3 Hour Song Attempt - "Untouchable" Alt. Rock

Bob,

I really lke what you have started here. The lyrics are great, as is the playing of all the instuments. I feel this song would benefit from better mixing though. There doesn't seem to be enough separation between each of the instruments. The laugh at the end is a nice touch.

Regards
Mark.

Bob,

It sounds nice and solid. Vox are a bit buried. Guitars sound big and ballzy...maybe a nudge up in the solo too...
I'm no where near her, really, I'm across town, far, far away...but i WAS on my cell for 3 hours last night...............

Did the 3 hours include writing this Bob? Really catchy song, great chorus. Love the guitar sounds, and I think you succeeded in getting more dynamics into the mix. I like the vocal effect but it could come up maybe 1 dB?

Nice work!

Mark: Hi, Happy New Year and thanks for taking the time to listen and comment. Yes, it was a really quick, rough mix ( around 25 minutes or so) and definitely needs to be polished up quite a bit. A few months back, a few of the forum users were trying to see what they could throw together in just a few hours, and this song just went really fast for me, so I thought I'd post it to get some ideas and opinions.

Thanks again for commenting!
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Jud: Happy New Year and thanks for checking out the song and for your encouraging comment. Yes, the whole song was recorded and mixed in Sonar, but I used a Line 6 Toneport UX2 and Line 6 Gearbox standalone for the guitars, bass and vocals. I haven't really gotten around to trying out GR3 yet, but I am planning to check it out soon.
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Rick: Happy New Year and thanks a lot for listening and for your suggestions! I wasn't quite sure about the vocal volume level, but after both you and James mentioned it, I'm definitely going to push up the vox and guitar lead just a touch.

Hey, I thought that might have been you heading for the nightclub door!

Thanks again for checking the song out for me. Have a good one!
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Robby: How's my buddy Robby doing? Happy New Year to you and thanks for checking out this "quickie" song! It's so funny you mentioned "Oisterizer", for years the roadies in my bands always called my stage amps the Oisterizer.

Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, I heard Hammer's current address is behind the dumpster at the Taco Bell on Sunset Boulevard. I'm all for it, as long as I don't have to wear "Genie Pants"!

Thanks for listening, it's great to hear from you! By the way, did you ever get a chance to try out that cool looking "bowed guitar"? That thing really intrigues me.
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James: Hi, James, Happy New Year, my friend! Yes, I started from totally dead scratch looking at a blank Sonar project window, and then, while noodling on my guitar, I accidentally fell into the main guitar riff and then built up everything else piece by piece, including the arrangement, vocal melody and lyrics from there. It was like I was possessed, it took me just under 3 hours over two nights for the tracking, and around 25 minutes for the rough mix.

It was like a dam burst, because I had been suffering with a major writers block for over a month where I couldn't even come up with a decent chord progression to attempt a new song. So I took a couple weeks off from working on music, and boom, it all came out at once!

As I mentioned above, as per your suggestion and Rick's, I will definitely up the vocals and guitar solo a Db or two.

This is my first attempt at taming the amount and adjusting the placement of compression that I normally use, and trying to get back some dynamics. I think I've got to try to find a "happy medium" somewhere between this song and the older songs on my SoundClick page. I was actually surprised by how many little bits and nuances that were getting masked by me smashing the mixes as I have been previously. I never thought I needed a pop filter for my large diaphragm condenser mic until I got stuck removing the "P's" in the chorus of this song with clip gain envelopes.

Thanks again for your input, it is always greatly appreciated!

By the way, in the "Show Us the View From Your Studio" thread in the Producer forum, I was very impressed with the beautiful rolling hills of Scotland in your photo, and also amazed at how similar the scenic panorama of your view is to mine here in the Northeastern part of Pennsylvania. Although the view from my studio includes quite a few residential homes, the hillsides and trees are almost identical to Northeast Pennsylvania.
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Janet: How are you? Happy New Year and thanks for listening and commenting! I was realy lucky on the speedy flow of this song. I think it was my fastest ever from the starting line to a rough mix. Yep, it looks like I'll be bringing the vocals up a bit. I still think it's so great that the good people of this forum are always willing to spend some of their valuable time to listen and make suggestions to help out fellow musicians and songwriters improve their skills.

Thanks again and have a great night!

HEY Bob,
Great rockin tune. Very nice performance on the guitar very clean, and great tones. Your vox sounds great sit perfect in the mix. Sounds a bit like DAVID LEE ROTH and the BGV's had a STEVE MILLER feel. On my end the crash cymbals had a bit of distortion.
SUPER job for three hours!

LATER
Kev

Hi Bob,

Very cool - I like the rhythm guitar tone and what you're playing there. At the end, you had a guitar harmony section I really liked as well. Also, your vox sound great - how are you processing them - sounds like some sort of modulation?

This song has excellent hooks ('She's Untouchable'), and I liked the lyrics - great metal tune.

Only mix crit - can you bring the volume up on the chorus and the guitar solo a touch - give those sections more punch - JMO.

Cheers,
Doug

I like it. Good writing... good playing. I thought the vox were just a bit to low.... but... for a 3.3 hr job... this is good.

It's actually amazing what you can do in a short amount of time when you know what you're doing....and have the talent and tools to pull it off.

Yes, for some reason my MP3 versions always seem to have a problem with “harsh” crash cymbals in particular, but the weird thing is, in the 16-bit wav file the crashes sound normal. It’s only after I convert the wav to a 192Khz MP3, and then after SoundClick drops the 192Khz MP3 further down to 128Khz that the harshness happens.

I am not real happy with what happens to my songs either when they are converted to MP3... a number of things (overall quality but especially on the high & low end) really seem to suffer in the conversion process..

You guys are just Freaks! How in the world are putting out bad ass songs in such a short time? It takes me months. This was good too. I like the lyrics A LOT . . . "while i'm up there on the stage like a tiger in a cage" . . . he he . . .

ORIGINAL: Bob Oister

Dan: Thanks for checking out the song and commenting, I appreciate you taking the time.

Yes, for some reason my MP3 versions always seem to have a problem with “harsh” crash cymbals in particular, but the weird thing is, in the 16-bit wav file the crashes sound normal. It’s only after I convert the wav to a 192Khz MP3, and then after SoundClick drops the 192Khz MP3 further down to 128Khz that the harshness happens. I’m still experimenting with ways to fix it because downloadable MP3 music is so prevalent online and offline, anymore.

I've found that I can get very good results for uploading to Sounclick by starting out with a final 16bit WAV file, then using LameEnc with:

-h --nspsytune --athtype 2 --lowpass 16 --ns-bass -8 --scale 0.93

I use Lame Front-End just to make this easier.

By the way, I really enjoyed “Chase the Wind” and “Return of the Winter Queen” on your SoundClick page, beautiful music! Thanks again for listening!

Bob

Thank you for the comments!

Regards,
Dan

Welcome to the 3 hour music club Bob! Man that is a huge wall of guitars youv'e got there. Great production and song especially given the amount of time it was done in. One thing that hit while listening to this the 2nd time around is, you have a great voice. I think your voice would be suited to many types of genre's, especially blues. Good stuff man.

ORIGINAL: droddey

It sounds nice. It has a really good, crunchy sound, with a good guitar/bass balance. Heck, it takes me three hours just to get tuned.

Dean, I am part of this 3 hour tuning club too.

Bob,

Great song, nice catchy rhythm. Nice guitar work.

Ken: Thanks for taking your time to help out with some great suggestions for my little "high speed" experiment, I really appreciate the specific, detailed suggestions, and I will definitely be testing them out to try to improve the mix. I was wondering if you had any ideas for warming up the vocals. This is actually the first time that I've hi-pass filtered my vocal tracks, do you think I may have swept out too much bottom end? Let me know what you think, and thanks again. I'm always amazed at the amount of great input this forum can offer on mixing and production. It's really great to hear ideas from others on how they would handle a specific mix.
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Dan: Thanks for the MP3 conversion tip, I've been thinking about checking out the Lame Encoder because I know a lot of people in the Producer forum seem to use it. I never realized that Lame had the ability to run specific filter switches while encoding the file. That might be just what the doctor ordered! Thanks, buddy!
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ChazDaddy: Hey, Chaz, thanks a lot! Yeah, I'm going to try a little "EQ Surgery" on the guitars to try to widen the mix. Thanks for listening and commenting! Have a good one!
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Maxprizm: Hi, Ed, how are you? Doing great, I hope! Thank-you very much for checking out the song and for the kind words. I really value your opinion and your comments! I think the last blues cover song I sang waaaaaaaaay back when, was "Louisiana Blues" by Savoy Brown, before three of them turned into Foghat. Their "Blue Matter" album was a real killer and Kim Simmonds could really play! Geez, after reminiscing, I think I'm getting the urge to write a blues song. Who knows? Thanks again!
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Dean: How's it going? I hope 2009 is treating you very well! Thanks for listening and for the nice comment. Speaking of 3 hour tuning, do you remember the "good old" Pitch Pipe days? They were probably more accurate than the most expensive strobe tuner, but I always felt like I was trying to play a Kazoo while I was tuning! Have a good one!
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Tom: Thanks for checking out the song and commenting, it's great to hear from you! Oh yeah, I'm ordering three "pitch pipes" one for you, one for Dean and one for myself, so we can get it down to a "2 hour tuning club". See ya!

Hi, Gary,

Thank-you very much for checking out the song and for your kind words. I really appreciate you taking time to listen and comment. Best wishes, and have a great weekend!

Bob

Hi, Bert,

Thank-you very much for taking the time to listen, and for your encouraging comments! I sincerely appreciate it.

Have a good one, my friend,
Bob