Feedback appreciated

Kevin, first and foremost: A warm welcome to this forum!
Your debut song sounds really good. I really like the voice arrangements in this song, very nice harmonies - the only thing is, I'd move them apart in the mix: I am not sure how many voices there were, but I pictured a choir on stage. The guy who at one point sang a brief solo harmony (in the final stages of the song) could be the centre. The others around/next to him (left and right).
I didn't seem to hear a bass guitar or anything bass related (instrument). Maybe it's just my spoiled ears - but I kinda missed that. The drums are subtle and rather in the background - which is good for this style. The sounds of the guitar(s) are too soft for my liking. They could come forward in the mix, yet - not competing with the choir.
Yeah, real good work, it has a very 'live' feel to it, and this is always a good thing! Thanks for sharing your first song with us - I look forward to your next one!
Heinz.

Kbill

Thanks for posting and welcome. I enjoyed the recording. I'm a newb myself and yes this forum is a great resource.

As much as your drummer may hate it, you'll probably get better results using audio drum loops or midi drums with good drum samples. Perhaps your drummer can play into a midi controller and you can have the best of both worlds. "Guerrila Home Recording" is a book that was recommended to me in this forum and I'll recommend it to you. Here's a quote from that book:

unless you have a good drum room, a good mic collection, exceptional ears, and some serious experience recording live drums, your results will be inferior. An approach using sampled drums just sounds better and is much easier to acheive, given limited resources and experience. And since the drum sound is arguably the most important sonic element of a mix - rarely does a song sound good if the drums don't - I believe this is the way for most home recordists to go.

He also has a good discussion on getting a good sound on a bass using a direct box.

Thanks all for the feedback. I'm going to re-mix with some of your suggestions, notably the bass and guitar levels. Perhaps I was trying to be too equitable towards other members of the band and not cutting their parts too low. I am a little self concious of that since I am the main voice and instrument (guitars). In doing this for about 5-6 years now, this is my first struggle with things sounding different on different stereo's. On my mixing headphones (I know, I know, but I can only record when my son is awake, and can only mix when my son is sleeping) the bass is perfect. Through my stereo speakers it is just about right, and in my car, it buzzes, on my iPod/headphones I barely hear it.

Heinz:
There are 6 voices on this recording. The main one in the middle (with the solo harmony towards the end that you mention) is me. I do have the rest of the voices panned - some, typically 30% left or right. I mix it so that one soprano harmy is left, the alto harmony is right, the other sorprano melody is right (to balance the other soprano in the left), and the other two male tenors are split left and right. Perhaps the 30% is not enough.

I would have preferred the drums to be more forward on this particular track, especially the snare hits and tom rolls. However, the hi-hat bled into the snare track WAY too loud, and if I brought up the snare track, I had way too much hi-hat.

Funny you made the "live" analogy because people told me our first CD did not sound like what we sounded like "live" so my approach this time was to try to replicate that - everything pretty balanced, hear all the voices, and mostly voices (since we play at church, the instruments are downplayed in our PA mix). Do you think the attempt in a recording is to capture your live sound, or to make a 'radio-ready' recording? I would have a different approach for the latter.

Fep:
I hear you on the drums. They have been the biggest downside to our band recordings. When I do my "solo" material (I will post some of that later), I use drum loops. I love them and am going to start doing a little more loop construction soon as well. For the band though, I think I need to keep it a group effort. We not only do it for fun, but it is part of the high school youth ministry at our church, and both of my drummers are teens, so it gives them some ownership in stuff. That being said, they also know I may supplement a snare hit or crash here or there when I decide something else is needed when editing/mixing. I am also constantly trying to get a nice set of Roland V-drums for the church. If we did, then that would be perfect for our recording needs. I'll check out the book you recommended.

Again, thanks all. I'll remix hopefully tomorrow and re-post it to see what you think.

OK that's two people who seem to be able to hear the bass just fine and i've listened again and again and as far as my little lap top speakers are concerned there is no bass whatsoever on this recording so it must be all very low frequency stuff because these speakers actually do hear bass lines just fine.
So it may not be as simple as just boosting the volume of the bass, i think you've got to get it heard through boosting of mid frequencies or your mix will appear to have no bass when played on dinky speakers...like i said there isn't even the slightest hint of a bass on this system.
Have fun.

ORIGINAL: opaque slogan

OK that's two people who seem to be able to hear the bass just fine and i've listened again and again and as far as my little lap top speakers are concerned there is no bass whatsoever on this recording so it must be all very low frequency stuff because these speakers actually do hear bass lines just fine.
So it may not be as simple as just boosting the volume of the bass, i think you've got to get it heard through boosting of mid frequencies or your mix will appear to have no bass when played on dinky speakers...like i said there isn't even the slightest hint of a bass on this system.
Have fun.

Yea its a boomy bass sound, so thats probably it, i have a 200 watt
subwoofer im sure thats the thing.
But you hit on an important thing, my first sound engineer i worked
with in a studio mixed everything down finaly on two small speakers
so that it can be heard on any setup from transister radio to size stereo
thats when i was turned onto roundwound bass strings and using a more
treble mix so it cuts through.

in other words a good mix should be heard on laptop as well as stereo
system