New song

Check out my new song. The electric and bass guitars were recorded with GR2, the rest with a USB condenser mic. Comments welcome.
http://cabomanuscripts.blogspot.com/2007/07/so-easy.html

 

This song has some potential. The playing is ok, the drum programming even a little 'different', which is refreshing. The mix needs some work, both with balance and dynamics. As a general observation the singing shouldn't be shy, as one could suspect that you are embarassed by your own singing? Still there is a style where the voice is somewhat buried in the mix, but to make this work well it still needs space in the mix, made with other means (not volume). With middle register singing like this, the voice's own resonances aren't at its strongest either. There's a reason why we usually sing in the upper register; the voice transmits much more energy there and hence cuts better through by itself. This comment shouldn't be about vocals, but a poorly functioning vocal track will tend to distract attention from everything else... Here you need to give the vocals space in both the arrangement and choice of tones for the other instruments, including EQ. This is of course where a tool like GuitarRig shines, as we so easily can tweak tones while keeping the actual recording. The guitar(s) need to not interfere with the most important frequencies for the vocals. It will need some experimenting to find these freqs; it could be in the middle so that the resonances slip thorugh, but also in the high to emphasize syllables (t and s sounds). Then cut them from the guitar. This could easily result in a strange or even ugly guitar tone when solo'ed, but the final mix is what matters here. You don't describe what type of distortion you use. Generally I really like 'loose' distortion like in this song; is it a Fender or Vox amp dist? Here I think it sounds too undefined first of all, i.e. I can't hear what chords you're playing, and next too brittle. Perhaps 'brittle' will be right in this mix (as a very full sound indeed will compete with the vocals), but then I think you should back off on the amount of distortion so that the harmony can be heard, and/or even change the type of distortion to a more 'tight' or modern sound - just in this case.
I hope you can appreciate my honesty, despite the critisisms. As I said I think this song has potential, and since I also have heard you doing other good work here, this is the reason why I care comment.

 

To the contrary, your comments are very useful. I actually use the Mesa emulation on the raw channel for the electric comping (guitar 3 in my mix). This has more gain than a maxed out Fender or Vox. I'll try rolling the gain back a bit, see what that gives, and maybe add some bass to even out the tone.

What you say makes it clear to me that I can't avoid re-recording the vocal and acoustic tracks. The reason the vocals get buried is that I used a previous demo version as a basis, which had the acoustic and the vocals on a single track. By the way, I still think it comes through well enough on the verses, but it just gets lost in the choruses and at the end. I doubt that EQ can solve this, as it will inevitably affect the acoustic guitar tone as well, but I'll give it a try before throwing the track out.

 

Here's a new version. There's less gain on the electric, and I'm playing the C chord in a higher position (3rd fret barre) to make it stand out a bit more. I also added mids in GR2 and boosted the low mids on the relevant tracks slightly. I still want to record a second acoustic guitar to make it sound more natural (this mix just has the same recording doubled on two tracks). Let me know what you think.

http://cabomanuscripts.blogspot.com/2007/07/so-easy-v20.html