Bring on the critiques

[dougo]

Fellow tapeopers,

Just finished this little ditty in my room last night. I went heavy on the bass to counterpoint the acoustic guitar. Let me know your opinions on the song, mix or any point I might work on.
Formula-
mac, logic
acoustic guitar-saved from trash can
electric gtr- amp(very quiet, late nite)
mic-octava 319
drumbeat-adrenalinn
bass and keys-logic instruments

link http://www.myspace.com/dayglogeisha

Thanks again for all your help,
Dougo

[tiger vomitt]

i like the song

here are some criticisms-

first, the drum machine's gotta go. as a person who is obviously capable of writing a good song, IMHO you have no excuse for the drum machine-y drum part. im not anti-drum machine, just anti weak parts. ouch but true.

you could play something similarly simple on pots and pans and a cheese grater with some spring reverb, maybe distort it a bit, and it would still sound better than the dry lo-res drum machine part. if you dont have any drums you can use "drums," you dig? it's a shame hearing the good song with the sub-par drums..

this is a good time to reiterate that the song is killer

the gtrs sound very good

bass doesnt seem very pronouced at all, oddly, considering your description. at least not on my speakers (mackie 824's)

the vocals sound really good...the only comment i have about the vocal is that they sound like you were right in front of the mic. not bad on its own, but it's a little...telling. it doesnt create any sense of mystery like the rest of the song has if you follow me. it just sounds like some dude right in front of a mic. so instead, i would try putting a couple of feet between your mouth and the mic. or be close to the mic but far off axis, etc.

dont worry if you start to get a little bit of noise from a mic pre because of this, no one cares about hearing that when the sound itself is cool. if youre backing off, you may find the sound is a bit too breathy once you do that because youre missing some proximity effect. so you have a couple of options, you can do like they did in the old days and put a hat over the mic, or you can use eq. personally i would put something over the mic. maybe a sock, maybe one of those poofy pop filter thingys, etc.

good song yes! nice job dougo fo real

[Slider]

Cool sort of sphagetti western guitar sound (and playing).
Vocal maybe needs a bit of work, it could use a little messing up I think, with a plugin, amp sim, or something.
It seems a bit shakey to be so up front and plain sounding.
This could be exactly what you want though. I'd still screw it up a bit.
Drum machine has a bit of charm, but needs some help.
You should buy a pawn shop kick, snare, and cymbal and start there.
It would be so much cooler IMO.
The bass is there it's just a very LOW low end.
It seems to be way down there like 120-200 was cut and 60 was boosted.
I feel it more than hear it. this is on my Event 20\20's they're my home computer monitors.
So who knows.
Cool track though.

[dougo]

Thanks for the tips guys,

I got rid of the drum machine track and replaced it with the following

Kick-Crate and Barrel 24"x24" box. Top open, Hand hitting side/ bottom corner. Mic'd from the inside with a A813a

Snare-Florsheim shoe box w/lid and original packing paper. Drum stick was a stainless steel wisk(thank my wife Cara). Applied some Logic silver verb.

Hi-Hat-My voice into SM57, driving out thru a lil' smokey amp and mic'd inside the crate and barrel box with the A813a.

I also dropped the vocal level down and added just a touch of distortion.

Let me know what you think. I dumped the old song of the myspace site.

Thanks again,
Doug O

[dubold]

this is pretty cool. I like it. the voice, stylistically, reminds me of neil young, who i like, so that's a good thing. I didn't hear it before, with the drum machine, but I do like the percussion as it stands now. and the guitar sound is pretty swell also.

uhm. hey, look, nothing negative to say! that's probably a first

-d

[VI66]

Very interesting.

[tiger vomitt]

hell yeah doug now youre cookin

nice

[Bear]

I like this. Good sounds, and as someone said, has a spaghetti western feel to it, which totally works. The "whatever's lying around" percussion is awesome, too. Good tip there from Mr. Vomitt. The electric guitar sounds sweet as well.

The only thing I can think of is that, maybe in the latter half of the song, you could introduce a new sound. Maybe something kinda "spooky." Like an "oooooh" track, mic'd really far away with lots of reverb. I can't say how well this would work without hearing it, but it might be cool.

Either way, the song sounds good. Word.

[tiger vomitt]

i was thinking that too Bear

but as another percussion part to come in that carries the rhythm more strongly. or one of the same sounds that's already being used doing it..

but then i got all 'oh why do i always gotta try to make things all fancy and shit'

[gabewheel2000]

i love the song. in order of what i like most, song writing, guitar, vocal melody, abience. good work.

[dougo]

Thank you all for the advice and kind words. It's wild how you can just keep going and going on remixing and adding onto a song. i'll leave this one for now so I can get another one done by this weekend.

By the way, check out Bears new tune. It's super cool.

Adios,

dougo