Welcome to our community.

Love your energy. Vocals are consistently pitchy, on the flat side. This could have a lot to do with not hearing yourself during recording or performance.
Hope this helps .

Welcome to our community.

audiokid, post: 467037, member: 1 wrote:
Love your energy. Vocals are consistently pitchy, on the flat side. This could have a lot to do with not hearing yourself during recording or performance.
Hope this helps .

Some singers will go flat if they have too much reverb and bass frequencies in their headphones..

Nice energy, I wish the drums were a bit more natural and the back vocals a bit louder..
God do I hate the compression on soundcloud. !!! Not your fault of course.. ;)

audiokid, post: 467037, member: 1 wrote:
Welcome to our community.

Love your energy. Vocals are consistently pitchy, on the flat side. This could have a lot to do with not hearing yourself during recording or performance.
Hope this helps .

Hey, thanks for listening and the feedback. That may have been the issue. We will go back and take another look. Thanks again

Nice tune, the vocal pitch is a bit flat, but it also its fighting for space with guitars. Maybe eq a space for it to fit in or spread the guitars out a bit more.

It's often the case that a piece of recorded music is only as good as the weakest element - particularly if there's an obvious disparity between them.... Basically if your vocal is a 5/10 (as this one is) that will really stick out if all your other elements are 7/10 or higher...

The ideas are really good - the song is good - the production and guitar playing etc is good -- so you've got lots to work with. But you really need to work on those vocals - it's not just pitch that makes them so obviously inferior to the rest of the track - it's breath and phrasing - running out of air... lack of commitment - obvious hesitation /hold back. If you guys are producing and recording these yourself - nominate one of you as the vocal producer and have him/her specifically drive the sessions for vocals so the singer. Self producing vocals can be really tough. The vocals also don't fit in the mix - they stand outside of it both in quality but also the sound.

Obviously take everyone's suggestions with a grain of salt - who are we right? Just a bunch of guys on the internet - but I'd say there's enough raw material and goodness here that you guys should put that extra effort in because it will pay off and you'll have something quite exceptional.

i on the other hand actually like the vocals. i think they're fine. Roy Orbison? no. but fine in a punkish way. being so dry they sort of seem to be in a different space. maybe a little delay and a touch of room verb.

oh by the way .... F*%K auto tune.

Kurt Foster, post: 467062, member: 7836 wrote:
i on the other hand actually like the vocals. i think they're fine. Roy Orbison? no. but fine in a punkish way. being so dry they sort of seem to be in a different space. maybe a little delay and a touch of room verb.

See - for me it’s about the disparity between them.... to go low-fi or punk we’d need to match them rest of the tracks which are a little more obviously cleaner or hi-fi..... and as for auto tune - ya I wouldn’t use it in this context.

melodyne is excellent for tweaking pitch. Nothing wrong with anyone (mixing engineers included) using melodyne where or if needed to polish a track (unless its Neil Young ;)). Especially if you nail a track that is so beautiful but has something pitchy which makes way more sense to fix the pitch instead of doing it over again bcause someone thinks its not cool. Nothing to be ashamed about there.

I liked the over the top energy. It's nice and loud and has that driven guitar sound.

But like most of the others, the vocals are lacking in a way that can best be described as 'not ready for the red light'

I also think you're sorta trying to span several genres at once. NOTHING wrong with that. There's elements of radio-ready punk, 90's guitar gaze, and all with a modern production on the drum sounds.

It's all sitting on the edge trying to gel and it's not quite there. BTW I also HATE the compression on soundcloud.....

So here's my suggestion.....FIND a vocalist who can bring this thing up. Someone with a unique take and tone. Someone whose guts show when they deliver the lines. I don't think tuning is going to help as it's not going to be that piece thats puts what your saying over the top. The way it sounds now theres a lot of thought and production in the instrumental and the vocals are being sang by the writer?? who should just be the writer.

I like it.

update: In ref to Chris' post I agree that with some producing you could get these songs really going. They just need that distinctive sounding voice. And they need to be in tune and in time. Working the phrasing and the meter of the vocals does a lot for the production

audiokid, post: 467068, member: 1 wrote:
melodyne is excellent for tweaking pitch. Nothing wrong with anyone (mixing engineers included) using melodyne where or if needed to polish a track (unless its Neil Young ;)). Especially if you nail a track that is so beautiful but has something pitchy which makes way more sense to fix the pitch instead of doing it over again bcause someone thinks its not cool. Nothing to be ashamed about there.

I would never want to turn away from a stellar performance just to try tweaking in a line or two to "fix" something when a few hours with a program as powerful and workable as Melodyne can do what 50 outtakes can NEVER do. In 20 minutes.

I think the vocals are actually fitting with this band so don't give up. I'm thinking the vox is in its early development and could be 100 % better with some coaching and positive reinforcement.

audiokid, post: 467071, member: 1 wrote:
I think the vocals are actually fitting with this band so don't give up. I'm thinking the vox is in its early development and could be 100 % better with some coaching and positive reinforcement.

that's what I was getting at about designating a band member to be the vocal producer... make it fun but have him vet the performance and push it to get a more solid take. You can hear the hesitation/uncertainty in the delivery... just inexperience/fear there.... the lack of power from this is probably exacerbating the tuning issues.

Link555, post: 467053, member: 31690 wrote:
Nice tune, the vocal pitch is a bit flat, but it also its fighting for space with guitars. Maybe eq a space for it to fit in or spread the guitars out a bit more.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes we panned the guitars a bit more to accommodate (sp?) the vocals.

DogsoverLava, post: 467060, member: 48175 wrote:
It's often the case that a piece of recorded music is only as good as the weakest element - particularly if there's an obvious disparity between them.... Basically if your vocal is a 5/10 (as this one is) that will really stick out if all your other elements are 7/10 or higher...

The ideas are really good - the song is good - the production and guitar playing etc is good -- so you've got lots to work with. But you really need to work on those vocals - it's not just pitch that makes them so obviously inferior to the rest of the track - it's breath and phrasing - running out of air... lack of commitment - obvious hesitation /hold back. If you guys are producing and recording these yourself - nominate one of you as the vocal producer and have him/her specifically drive the sessions for vocals so the singer. Self producing vocals can be really tough. The vocals also don't fit in the mix - they stand outside of it both in quality but also the sound.

Obviously take everyone's suggestions with a grain of salt - who are we right? Just a bunch of guys on the internet - but I'd say there's enough raw material and goodness here that you guys should put that extra effort in because it will pay off and you'll have something quite exceptional.

Thanks for the feedback! I am the singer-songwriter and guitarist, bassist. My counterpart plays drums and we both mix. I may try and retrack the vocals this weekend if my schedule permits. I recorded the vocals as part of a demo so that my drummer would have something to play to (we live in separate states) and kind of grew fond of the demo vocals although as you pointed out there are some flaws that are probably worth addressing.

Davedog, post: 467069, member: 4495 wrote:
I liked the over the top energy. It's nice and loud and has that driven guitar sound.

But like most of the others, the vocals are lacking in a way that can best be described as 'not ready for the red light'

I also think you're sorta trying to span several genres at once. NOTHING wrong with that. There's elements of radio-ready punk, 90's guitar gaze, and all with a modern production on the drum sounds.

It's all sitting on the edge trying to gel and it's not quite there. BTW I also HATE the compression on soundcloud.....

So here's my suggestion.....FIND a vocalist who can bring this thing up. Someone with a unique take and tone. Someone whose guts show when they deliver the lines. I don't think tuning is going to help as it's not going to be that piece thats puts what your saying over the top. The way it sounds now theres a lot of thought and production in the instrumental and the vocals are being sang by the writer?? who should just be the writer.

I like it.

update: In ref to Chris' post I agree that with some producing you could get these songs really going. They just need that distinctive sounding voice. And they need to be in tune and in time. Working the phrasing and the meter of the vocals does a lot for the production

Hahaha. Do you know anyone? I always considered myself more of a songwriter than a singer but we've never been able to find anyone reliable. Thanks for the feedback!

The Story of the Sun, post: 467098, member: 51853 wrote:
Hahaha. Do you know anyone? I always considered myself more of a songwriter than a singer but we've never been able to find anyone reliable. Thanks for the feedback!

LOL. Maybe taking heed of the coaching from the others on here may get you closer to your end product! By the same token, there are places on the net with lots of people to collaborate with. Some want money and some just want the experience from sharing talents. Since you guys are used to sharing tracks and working that way perhaps delve into these places and see what you can come up with. You never know where that one talent is that just blows it all up!

The Story of the Sun, post: 467098, member: 51853 wrote:
Hahaha. Do you know anyone? I always considered myself more of a songwriter than a singer but we've never been able to find anyone reliable. Thanks for the feedback!

i get it. it's your song and you want to sing it. and it sounds fine. lots of singer songwriters don't sing perfect pitch. way too many to list. i think it adds character and personality. these days i'm sure there would be people who would auto tune Janice Joplin lol. when everyone uses the same tools and approaches, everything begins to sound sameo sameo. i like sparks and farts. i personally can't live with my vocals without a little tuning but i think it should be a personal decision. if it doesn't bug you, why fix something that isn't broke?