Silent Advance

[chumpy]

Heya folks!

 

After a bit of a hiatus, and taking a plunge into the world of podcasting, our band, Jerkatorium is back once again creating music! This is our first song of 2019, and it's for the SONGFIGHT DOT ORG  bi-weekly contest. This time around the arbitrarily chosen title was "Silent Advance", and this is what we came up with. Hope ya enjoy it!

 

Edited February 27, 2019 by chumpy
Grammar.

[Michan]

Hey Chumpy! 

 

It's a cool one! I enjoyed it a lot! I like the vibe, it reminds me to a nice mix of different groups I like!

 

Just one thing, and I am super naive in this (no idea about mixing, balancing and stuff like that), but I felt there's something off in the volume  balance of instruments&voice, I think with a bit of expert touch there the sound can be improved a lot. Sometimes I feel the voice is too loud and I can't listen well to the instruments, and in other parts I feel there's everything too equal so I can't focus my attention properly. I was listening to the song in a noisy metro, so maybe that messed up the sounds a bit! But I think it can be improved a lot just playing a bit more with the levels!

 

Anyways, as said, the song is great! Good luck in the contest! And looking forward listening to more!!

 

Best!

[chumpy]

On 2/27/2019 at 1:58 AM, Michan said:

Just one thing, and I am super naive in this (no idea about mixing, balancing and stuff like that), but I felt there's something off in the volume  balance of instruments&voice, I think with a bit of expert touch there the sound can be improved a lot. Sometimes I feel the voice is too loud and I can't listen well to the instruments, and in other parts I feel there's everything too equal so I can't focus my attention properly. I was listening to the song in a noisy metro, so maybe that messed up the sounds a bit! But I think it can be improved a lot just playing a bit more with the levels!

Hi Michan,

 

Thanks for the feedback! I feel like your comments here are very perceptive. 

 

Mixing and mastering is hard, and I'm not particularly good at it yet. What I have is a "static mix" where all the faders are set once and they don't move at all throughout the duration of the song to highlight different instruments or focus on different aspects of the performance. I also don't do a lot with EQ to make sure each element int he song has its own dedicated space in the frequency spectrum.

 

I've got a lot to learn about mixing, but I'm going to keep plugging away at it!

 

[Mattius Fincham]

This is a quirky and energetic song! That's a great guitar sound! The leads are wonderful.

The drummer was really tight! Catchy chorus is all that I could have ever asked for!

This is a great composition and I also favor the structure. Thank you for sharing this!

Very danceable piece!

[Odanada]

Fantastic and fun

Great harmonies (both vocal and guitar), great hooks, great changes.

Keep doing what you're doing.

[ccarnucci]

Yup, this is well done musically.  Would love to have the lyrics to study a bit as there is so much going on, but even without them, there is nothing to not like here.  

 

Just a fun little ditty!

[imbassman]

On 3/1/2019 at 9:49 AM, chumpy said:

Hi Michan,

 

Thanks for the feedback! I feel like your comments here are very perceptive. 

 

Mixing and mastering is hard, and I'm not particularly good at it yet. What I have is a "static mix" where all the faders are set once and they don't move at all throughout the duration of the song to highlight different instruments or focus on different aspects of the performance. I also don't do a lot with EQ to make sure each element int he song has its own dedicated space in the frequency spectrum.

 

I've got a lot to learn about mixing, but I'm going to keep plugging away at it!

 

To me there is not a mix issue. I think the mix is fine. Just tweaks in the mastering process. I do my mixes then I send to a friend to double check the mix and then he actually does the mastering. When you do your mastering is it in your daw full project open or do you export it to lossless stereo file and master that file? 

[chumpy]

On 9/14/2019 at 7:23 AM, imbassman said:

To me there is not a mix issue. I think the mix is fine. Just tweaks in the mastering process. I do my mixes then I send to a friend to double check the mix and then he actually does the mastering. When you do your mastering is it in your daw full project open or do you export it to lossless stereo file and master that file? 

 

I export the mixed song to lossless .wav format and then import that into Ozone where I master it. For me, mastering is mostly selecting a preset that I like the sound of, and then configuring Ozone's maximizer plugin (the last thing on the chain) so it learns the right threshold to output the track with an -14 integrated LUFS. I'd do more, but honestly I haven't trained my ears to the point that I can actually hear any of the nuance that mastering engineers tend to obsess over.

 

 

[moptop]

This is great! What a fun song!  The mix on this is just perfect!   I wish my mixes sounded half this good!   You never did say how you did in the contest!  You won of course, right?

Thanks for sharing!  

 

Oh, and who did the drawing used for the backdrop? It's cool!

Edited September 29, 2019 by moptop

[lemonstar]

This is great! My shoes started dancing - which was strange because I'd taken them off and left them in the corner of the room.

 

I think the mix will sound very different depending on what you listen through - I use some small open lightweight headphones Senheisser PX100 (https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-100-Lightweight-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000089GN3) - they're old but I still love the sound - I have some HD450's too but they are bulkier. On the PX100's the only crit I have is that a few of the the bass notes really thump - I'm sure it will just be that the frequencies of those notes sit right in one of the many peaks in the PX100's response  - I do get the same thumping bass notes on the HD450's but it's not so pronounced. In a nutshell it's impossible to please everyone.

 

As I understand it you can use some compression to stop overloading certain frequencies and the kick and bass can operate in the same range.

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by lemonstar