YAAY MY First song--Please critique the mixing

Post this in the songs forum, please.

EDIT: Yeah, the moderators mooved it, cool.

Loved it. Very impressive.

How did you get those nice timpani (?) sounds?

- Tom

Great piece......Loved it.

Completely awesome song! I love the Timpani and the sound. Great modal sound. It will be perfect for a film project. Good luck on your endeavors! I would recommend your song.

ORIGINAL: Wanderingbard

Please let me know your opinions of how it sounds and how I can improve my mixing. TY ALL. Here is the song link.

Phillip Lai

Hey Phillip,

I enjoyed this piece very much. You have some wonderful themes which evolve nicely from one section to the next. Sounds like you may have some formal composition or theory education?

The only advice I can give someone with your talent is to get the best possible sample set you can. You did not list your tools but judging from some of the sounds I would guess you have a general midi module or maybe free soundfonts. Some of the pizz and stacatto strings were convincing but I think most if not all samples cold be improved.

There are many new, great and inexpensive libraries out there. For someone with your talent, your compositions would improve lightyears with a better sample set.
The one inexpesive library that I could suggest would be Garritan GPO... www.garritan.com

I hope that helps.
Thanks for sharing this piece, I really enjoyed it

Toby

TY Toby and Loop. Edirol Synths are pretty bad. I had to use effects just to get the sound quasi-Listenable. I am learning more and more about the lingo used in Mixing and recording. When I started, I had no idea what a soft-synth was.

I just checked out the Garritan site and there is some really good stuff there. I will definitely have to add it to my collection, however, my spare funds are going towards purchasing a Yamaha P90 for gigging locally. Here in Northern NY, I can't really make the music I want and havve it played locally, so I have to semi-conform with a country music feel. I will be downloading a couple of my vocal songs soon.

Toby, I was trained classically from the time I was 5 years old, but at around 16 started playing funk, soul, and black gospel. Then moved to Tampa and played quite a bit of Latin stuff. I lived in Chicago a couple of years and listened to the Blues/R&B sound there.

I studied theory from the time was 5-15, but I am not thinking any theory when I create. Rather, see a picture in my head and just play it. My study in College was Viking History. Theory really helps when jamming with a band. It helps everyone communicate faster:) I used to love listening to Bela Fleck and MMW.

I will check out your links tonight Loop.

TY both for your compliments.

Any other feedback on my song is greatly appreciated. http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=320179&content=music

TY Kev. I think I will definitely remix this song with some more realistic sounding synths on the CD I will be selling. I listen and try to create everything. Different moods or pictures make me wite all kinds of stuff. You have some really nice stuff on your site!

I woke up this morning and discovered that I had moved up in the rankings on soundclicks. How in the world does that work? How can a person tell how many people have listened to my song?

TY for the wonderful comments on my song http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=320179&content=music

Phillip

honestly lets record some live music and see how you do, and some VOCALS hah hah hah great song my ass

This entire recording IS live. I sit at the keyboard and create every single track myself. You do realize from reading the thread that this song is for my Movie soundtrack project and as such is strictly instrumental don't you? It is kind of difficult to locate a full orchestra so I used MIDI input.

This project stresses CREATIVITY first. Since you seem to be an expert in sound recording as well as songwriting is there a link to your musical work? Also, what wold you do to improve this for a movie score, considering that I am NOT using voices for this nor do I have access to an orchestra.

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=320179&content=music

TY very much Toby. I was wondering about the stats. I am glad this guy was just a troll. I was getting worried about my song being mixed badly BTW Your stuff is REALLY good:)

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/default.cfm?BandID=320179&content=music

Hi again everyone. I just bought a new computer for my DAW, and now I am having problems transfering my sonar files from one hard drive to another. When I try to burn the files onto a CD and transfer them manually, I lose all the audio files. What is causing this? Do I have to use the export command? Or am I saving incorrectly to the CD? Any help is greatly appreciated.

I just bought a new computer for my DAW, and now I am having problems transfering my sonar files from one hard drive to another. When I try to burn the files onto a CD and transfer them manually, I lose all the audio files. What is causing this? Do I have to use the export command? Or am I saving incorrectly to the CD? Any help is greatly appreciated.

you can save them as BUN files, or save all the project files and AUDIO separate. Seems a shame to have to waste all those CD's (of course depends on how many songs you have). Can you not just take the harddrive out of the one computer and hook it up to your new one and transfer the data? It's only 2 connections-I'm not a geek at all and I learned how to do it. I have an external harddrive for transporting files back and forth to from my laptop to my desktop as I have to do it quite often. Let me know if this is what you are talking about. Actually, I'm off to a session but will check in again in 3 hours.

Cheers.

you know Philip, I don't know your budget, but if you can afford it, a USB/Firewire external drive is great. I have a 160GB one, and after tracking a song, I will back up the song and the waves to my external drive as well. I have 2 HD on my DAW, and I used to back up to that second drive, but if my system were to shut down for some reason, then I would have no way to work till my system was back up. Please email me and I can even phone you to walk you through things. My treat.

mfskATgreenDOTocnDOTneDOTjp

That was really awesome. It reminds me of the music in the Final Fantasy video game which is a compliment. Keep up the great work and i thought the mix was awesome.

Wow, that's different. I loved it. Great job and very original ideas. I don't think I'm anywhere near able to properly critique the arrangement or technical elements of orchestral compositions, but I will add that it just felt too "midified" for my tastes. A bit mechanical if you will. Not sure if you can correct this with mixing tricks or if it'll need to be re-cut with either sampled or live players.

Again, very unique and nice piece. Please post more.

Phillip,
Very enjoyable. Nice compositional balance / structure.
This works well as an orchestral piece, so I'm wondering about the the dynamic panning effects especially the pizzacato strings wandering around the sound field.

Thanks for posting this.

TY for the compliment Ed. I was making this for the Sundance Film fellowship. I am still working on my mixing skills. I made a couple of folk-country songs that I will be posting as soon as I remix them properly.

I do not completely understand the questions about dynamic panning of the pizzacato strings. I am just getting started in the world of mixing....I will try to answer your questions if you let me know what this means. Pardon my ignorance

Also, you have some really nice stuff on soundclicks. Superb recordings. I look forward to hearing more!

Phillip:

I really appreciate you posting this. It's nice to hear things a little off the beaten path. Good start on this. I have nothing really to add in the way of comments. Get yourself some better samples and you have a winner! Oh, and watch your levels - things are distorting sometimes.

TY for the critique and compliment Charley. I am still trying to learn the mixing part of the production. I jusy recently found out about background noise and the fact that a little noise in each track addsup to a LOT of noise in the master.

You have some really awesome stuff in Soundclicks! Jazz is one of my Fave styles of music. I played out in Jazz clubs/restaurants for years in Tampa.

That was really awesome. It reminds me of the music in the Final Fantasy video game which is a compliment. Keep up the great work and i thought the mix was awesome.

TY! Someone else said the exact same thing:) I would not mind making some songs for a video game one day. It pays the bills. I went to your Soundclicks site. You are definitely NOT a rookie like me at this mixing and recording stuff. Also your songs sound great!