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It's a song I wrote called never know. I hope you all like it.

[MEDIA=soundcloud]john-a-regan/neverknow4-more-kick-and-snare[/media]

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anonymous Wed, 05/15/2013 - 05:43

Nice song. Dicey mix.

Top end on the vocals is killin' me... and not in a good way. LOL.

What mic did you use for vox? The vocal track is very sibilant, harsh on the top end, and not the 'silky" highs that are sonically pleasant. Try using a de-esser or attenuate 4k -7k on the vox (both vox). This is a suggested range. I can't tell for sure which exact frequency is the heaviest and causing the hard S's... but the 4-7k range is a good place to start. Sweep through that bandwidth, attenuate by a db or so at a time, tighten your Q and reduce to taste til the sibilance disappears. If you find yourself losing presence after getting rid of the sibilance, try using a de-esser instead. Look to the same freq range to trigger the de-esser.

Drum fills are kinda cool, but the verse/ chorus pattern itself lacks groove. Did you use pre tracked fills and loops for this using a prog like DrumCore... or something similar?

The part isn't really what a real drummer would play, performance or groove -wise. Can't distinguish a hat or ride... not even sure if there is any hat or ride. Sounds like it's just kick and snare. No crash cymbals coming off your fills. Not saying you need one every time, and not saying it needs to cut the listener's head off either... but this sounds like a loop por machine to me... which is fine if you are recording a Dance track... but for this style of music, you want some authenticity on the drums, and it's really not there. This drum track isn't what a real rock drummer would have played or how He/She would have approached it, in terms of performance.

Tonally, the kick sounds alright. The Snare sounds over-compressed. I can hear the GR kicking in. What is your compression setting for the snare track?

The snare has a nice beefy warm sound, but it's lacking presence... I'd consider adding maybe 3k -5k by a db or two to give it a bit of air and snap.

Vocals are pretty pitchy. I'm not normally a proponent for relying on auto tune progs to build an entire vocal performance around, but in this case, I think you need to consider tweaking the vox... quite a bit.

Guitar tones sound like a direct line out of a pedal or a plug-sim... Amplitube? Vintage guitar rack? And if not, it doesn't sound like a real amp miked up... no warmth, it sounds brittle and "fake".

Fine for a demo. Not press quality.

IMHO of course.
-d

anonymous Mon, 05/05/2014 - 05:29

Luke, you are replying to several posts here that are pretty old...some over a year. I realize you are a new member and there's certainly no problem with you commenting on old posts, I'm just giving you a heads up that these posts are quite old and not really active in terms of contribution. Welcome to the forum. ;)