new song (w/ Morgen and Jake) ** UPDATED MIX 0804

[andygabrys]

I just checked this out, and it sounds great - except for a couple things:

When everything is cooking, I don't notice it, but the naked intro kick is a little MIDI, and the entrance of the bass guitar going into bar 3 signals a programmed Keyboard bass and not a real bass guitar.

then at 0:29 where you have the one bar of tamborine and the little break - I stop believing the band sound for a second again.

I think just starting with the guitar riff / with kick at 0:05 and letting that rock through the first verse would work, and it would shorten the intro (great idea for film TV anyways) and disguise the bass sound.

then ditch that bar of tambo in the break and just roll right into the chorus, picking up the bass guitar at the same time. really kick it into drive there.

If you have Melodyne (or possible Auto-tune in graphic mode, but not in the classic mode), i would look at tuning a couple of sections where the harmonies happen - Not to make them straight on the scale pitches - not that at all. I think that would wreck some of the charm on the vocal. But I would make sure than when the harmonies happen, the rhythms are really tight, and any intervals between the harmonies are really working. To my ear there are some discrepancies there.

If you want a real bass instead of the keyboard sound (and I apologize if I have heard wrongly) I am sure there are a number of people on the forum that would give you a quick bass guitar track that you could use. PM me if you would like me to have a go at it.

good job - fun track for sure!

[morgen]

Thanks for that input, it's much appreciated. It's really hard to please everyone because everyone will point out different things that they hear and sometimes not all the same things lol. So we did our best to correct the things the majority heard and will have to go with our gut with the rest. In a perfect world, yup, the bass would be live, so I understand what you're hearing there. The kick drum is real though. But I will definitely take your advice to heart and really do appreciate you listening!

[deantaylor]

Thanks Chris, thanks Andy. Excellent feedback as usual.

[nick.moxsom]

I was wondering what to write for this. Then I saw Andy's comments above, and he said pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Spooky.

Great git line – infectious. Drums not quite convincing. Once you open the door, jump through it and stay with that fat groove all the way. The more rocking the rest of the track is, the less distinctly that dubious vocal harmony will notice.

Just being honest.

Best,
Nick

[Casey H]

Nice track... Like the new mix...

The one thing that still bothers me - and I can't define it, is there is a lack of dymanics-- a lot of "sameness"... By "dymanics", I don't mean frequencies... Like it needs more build and differentiation. Take this with a grain of salt since I'm production challenged.

Best of luck with it!

Casey

[morgen]

Hi Casey, Thanks for the feedback. We did add an extra guitar, organ as and a few new vocals from the bridge out to build the song a bit more. I think that if you add too many things just for the sake of adding it, it becomes very cluttered in the mix and takes away from the feel of having a few band members. Does that make sense? I know that some people are still not feeling the harmonies, but there really only 2 intervals that go with the key (G minor), so we went with those. But in the future, I will maybe use a different key in songwriting to allow for different harmonies because that's a valid insight and I will remember it.

Thank you all again for helping us to finish up this song. It was a privilege for me to work on it with Dean and we had lots of fun with it. Again, I can't say thanks enough for all the valuable feedback

[Len911]

The harmonies make much more sense to me now and the overall song as well, except it's missing the story, but because the goal is film/tv I find it befitting that the story will come from the story within the film or tv script, no conflicting story.

[morgen]

Thanks! And yes , you're right in that when a song is marketed for TV/Movies, it has to be kind of universal so it could apply to many different scenarios. That's our intention for the song. It's funny that so much effort goes into it and if a song gets placed, they'll use about 4 seconds of it anyway, or the instrumental version lol.

[Casey H]

There will always be more comments on how to make a track "better"...

Sometimes you have to let it fly, test the waters, (Did I use enough cliches there? ) and see what reaction you get from some library folks you work with.

Good luck!
Casey

[morgen]

Yup, I agree..In the end it's always up to who you're pitching it to. A song could be perfect in every way, but still get passed on. If it's right for the project, it will be right regardless of any small issues. And if it isn't right for the project, then it won;t matter how many fixes you do.