My first heavily produced track

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claygate
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My first heavily produced track

Post by claygate » Wed Dec 09, 2009 2:22 am

I recently recorded my band (I play drums) and this song was the most interesting to mix. I've always been into electronica although I only played in rock bands. This was the first time I've been able to put some electronica in a rock band. Tell me what you think.

Pepper Lane - Can't Freeze Time
"Have you ever transcended space and time?"

"Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about."

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lukievan
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Post by lukievan » Wed Dec 09, 2009 6:35 pm

turn up the vocals!

LFF
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Post by LFF » Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:35 am

The vocals need to come up a bit and it needs some EQ. Very catchy song.
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claygate
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Post by claygate » Thu Dec 10, 2009 3:42 pm

I brought up the vocals and cleaned up what I was doing at the master FX, but I didn't add any EQ. I think I found clarity without EQ at this point. Everytime I put EQ on the vocals it seems to thin out. The link in the original post links to the new mix. It was recorded live (vocal overdubs later) in a 13 ft x 17 ft, tiled room with 9 ft ceilings. As you can see below, various forms of isolation and reflection-killing were improvised.

Pepper Lane - Can't Freeze Time

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"Have you ever transcended space and time?"

"Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about."

sluzbenik
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hey

Post by sluzbenik » Sun Dec 20, 2009 11:46 am

I like this track, reminds me of old '90s indie like Tuscadero. That said, it's entirely too long, now that it's recorded, look at the arrangement again, there's a lot of good vocal stuff at the end, pick out the best bits and repeat, but seriously shorten it, the chord progressions don't change much, and even though the vocals are good, we just lose interest as it goes on and on because there isn't a rhythmic or chordal change at all.

Quite like the blurpy synthy thing on the left speaker.

Why did you record the vocals through? Did you use any compression? They sound like they're singing 5 feet from the mike. Maybe it's what you were going for but even for indie stuff I like a more in-your-face vocal sound.

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Re: hey

Post by xonlocust » Tue Dec 22, 2009 9:29 pm

sluzbenik wrote: Why did you record the vocals through? Did you use any compression? They sound like they're singing 5 feet from the mike. Maybe it's what you were going for but even for indie stuff I like a more in-your-face vocal sound.
i agree - there's a really good sense of space in there, but i find it distracting that the acoustic is so foreground as compared to the vocal. sounds like the male voc could be exactly where it is if you could focus the female voc - then it'd balance the gtr.

fwiw - i tend to think of stuff in 3d - consider your frequency spectrum from low to high, of course left to right, and then spatially from front to back. create a space for each part. literally imagine a stage, and place your instruments there. ideally you're looking to have a good spread of all those dimensions and use your technical skills to place things where you want them to appear in your sonic picture. sounds great, but i hear the mix sorta shading mid to backstage - or like everyone in the audience is standing 10 feet from the front of the stage - except the acoustic who's like 3 feet and to my left. and it's not really about having to have a super in your face voc sound if you don't want it - it's more about the relationships - i hear the acoustic featured more than the vocal the way it's presented now, which may, or may not be the best thing. you could alternately move that back.

all that said, well done.

btw a handy trick for recording vocals is to record 2 tracks - 1 close mic that's compressed for clarity, and 1 (or 2) rooms for natural sense of space. this way you can easily move the vocal forward and backward in your space at mix time to suit the material.

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