Kevin Walsh

18 hours ago, KurtS said:

Nice song. I do think the recording sounds a little flat. Maybe the guitars need some sparkle, top end.  Really there's nothing wrong with it the way it is too.

Thanks for giving it a listen, I agree with you, it does sound a little flat and a little dull. To be honest, it's pretty hard for me to tell because of hearing loss in the upper frequencies, but your suggestion is in-line with the ideas from steve@baselines.com so we seem to be developing a consensus here. 

18 hours ago, steve@baselines.com said:

I like it - you asked for suggestions so I have some.  You may hate it, but they're my comments anyway ?

I think it would benefit from being shorter.  Get the vocal in there quicker.  Maybe excite the snare a little.

Pull up the under 50hz a little and the over 10K a little.

Maximize a little higher, perhaps -7.8db

Widen the mids.

I did some edits which you can toss if you don't agree, but here's my idea.

https://www.baselines.com/brand_new_day.wav

Steve

 

Steve, thanks for listening and thanks for taking the time to demonstrate your ideas, it's above and beyond the call of duty and I appreciate it. I personally like the intro the way it is. I more of an ease into the business at hand kind of guy so your edit sounds kind of abrupt to me. On the other hand, the EQ changes you made do sound better, and I will give the other ideas a go here when my wife lets me work on this stuff again.

21 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

You are a very talented singer/ guitarist. The arrangement seems just fine to me. Any comments I have about the song itself are only opinions on what I might experiment with if it were me. I would probably try pulling up the harmony in the choruses some. If I could pull the midi up for the drums I would maybe try adding some extra drum hits in key places especially highlighted toward the end. At about the 5:00 time mark I would try delay automation on the guitar to give the ending a more spacey take away. I would not leave it in all the way but add it in that one part. The key idea would be  variation here and there is more exciting and sounds more spontaneous if done well.

I'm on earbuds here at my job so I can't really comment on the mix critically. Comes across on these buds well.

Tim, thanks for listening and for providing the feedback. I will certainly give your suggestions a try.

2 hours ago, Wookiee said:

Pleasant enough song, sung with a certain amount of conviction.

Thank you, wookie, I appreciate you taking the time to give it a listen!

2 hours ago, SupaReels said:

Typical you, I was looking forward to this when I saw your post ... didn't disappoint, one thing would be to take the chorus down a tad or maybe widen it as I feel it's to much in your face .. v. small crit .. I love you stuff and the smokey Dillon like vocal .. so well done?

Steve

Thanks for your ear, Steve! I appreciate your kind words and I'll give the thing another listen and do another mix after work. You're the man! (presumably.  )

Update:  Fellow forumite @garybrun reached out to me and asked me for the stems to this song so that he could take a crack at producing a mix and master. I was both flattered and very interested in what another pair of ears and set of skills could do with this song and I'm not disappointed, to say the least. I think he's done a great job and it's very cool to hear the choices he made compared to those in my mix. Here's a link to a share with his mix. I'd love to hear compare/contrast commentary on his work.  My final mix is still accessible below. Thanks!

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AguGELRT6OXyhdgsAOrpn-3rNMuD0A?e=oeGBbL

Well, I got this one together in time for Christmas. My ear finds lots of problems here, hoping for some good feedback on mix, instruments, playing, arrangements, etc. I appreciate your time!

Update 1: Updated the mix with the suggestions below and monkeyed with speed and drums to snap things up a bit.

Update 2: Next mix, reigned in some out of control background vocals.  Overall, much nicer sound, you guys' feedback has been spot on! There are still some vocal issues I think here and there but it's come pretty darned far, thanks. 

Update 3: Re-mixed and re-mastered

Update 4: Posting garybrun mix

That's great, thanks, I'll give that a try!

I would love to have a command that removes all events after the current timeline position.  

This is a beautiful piece. I guess I'm listening to the most recent mix because to my ear the guitar is spot-on with nothing to detract from the wonderful playing and the absolutely gorgeous tones. The whole thing just rocks. The balance in the rhythm section is just drool-worthy. 

Meh? Really? Not hardly, this is great! 

Just gave your new mix a listen, it's awfully good. Love the bass tone, you're going to have to tell me how you get that sound. I think you nailed it with the organ mix. Everything is nice and spacious. If I'd change anything I'd bring the lead vocal up just a hair, but that's a subjective thing I think. As always, great vocal performance. You have a really good set of pipes and you use them to great effect here. 

Loved the arrangement. It's pretty busy what with the guitar, the vocal and the bass all playing around at the same time. The guitar on the left still threatens to dominate the mix.

This is a good one!

And... he's off!

It's the rare tune that falls out of your head already finished and polished up nice and neat. This has some good ideas in it that deserve  development. In particular the guitar break at the end is really nice and is the beginning of a nice bridge.  Looking forward to what you come up with!

Thanks steve, your feedback is always welcome. Paul Young? Really? I have to tell my wife, she loves that guy. She'll be rolling on the floor laughing I'll bet, not because you're wrong but because of my silly old guy presumption.

Anyway, I didn't change the drums but I did post a new mix. 

I think this is a much more interesting and more musical piece than your original mix, imho. The bass and the drums sounded like they were working together to provide a foundation for everything else. It sounded pretty decent even on my little cheap cell phone speaker. I really liked the bass tone quite a bit. It seems like the mix gave me things to focus on one or two at a time instead of the everything all at once. I will give it a listen on my good stereo later. Nice work!

3 hours ago, antler said:

This song's cool Kevin - love the groove! You've got some great playing too. The relatively sparse arrangement really lets the guitar tone shine through. The only thing I would say is that the ending seems a little abrupt.

Thank you for listening and for taking the time to comment. I guess I let things get a little too sparse at the end.

9 hours ago, PhonoBrainer said:

Well here's more .02 kroners on your excellently constructed, sung, and vibed song that is super catchy . . . I listened on headphones and was always noticing that open hi hat that splashes up on the "3 and" , you might bring him down a bit.

And in my headphones the bass disappears, who I think would or could be a main driver in this groove.

Overall, though, very well conceived. Kind of an Emo Burt Bacharach! I dig.

 

Ha. Emo Burt Bacharach! That's great. And me without a single 7th chord in the whole song! Thanks for listening and for the great feedback. I appreciate it!

I agree with what's been said with the exception of one thing: soul to soul bomp bomp chop!

23 hours ago, Paul Bush said:

Hi Kevin i really liked the song as it kept me trying to look around the corner for the next surprise , as i´m no great shakes as far as production goes i can really only comment on the song which as I,ve said is super good .

Thank you for listening and sharing your thoughts, Paul. It means a lot to me and I'm sure other songwriters when people take the time to listen and comments on the songs we do.

It's all in fun but I know that we all put a great deal of effort and passion into the songs we post here, so even a simple one line acknowledgement that you listened to and liked a song is a big deal to me. Thank you!

On 11/13/2021 at 10:33 AM, Bapu said:

The song is really good, the mix is really good, but to my ears the drum patterns (especially the kick) are too over the top. Kind of distracting to me. If I were producing I would strive for less is more on the drums.

Thanks, bapu! I frankly expected more comments like yours about the drum track. I went back and forth on this and I found that, to my ear anyway, it lost something when I put a more subdued drum track in there and so I swallowed my misgivings and kept it the way it is now. Thank you for your comments and your ideas.

On 11/13/2021 at 2:38 AM, bjornpdx said:

Beautiful song, especially when the theme starts up with that wonderful guitar at 1:45.
-Bjorn

Thank you. bjorn!

Thank for taking the time  steve!

Well Mark, that is utterly badass tele-funk! Awesome song and playing all around on this one. A keeper for sure!

I sort of get what you mean by timing but it's beyond me how you make it any tighter than that short of taking it on the road for six months.  That is unless you want to sit there for weeks tightening things up with audio snap. Not.

And anyway, whatever timing issues there are  here and there don't detract from the groove at all, rather it sounds more human and real to me. I only wish I could play like that!

I listened to this on my phone's speaker  so I can't really comment on the  quality of the mix  but it really sounds good on that device. I'll give it a listen later on my big system. Really fine work here!

5 hours ago, KurtS said:

This sounds very Peter Gabriel, very cool. The guitar tones sound really good. I have some very nice homebuilt amps but I've been too lazy to try and record them, the plugins are so easy to use.

Thanks, Kurt, high praise indeed, I'll certainly take it. !

Peter Gabriel tunes are all over  the place in my reference track folder. 

This is the box that I was referring to. I can disconnect my amp's speaker and it acts as a load box and I can route the XLR out to my Audient ID22's XLR in. It just sounds so good that way.  I've had this box for years and years and I've always used it just as an attenuator but I thought I'd finally give the studio capabilities a try. 

I 

This particular track has much of the lead recorded this way, but there are other tracks that use plug ins: Helix Native, S-Gear and a Guitar Rig track or two. Each of these guys has a particular vibe to it that nothing else covers as well.  Incidentally, for this track I didn't use any amp sim delays, I used Wave's H-Delay plug in. I love it's ability to smear stuff everywhere.

9 hours ago, Douglas Kirby said:

Really cool mix and I liked the song as well - the guitar tones were quite good in my opinion.  Kudos for the vocals as well.

Nice job on the arrangement of the song - I enjoyed the listen.

Thanks, Douglas, I appreciate it!