Honest Opinions Wanted

 Warrning Christian content: We would like some Honest but even handed feed back of this praise song. It is called Stand this is just a rough mix right now although I think the Drums, Lead Vox,  and Bass lines are keepers we will need to add Electric Guitar, Keyboards and backing vox on the final mix, I am using MC4 can some one tell me if this program can be used to master songs when there done and if so how? and if not what do I need to do to get them smoothed out? thanks Jimmy, SOJ
 
                       http://soundclick.com/signofjonah

Double post

Thanks Guys You're  right about the mix being muddy I'm still trying to figure out the whole EQ thing saddly I'm an OK bass player but a lousy sound engineer. Morenoise you nailed the direct recording on the head. My ( Studio) IS My Garage Really so we are forever trying to build foam boxes to cover mic'd amps  but I haven't found away to wrap my guitarest in foam "YET"!! I'll listen to the backing vocals again I hadn't thought about going up on that part but then again we will be recording backing vocals again next week.

Thanks Herb The Warrning was a bit tounge in cheek The song started out as sort of a fight song about not being ashamed about being a Christian But over time God sofened my stance and it became a strait praise song. Yea I Love modern Praise music too, I also love all the christian rock going on out there. Good to see that Christian musicians and song writers can hold their own on AOR,

I like it.  :-) 

savageopera


Jimmy, there are many Christian songwriters on this forum so......welcome. Great start on a great song. Strong arrangement. Solid voices on this although the lead vox eq is a little "honky", nice accurate bgv. The toms are sweet and meaty on the chorus but the verse drums sound thin. Small timing glitches here and there. I think you have a winner here. I am looking forward to hearing the final. Excellent potential, enjoyed the listen................Ron 

Thanks Ron,  I appreciate the imput, not sure what you mean by ( Honky) But we will be reworking the Backing Vox in a week or so I have Terris voice doubbled right now but I think I'm going to back that out a bit, The Drums are a Roland TD4 we use Gretsch live and were planing to mic them and get a recording so the Roland was just a stop gap but we are liking the sound so we might see what we can do to fatten up the verses.  The timing glitches are due to me cutting and pasting the accuostic guitar part I am hoping to redo them when I can find away to mic the guitar properly. I want to have a final product in a week or two. Thanks Jimmy

jim - I really like this!  very nice work!

the mix is a little soft, you could use some compression/limiting on the output.  the ride is a little hot in the mix, I'd EQ that down a tad.  nice voice for a guy!  

the mix sounds very mono - do you have anything panned?

bass could come up in the mix some.

lead vox could use a little boost in the upper mids (and a pop filter to prevent plosives)

great song, very nice first work!

on EQ - yes, in MC4 that's the only one that comes with it and it will work, or you can download some freebies.   there are a couple of really good freebie EQs out there, but I don't remember what they are right now, I always just use sonar's EQs.  search on KVRaudio.com for a free parametric EQ.

as far as the guitar recording - yes, if you record your guitar thru the UX2's software adding FX then it will be in stereo and you will get 2 waves on the track.  panning a stereo track like that won't do you any good.  if you only have one guitar then that's fine the way it does it anyway.

but some widening of that field might help, too.

what mic are you using for vocals?  a pop filter when recording vox always helps, a windscreen doesn't really stop plosives as well as a pop filter does.

like the song, could definitely here my church doing it.

agreed with most of the mix comments so far
vocals sound good
needs more kick/bass for sure.
need to widen the mix, there are plugings that can help with this.   Also doing stuff like double or trippling up on the recording, and panning some middle some to the sides.

anyway, nice job :)

Thanks again Beagle, I think I might have found part of the problem in looking in the help topics the XLR connection  is a mono signal according to MC4 I would have thought it was a stereo. I do have two wave forms in all my  tracks  but I still only have sound on the left I went through all my settings last night and can't find where I have anything set wrong. I use sure 58s on my vox and when I mic my amps sometimes I will mic my amp and also run a direct line the UX2 gives me that option. I'm going to start playing with the EQ this week to see what I can do but in the end I'm going to re-record the vox  ( with a pop filter)  pull up the bass and re-record the guitars.

Kroneborge


like the song, could definitely here my church doing it.

agreed with most of the mix comments so far
vocals sound good
needs more kick/bass for sure.
need to widen the mix, there are plugings that can help with this.   Also doing stuff like double or trippling up on the recording, and panning some middle some to the sides.

anyway, nice job :)

Matthew that is about the best compliment I could have gotten Thank you. This song was written to be shared once it is done if you really like contact me or have your Church music director contact me and I'll send you a chord sheet and performance notes

good start to the tune....wont comment on the mix as I'm on puter speakers...its 100% praise song so in that vain I wont go into the backing vox being too much too often...as I'm assuming its meant for the whole congregation to be singin off the prompt....so in that light its a cool song and should work well in a service!


cool stuff

This is good, and has some power to it. It wants to be bigger, much bigger. At the moment it is a bit dry, and somewhat monophonic.
Experiment with busses, reverb, doubling, etc. You can do some incredible things with MC4, so don't worry about that.
As you try things and make changes, save as a new version. Don't sweat trashing a version. You will.
This deserves putting some work into it. Looking forward to hearing what you do with it.

Jimmy, Everyone has kind of nailed everything on the head, so I will just say a great start to a great up and coming song. Nicely done first.

Blessings, John

nice song.  I think it has a lot of potentinal.  bass and drums sound good.  maybe eq the resonance out of the toms a little, they seem to be kinda boomy.  boomy is good, try to get the feeling of boom without overpowering everything else. 

the whole song could use tightening up.  some sort of audiosnap or whatever you have. to give you an example that is pretty obvious at 3:23 the acoustic and the crash don't come back in at the same time.  the crash hits first.  also the timing on the drummers rolls seems to be sloppy. 
 
the acoustic guitar could use some reverb or something to help smooth it out.  also, it maybe a little choppy.   try eq it out of the mix so you just hear the percussive strum of it and less of the tone.  that works in some songs with acoustic guitars.  I also think that micing it would help.  the pezio pickups don't sound that great (on any recording) 

So i think the thing that is adding so much "mud" to the mix isn't necessarily the eq of the song, maybe just the eq of the reverb on the lead vocs.  Try to cut out some of the low end reverb.  500 hz or above or maybe a 1000 or above or to taste.  Also, way to much predelay, it's distracting.  maybe there shouldn't be any at all.  i don't know play around with it and see what you come up with.

i'm just now starting to understand how to make reverb sound the way that it is supposed to.  It should sound like peanut butter being spread in one even stroke from one side of the bread to another.  or the way that bob ross whisps clouds with a brush stroke on his canvas, if that makes any sense. 

also a lead guitar part for fills would really help out.  that would help take the pressure off of the acoustic.  do you have anybody to do that for you?   

hope any of that helps.  these are just suggestions that i would try to make this song sound better.  Some of them will work and some of them won't.  Either way, i hope i didn't burst your bubble. 

quentin