveling.

Thanks again, I appreciate the great response.

Jon

[tgrokz]

the vocals are outstanding and the things you did with the song in general are very good.
my only gripes are the drums and guitar. i think the guitars can be a bit brighter. the drums need bettter samples. they sound very lo-fi. then again, i have never herd anything from DFH. these bring the song down a bit. when the vocals came in after the intro, i was all then everything kicked in, and i felt the guitar sound and drums took down the outstanding quality the song should be at
sorry...hate to be the guy to be negative

[SRS]

Thanks for the insight to the recording.... nice work.