General Music Chat

Worked on a little mix of a shop edit on WHERE'S YOUR FAITH .
This will be the opening cut on our CD titled WHERE'S YOUR FAITH .

This is a dry recording, no effects, my mix utilizing AUDACITY just for fun.

Open for critique / suggestions of course.

On my player now.
Enjoy.

Worked on a little mix of a shop edit on WHERE'S YOUR FAITH .
This will be the opening cut on our CD titled WHERE'S YOUR FAITH .

This is a dry recording, no effects, my mix utilizing AUDACITY just for fun.

Open for critique / suggestions of course.

On my player now.
Enjoy.

Hey George...Its hard to say much with a 'dry cut'...But the song sounds structurally intact. The chorus prolly needs background vocals... and maybe a lead solo somewhere between the first chorus and the 2nd time the chorus comes up.

Would like to hear this again when you add more tracks.

Awesome song George! I like the tonal quality of your singers voice!

I listened. Needs some work, but I'd like to hear it again when finished.

Lets see George, what do I hear in this? Thats always what I ask myself.

I like the little lead riff on the front, but what I think you should do is listen to the melody of the chorus and mimic that on guitar, I would even go so far as to add a second lead harmony line.

I like the raunchy sound of the guitar, but it stays the same the whole way thru. You could do some clipped chords, or mute your strings and sound harmonics for the first and second line of the vocals, and give your bass player some space and let him funk it up a little bit, then on verse 3 & 4 come back in hard.

Vocally it needs some more vocals on the chorus, somebody doing some falsetto high up in the background would fill it up.

After the chorus I would put in a little short lead before the vocals come back in.

At the end of the song as you are chorusing out, you could drop the bass and guitar for a few bars and try to get audiences to sing along with it.

Just my 2 cents, but from a guitar player it needs mo lead! LOL!

George listen to the song Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana, Cobain was very good at turning a simple riff into something different. That song starts with a hammering guitar, then he pulls back and puts a little riff on, then he starts repeating a little riff over the bass. Its a simple way to add dynamics to your songs, without getting complicated.

I appreciate the input and will print a copy for the band members to review.

Probably not going to be a lot of changes on this run but we will certainly use the input to spice up the live performances.

We all agree that some vocal harmony would help but the sad reality is we have just one singer, though Eric and I do a little background when we play live, mostly just at the "fill" level though.

Trick is we have a band policy that we won't record anything that we cannot reproduce live.
JAX wants to do his own B/U vox on the recordings but the band has pretty much voted this down every time it comes up.

Again I greatly appreciate your time & comments.

I appreciate the input and will print a copy for the band members to review.

Probably not going to be a lot of changes on this run but we will certainly use the input to spice up the live performances.

We all agree that some vocal harmony would help but the sad reality is we have just one singer, though Eric and I do a little background when we play live, mostly just at the "fill" level though.

Trick is we have a band policy that we won't record anything that we cannot reproduce live.
JAX wants to do his own B/U vox on the recordings but the band has pretty much voted this down every time it comes up.

Again I greatly appreciate your time & comments.

Thats actually and excellent policy. One that I should have adopted for my CD crap. I've already been asked about certain piano parts in my songs and I'll be damned if i can either remember or reproduce for lack of keyboard...
Ah well such is the reason I now tell folks I'm releasing my "art" cd

George you guys might think about a vocal harmonizer to fill up the vocals, of course my old trick is still to put 10-20ms of digital delay on it to thicken it up.

On your guitar parts, I think something that would help is for you to maybe play little partial chords on some verses instead of all thick chords.

Im not musical enough to explain, but I will try.

Say you are playing a A major chord on all six strings at the 5th fret, for a couple of lines of verses you might just play the G,B and E string part of the chords, this will give it a little more dynamic, and then when you hit the important parts go ahead and use all the strings.

I do this on a lot of things live, just mixes it up for me, and makes a change in the tone of the song, to hopefully draw a listeners ears in.

You have the makings of a great song so dont give up exploring some chord inversions every now and then, like I was just talking about.

George you guys might think about a vocal harmonizer to fill up the vocals, of course my old trick is still to put 10-20ms of digital delay on it to thicken it up.

On your guitar parts, I think something that would help is for you to maybe play little partial chords on some verses instead of all thick chords.

Im not musical enough to explain, but I will try.

Say you are playing a A major chord on all six strings at the 5th fret, for a couple of lines of verses you might just play the G,B and E string part of the chords, this will give it a little more dynamic, and then when you hit the important parts go ahead and use all the strings.

I do this on a lot of things live, just mixes it up for me, and makes a change in the tone of the song, to hopefully draw a listeners ears in.


You have the makings of a great song so dont give up exploring some chord inversions every now and then, like I was just talking about.

I know exactly what your getting at JW.
And it's good input.
This song actually has changed quite a bit from it's inception where in the original version the second guitarist was playing the whole rhythm with me doing the heavy distortion on the chorus only.
We only recently switched to my playing the entire rhythm, and to be quite honest I'm still not very comfortable with it.
Often I do use a lot of sharp palm stop and staccato strumming but I still have some difficulty keeping it together with the vocal flow.
( some of the original lyric have been changed as well which complicates things on a song I've been doing the same way for six years )

We have a harmonizer, but really have never been pleased with the sound.
We also use a lot of effects on JAX vox live ( delay & reverb ). This was recorded pretty much dry all over to allow more leverage in the mix / master phase that is being done by a "second party" we trust.

I appreciate the input and will print a copy for the band members to review.

Probably not going to be a lot of changes on this run but we will certainly use the input to spice up the live performances.

We all agree that some vocal harmony would help but the sad reality is we have just one singer, though Eric and I do a little background when we play live, mostly just at the "fill" level though.

Trick is we have a band policy that we won't record anything that we cannot reproduce live.
JAX wants to do his own B/U vox on the recordings but the band has pretty much voted this down every time it comes up.

Again I greatly appreciate your time & comments.

Thats actually and excellent policy. One that I should have adopted for my CD crap. I've already been asked about certain piano parts in my songs and I'll be damned if i can either remember or reproduce for lack of keyboard...
Ah well such is the reason I now tell folks I'm releasing my "art" cd

That is the kind of thing we want to avoid.
We are primarily a live performance band. Our music and our style is pretty simple rock n roll. We prefer our CD to reflect that fact and save the embellishments to keep the live act fresh.

Wait you only want the CD to sound like what you do live? Why not just a get a good live recording then? The whole point of recording in the studio is to reach beyond what you can do live. You're not going to double any rhythms, add any extra vocals, add a little harmony to the lead? Bands have been doing this for fifty years. Awful waste of time and money not to IMHO.

Wait you only want the CD to sound like what you do live? Why not just a get a good live recording then? The whole point of recording in the studio is to reach beyond what you can do live. You're not going to double any rhythms, add any extra vocals, add a little harmony to the lead? Bands have been doing this for fifty years. Awful waste of time and money not to IMHO.

what jimmy said. i have to agree...if you're just wanting to represent how the band sounds live, then why not just do a live recording? and then folks can be impressed that everything they're hearing IS representative of what you actually can do live.

just think....what amazing music would we have missed out if The Beatles had taken that approach to recording!

I think you may have missed the point.

Yes we will embellish on the recordings, ( effects, double tracking ETC )

But not add anything we cannot do live.

Say as an example I could get one of you guys to lay down a lead track or some keys for a recording.

But you won't be on the road with us so it's cool n all.
But it's not representative of our live performance.

Let's face it. We are not in your average band situation.
The people who hire / listen to us expect us to be completely transparent and honest in our dealings with the public.
Something that could be misinterpreted or misrepresented as being dishonest could kill us. . .

i think the track was a good representation of what you want.
in this context it was complete, and sensible
a little compression and reverb , and it is a good demo.
most bands over estimate the requirements of a demo.
go with it.