New Hard Rock Song

Hey guys,

Got another new tune for ya.  This is just a basic hard rock guitar riff with Josh Whiteside on vocals.  Have a listen and tell me what you think.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10255614


Thanks.

Hey, nice work.  I like the sound.  When the vox came in I thought they were a little 'lo-fi' - and I thought that was probably on purpose.  I wonder if the song would develop and grow a bit if after the first verse the vox didn't have so much of the lo-mids rolled off?  Just a personal taste thing, really.  Nice guitaring!

excellent Mark, you're really on a roll at the moment!
very cool tune, some great riffs and leads. vocals initially sound a bit boxy but once they get going they fit in fine.
obviously working with this vocalist is really inspirational for you, so let's hope it continues!

I'm getting my monitors today...that should make this more fun.

I love the music. The vocal is too effected, I think. Need to take that low pass off or whatever is taking the meat out of it. The vocal is thin and far away.

Drums sound great. Great guitar licks, though I felt that the melody on the vocal was a bit repetitive and lacked creativity, but not passion. So, it's one of those things where if you listen to it more than once or twice you'd probably find an appreciation for where it sits.

All in all, I'd say the song is probably doing what it's supposed to be doing because it caused me and others to comment. All I have is generic advice since I don't know the vision of the song, but I like the lyrics.

Good work, I love hard rock stuff. I got some I'm going to post later this month.

Ok re-listened with my new mackie MR5's...

Rythm is tight and full.

Vocal needs a de-esser for certain.

Also, it's empty. Anemic. The vocal delivery is good in the mix, maybe a little bump in volume but however your effecting it and eq'ing it, it's too thin. Sounds like paper compared to wood in terms of thickness, vox to music...

anyhow. Hope that helps.

As always, thanks for listening!

This has got to be the best forum on the net for getting good feedback & tips on this recording art.

James:  Thanks man.  Glad you can dig it.

Daniel:  This was an older track that I had pretty much finished.  It just needed vocals.  Josh & I wrote the lyrics & added the Vox Monday.  I found it rather difficult to get the Vox to sound like they where in the same room as the rest of the music.  I guess it could still use a little work.  This one was done in Guitar Tracks Pro 3 so I don't have as many tools to work with for the vocals.  I've got two vocals tracks going here. One with a compressor, EQ & Verb.  Which is the main one you hear & another that is a little lower in volume thats running through Amplitube on a fairly clean setting but still adds a little grit to the Vox.  Maybe thats what makes them sound thin?

Bobby:  Glad you dig it.  Telling me that any of my licks sound reminiscent of Randy Rhoads is the highest compliment in my book.  Thanks.

MGH:  Thanks allot mate!  As mentioned the Vox where a little difficult to get sounding right with this one.  Josh is a great singer in my book.  He should only better too.  He's only 21.  He blows me away with some his lyrics.  We've got some other stuff we're working on.  So hopefully we can keep this going.

Scotty:  Thanks!  Seems like some people like the vocal effects & some don't.   I would like to beef up the Vox a bit but not sure exactly how to do it.

Joshua: Thanks for checking it out.  I take it you like this one better than the Southern Twang we did last.  I think if there where a few different guitar lines we could have added some different Vocal melodies.  If you or anybody could suggest a could de-esser plug in it would be much appreciated. Preferably one that's Free!

Patm300e:  Appreciate your listening.  The rhythm guitars are just my trusty old ADA MP1 preamp, Marshall 9005 Power Amp & Marshall JCM 900 4x12 Cab with an SM57 Shoved right up to the speaker grill at about a 45 deg. angle. The leads where done through Amplitube amp sim. 

Bapu: Thanks man!  I guess the Vox could be bumped up a bit.

Thank Janet,


Glad this link worked for you.  I think I'll work on the vocals some more and see if I can beef them up some.  They sounded really good while he was singing them.

Gosh dang it! I'm Bumpin' this thread, because it's worth a second/third/4th etc.... Listen!!!!!!

Bobby

BENZOFOG,  Your enthusiasm for this song is much appreciated.  I hope I can come up with some more stuff along the lines of this tune. 

Bobby,  Appreciate the bump & again glad you liked it.

geeare1,  Thanks for the compliments.  Glad you like it as it is.  I think I may have Josh take another stab at this using my "other" DAW and see if we can't fatten up his vocal track.   It sounded much fuller, live in the room.  It just didn't translate that way to the recording for some reason.

7 string guy,

Thanks man.  Allot of peeps seem to disagree on the guitar panning,  but I tend to like it myself.  The Rhythm guitars are panned 100% L/R. 

Yea, the song is mainly based around two basic riffs (one single notes, the other chords) which are different but similar in phrasing I guess.

I usually have the bass turned up quite a bit on my amp and I added some more mids to the rhythm guitars as well.

Thanks for listening

Hey Brad,

Thanks man.  I'm glad you like the Guitars.  If I should be able to get anything right it should be the guitars since that's my main instrument.  But that's not always the case.

 I struggled coming up with a good bass line for this one for the bridge & lead section.  Nobody has mentioned it so I guess it works.

Thanks for listening.

Diggin the tune. I agree with most about the vocals low in the mix. It sounds like you maybe tried to blend in the vocals too much by setting a highpass at 250hz. Thus the vocals really have no resonance, no power. It's kind of stuck in a cave down the middle with such prominent guitars, which brings me to another point...

I think you have a predicament on your hands here, because the guitar tone is really great, but you have a lot of verb on your vocals and snare. I'm getting more of a small room vibe from the music, and I think the mix would benefit if you pulled back the verb on the vocals, and especially the snare. The snare sounds great in its own right, really huge, but I don't think this song calls for that.

Another critique, and this is certainly being nitpicky as there is little to complain about, but the tempo is a a bit sluggish. I think if it were 5 bpm faster, it would really have a good rolling groove to it. The drums sound like they're real, so you'd just need a timestretch plugin and apply it to all of the drum tracks. Unfortunately, you'd have to re-record everything else. So that's probably not an option, but...

After a third listen, I think I discovered the catalyst of the drag; the guitar riffs are a bit quick to the next beat. Assuming you played the guitar, I think you might have heard the song in your head at a faster tempo, but then you were forced to physically play the drummer's tempo. It's slightly distracting to the discerning ear.

P.S. It's pretty rare that anyone will compliment bass guitar. If no one comments on it, that means it's perfect. :)

James,


Yea I hear the Hi-hat thing too.  Not sure whats going on with that.  The only thing I added to the drums (which are loops) was a compressor.  Maybe I should make some adjustments to compressor settings.

I love me some funky Lenny Kravitz!  I only wish I could touch that level.  I thought the guitars needed to come up a bit myself, but being a guitarist  I didn't want it to sound like a guitar player did the mixing. 

Mojque,


I think I agree with most of your comments. The vocals where difficult to get to blend in.  I really don't have a lot of experience with recoding vocals so I'm just kind of shooting in the dark.  I've already discussed redoing the vocals with Josh.  I think we can get a better sound if I re-do this in another DAW.

The drums I don't have a lot to work with since I'm using loops.  I love the snare sound but as you mentioned it does have quite a bit of reverb on it and I didn't add anything to it other than a compressor to the whole track.

I might try upping the temp but again that will require quite a bit of re-recording and it was I that did the guitar playing and your spot on about the tempo comment.  I came up with this riff outside of the DAW and then tried to find some loops that would fit it.

Thanks for the great advice!

Vincete,

Thanks for listening.  I'll look into more low end if & when we re-do the vocals.

Hey,


Just wanted to thank everyone here for giving this new song so many plays.

It's at #1 in Hard Rock!  I know that being #1 on soundclick really isn't that big of a deal, but it's quite an accomplishment for me & my buddy Josh.

Now if only a 100 or so people would buy it I could go and get myself a dozen new purple guitar picks.