Well, it is supposed to be a contemplative tune, not a hooky type tune, so I guess it's doing what it's supposed to be doing if you think it has no real hook. And this is just the opening part. The subsequent parts will get more full and have more going on. And I'm still going to be adding a few more 'accents' in this opening part yet. But yeh, it's supposed to be a bit 'Floydian', with a fairly long intro to warm it up before it gets into the meat of the tune.

I find it interesting that you don't think it flows, when I'm thinking that it flows too much :-) Maybe we disagree on what flowing is, but if anything it seems to get a little 'audio wallpaper' in nature due to lack of rough edges. There again, that'll change as it moves forward and gets more agressive.

The akward part you could expand on a bit, since it's definitely not supposed to be awkward, so that's bad. What do you find awkward about it?

Having said all of that, it *is* a proof of concept in recording. Everything I've do so far is, until I feel I'm ready to start working on something that's going to take some real sweat and tears. I want to know that I'm not wasting my time before I go down that road. But, it's supposed to a pretty proof of concept :-)

Very nice and relaxing. Love the DimPro sax. Can't believe that it sounds that realistic. For some reason, this songs makes me think of the movie "Sideways". Don't know why. Probably because of the sax.

I thought the textures were really cool. It was pretty good.
I did think the sax didn't sound very realistic because the notes were held pretty long, however it sounded good. Most people wouldn't notice anyways.

Man, you learn something every day. I found today, just by wandering across a thread on the SONAR forum, that SONAR doesn't really support stereo panning in the on-track pan controls. All it's doing is just throwing out as much of the channel on the other side as you've panned away from. This has been at the core of so many of my problems and I didn't know it.

This is why instruments sounded so bad when panned fairly hard either direction. And things like why does the stupid piano sound whimpy when it first comes in, but then sounds more full later. It's because the piano is pretty wide across the image and when I panned it right during the intro, the left side, where the low notes are, was just being thrown away.

So, it turns out that by just grabbing a simple little free plugin, I can get the kind of panning that SONAR should be providing already. It basically splits the stereo into two monos (internally), and lets you pan each side as you would like. This has made a HUGE difference. Check this version out and compare it to the preview #12 above.

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/TmpAudio/PainSongPreview13.wma

So not only does this allow panning correctly, but it also provides a very simple and straightforward way to control the stereo image width of each track. I was using the Waves stereo image on the piano before, but that was kind of overkill and introduces it's own kinds of artifacts because it's really for expanding mono tracks via pysychoacoustic tricks, AFAIK. This little utility does it simply and straightforwardly.

So in this version I was able to put each instrument where I want it, at the width I want it, and they don't lose body and sound quality when panned because they aren't losing half of their stereo signal (which was one reason the sax was sounding so crappy compared to the original version I had back when.) The level of clarity is improved immensely as well because the instruments are pushed into their respective areas in the mix.

I really, really wish I'd known this a long time ago, because I've suffered so much over this, thinking it was me and my lack of understanding of how to get a good sound, when it was the dang tools.