banging on a guitar - prog punk

[Zombie Queen]

It's a little piece of rocking and rolling doom pop. It gave me a hard time mixing it up, it took me way too long and way longer than composing and recording, which is really a bit of annoying... I wouldn't mind some criticism, if you have it.

download | read | cloud

instruments: Battery 2, Kontakt 4, impOSCar 1, quadraSID, guitar, mic.
samples: Kontakt's choir and bass, Puremagnetic 4bit meltdown, various single hits (Waveshaper, Wave Alchemy, Alchemy...).
processing: SKnote THREED, IIEQpro, Overloud TH2, Molot, Fabfilter Pro-C, db-S deesser, Voxengo Old School Verb, Voxengo Soniformer, Stillwell Major Tom and Eventhorizon.
hosting: Sonar 5.

[Tricky-Loops]

This song would get better along with some orchestral elements - some pizzicato strings for example, a grand piano or some organ... It sounds a bit like cabaret, so I could imagine some orchestral parts in the song...

[PurpleCatfishBettie]

maybe in the intro, the guitar is just a tad too loud?

in parts where the guitar and bass are together (with no vox), they sound to have just a bit of trouble getting along. ymmv

that guitar has got some great attitude.

sometimes i wonder if it's too bad that each of we 'bedroom producers' don't have our own personal favorite engineer and producer on hand. for example, i'd probably record with some combo like glynn johns/engineer and jimmy page/producer.

we wear many hats (writer, singer, musician, sequencer guy, engineer, producer, marketing, etc.) don't we?

yada yada... cool piece.

[seismic1]

Great track. I wasn't sure about it last night, but listened to it again this morning at higher volume and it has won me over. I love the intro guitar-riff. I love the bassline during the verse sections, and those multi-tracked vox are really tight. I enjoyed the middle section, with that crazy reverb at the end. The "choir" sections were lovely too.

You got a beef with the Apocalypse?


Good work

[Zombie Queen]

Thanks for comments, it gives me some perspective.

@mr blitz
The intro is louder altogether, that was deliberate, but I probably overpushed it.

Guitar and bass troubles, thanks for pointing out, there's something not quite right in the middle part. I've had it muddied by low end garbage from quadraSID, which was causing a lot of chaos, I could not pin it out for long time and hi-passed it last minute, guess I was too content of getting rid of the problem, that I didn't notice other problems which were revealed.

Yeah, it would be nice to have a private engineer of my own and maybe some private musicians, and maybe some singers too and... I could go on and on. Hard luck, I've only got myself.

@seismic
Apocalypse? I thought of a title "Apocalypso" for a set of songs, guess I still have it bouncing at the back of my head.

[PurpleCatfishBettie]

i suppose that on the other hand; do-it-yourself results in more of the artist's personality coming through, compared to handing it over to a 'big-name producer'.

[folderol]

Can't help thinking this should be a soundtrack to one of the Monty Python sketches - I mean that in a good way

[Zombie Queen]

Any reference to Pythons is good, thank you.

[Shangsean]

I had to comment on this one. Very cool track that really stands out from the crowd.

It's not at all what I was expecting to hear after reading the thread title.

[quintosardo]

Very nice, I like the attitude and feeling, too
If I'd have to ask for something, i'd love to hear it mixed with strong ambience, like lots of early reflections or delay to make it feel huge (but dry).

[Zombie Queen]

It's not at all what I was expecting to hear after reading the thread title.

Yes, I have natural gift to describe music in a confusing way.

i'd love to hear it mixed with strong ambience

Like putting that sort of reverb on full mix? Thank you for the tip, I'd never thought about it. I'll try it out definitely.

[D.H. Miltz]

I'll try to listen more critically soon. In the meantime: I enjoyed it. Thanks.

[jancivil]

well, you asked for criticism rather than strokes... some of this is just taste of course. I'm going to talk about my impressions of the mix then.

the guitar in the beginning is real boxy sounding to me. if you strongly disagree, if you're in love with that, never mind. it is everything I would want to avoid for that in terms of a chunky rock guitar production though. when the acoustic comes in over that, it makes matters worse, the same sorts of problems but in the higher range.

I can't know you don't really like that though, you like things I do not, I reckon.
when synths come in to decorate the vocals, the dryness of that - and the unstable sounding bass which may be a root of several issues - really exposes my problems with the sort of wrong 'clang', resonances sticking out like a sore thumb; eg., when you get harmonics out of the guitar attack there is something not good about it for me in a pronounced way and things combine to make it claustrophobic. I think you could consider the different elements, in terms of placement and in terms of what space in a room they would occupy a bit more. I mean many of the parts feel like they takes up a lot of space and it's all right up front. You could take some things and send it to some sort of reverberance, back off the original channel a bit and get something to seem in back a little.

If the idea is to be physically ugly on purpose you have got that no doubt. I imagine it's somewhat in the intent of it but it's really not so listenable for me.

[Zombie Queen]

Thank you for taking time (and ear pain) to comment jancivil, I don't mind getting some strokes and these are rather helpful.

I'll let my head rest from this and I will attempt to re-arrange this someday later, so I'll get back here and try to make some positive use of all tips I've got.

I never do ugly things on purpose, so it must be my lack of skill or/and a different perception of beauty. Perhaps I'll manage to improve on one of this things someday.

[forw]

pretty nice danny-elfmannish melody!
- in the first 10 seconds guit and perc are not together so it doesn't really start to groove.
- in the "voc. repetition parts" at 2:01 (magic magic magic magic etc.)I would try how that part would sound with a crescendo
- maybe spread the choir a bit more in the stereo field?

sounds cool to me overall.