bitflipper


Thanks, Danny, I'll definitely give the Studio Instruments' bass a go due to your suggestion. I think I've only tried it once, only briefly, and then put it away. Always room for another bass in the collection! I may have been overly conservative with the low end, as I'm still getting acclimated to my new room (I know, I know, you don't have to bring up our favorite room-correction package). 

Yeah I think you'll like that SI bass. I usually get it as good as I can within the plug then process it with other plugs like I would a real bass. It's impressed me every time I've tried to use it so far.
 
Hahaha, no worries bit....I'd never bring that room correction thing up as I know how you feel about that and you have your own system for correction. From what I've heard of your past work, it works quite well so stick with it.
 
So I take it you moved? Did you wind up moving to the Philippines or something? Hope that all went well brother. Again, this is still a really good job...just thicken it up a little and you'll be in good shape. The hard thing is...when you're in a new room, you sometimes can't hear that stuff until you find out what the deal is. But knowing you, it will be a simple fix once you find out what it is. Good luck man....if you need me for anything or I can help in any way, send me a pm or an email. :)
 
-Danny 

No, Danny, I never made it to the Philippines. I put my house up for sale here but didn't get any offers close to what I needed to cover the cost of the move. So we had to bag the whole idea, or at least shelve it for a while. 

To cheer myself up I took over the largest of our three garages and spent the summer turning it into a recording space. It's still a work in progress since I can't afford to do everything at once, but so far it's sounding pretty good. Another truckload of fiberglass and I should be there.

Mark: the song was an instrumental for more than a year before I decided to put words to it. Then I couldn't decide which parts of the instrumental to trash to make room for the vocal! So I compromised with a long intro. It wasn't any kind of artistic statement, just me ignoring the conventions of song structure for no particular reason.

BTW, I've remixed the song based on all the great input received here. I've brought the kick, bass and vocal up and loosened the HPF on the vocal to make it a little warmer. I think I'm done with it now. Maybe. I think it may have Herb H. who once said "I never finish a song, I just get tired of it."

bitflipper


No, Danny, I never made it to the Philippines. I put my house up for sale here but didn't get any offers close to what I needed to cover the cost of the move. So we had to bag the whole idea, or at least shelve it for a while. 

To cheer myself up I took over the largest of our three garages and spent the summer turning it into a recording space. It's still a work in progress since I can't afford to do everything at once, but so far it's sounding pretty good. Another truckload of fiberglass and I should be there. 

BTW, I've remixed the song based on all the great input received here. I've brought the kick, bass and vocal up and loosened the HPF on the vocal to make it a little warmer. I think I'm done with it now. Maybe. I think it may have Herb H. who once said "I never finish a song, I just get tired of it."

Ah man, sorry to hear that. Then again, part of me isn't because I know if you move to the Philppines I'll never get a chance to meet you in person. LOL! :) Ah a nice big garage, very cool. Yeah you'll probably notice a major change once you get it all insulated and then do your room correction the way you do it.
 
Listened to the new mix....man, it's great just like the other was...so balanced and perfect in my opinion. But still a bit small in instrument size. You are really maxing out what you have there, that's for sure. The mix sounds to me like what I like to get from clients pre-master that I don't get often enough unless they are big studio's with a clue. LOL! It's not pushing or over-accentuating anything, so that's a good thing.
It's like....ok, let me try it this way Dave....maybe the way I'm explaining things is wrong. Honest I'm not trying to compete with you or give you a hard time. But if you listen to this next to yours: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/DannyIdea.mp3
 
You'll notice the sound size is a considerable amount different. I know it's louder, more compressed and effected and sounds terrible, but just listen to the size of the sounds even if you don't particularly care for them. The drum kit in that is the EZD DFH kit with a few Drumagog samples played on V-Drums that I'm hybridding and I just threw this together to demo the idea to my band, which became a full song in 2011. The finished version is even bigger than this one without all the effects. But my purpose of showing you THIS one is because for a quick demo done on a Realtek, it's not half bad without any bells or whistles. It's nothing special, but even if we took the room away in the drums, the sound size itself is still rather large.
 
I'm not saying you need to go for a sound like that, but this is what I'm talking about when I say the sizes of your instruments sound a little small.
 
Here's one more in a different genre: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/06_Shine.mp3
 
Hear how big that freakin' snare is? That's even bigger than mine. LOL! But this is what I'm talking about as far as sound sizes go. I think your tune would really kill if it had the impact of bigger sounding instruments. Just listen to these along with yours and you should be able to see/hear what I'm talking about. I just didn't know if I was explaining it right which is why I provided a few clips to show you what I mean. Ole CJ has a song somewhere on his site that has instuments that sound so huge (can't remember the song off hand) it made me sick! This is something I've been getting into myself. It's like the new kick I'm on...trying to make the sounds themselves appear larger than they are from the source instead of trying to make things bigger with effects or wideners etc. I know how to do it with multiple mic's, but it's nice to do it with samples too.
 
One more little example. This to me is a bit over-kill and a bit too squashed....but the sound size (I know the engineer at this studio so I've heard these mixes before they were mastered....the only thing that changed was the level and of course it lost a little snare crack with the limiting) is just remarkable.
 
http://www.helmzedge.com/Helmz_Edge_Radio.html
 
The Alice in Chains song is a good one...the others are cool too. Not the way I'd mix these, but man, the size of these instruments to me is pretty impressive. Anyway....you get the idea. I'll take your engineering skills over all the tunes shared in my post here....I just think with a bit bigger sound sources, you'd be a force to reckon with even more than you are now. :) I hope you don't mind me sharing this stuff with you and talking about it. Just trying to help because I luv you mayan and think the world of you. :)
 
-Danny

Lots to think about, Danny. Thanks for taking the time. I think there's something good to be gained here if I can wrap my head around the "size" thing. I just need to translate it into, like, real numbers on knobs.

James, you're absolutely right. The tune is all over the place, lacks a unifying theme or even a dominant instrument. It has no dynamics, an intro that's half the length of the song, and a wimpy ending. "Quirky" is a word I've used, but "oddball" works just as well. 

And I make no apologies for the quirk factor! That's the joy of making a tune purely for the fun of it: with no expectations to be met, whatever comes out comes out and that's what it is. 

If that made no sense, it's OK, I have a note from my doctor. I'm flying high on Oxycodone at the moment, as I'm suffering from a herniated disc. It's a choice between excruciating pain and "Dave's not here".

Thank you, Bob. As a fan of your stuff, I'm flattered. 

Healing my back can't happen too soon. Had a sleepless night last night, even after dropping enough painkillers to sedate an elephant. Figured there was no point in suffering horizontally any longer so I got up at 4:00 AM and came here for distraction. 

They say you gotta suffer to sing the blues. I'll try to apply that principle and make some music this morning. I'm pretty sure any lyrics I write will have the word "pain" in them somewhere.