The Unwanted - New demos

[markiegiscool]

Hello all,

My band (The Unwanted) has just finished recording some new demos. If anyone could have a listen and let us know what they think, songwriting, performance or recording wise that'd be fantastic.

A songs have been 'mastered' using the multiband compressor in Izotope Ozone, and the Waves L2 limiter.

I think they sound pretty good through my monitors and car speakers, but having just listened to them on my computer speakers, they sound a little more top end heavy than I thought. Hmmm, what does every one else think?

Enjoy!

[PeterPav]

Its too compressed for me, I personally hate compression. Boom boxes, car radios, home stereos, Radio stations all have some kind of compression. So my thinking is to leave stuff un-compressed. I met a session bass guy who practiced with a VU meter. thumping and slapping to hit 0vu without a compressor. Just my opinion. I like the music, the second tune has a nice emotional feel.

[rockerdude]

This thing is squashed to death.Way too much compression.There is alot of sibilance in the vocals and they sound thin to me.The music has no dynamics.The snare has a delay or somthing on it that sounds like a miss trigger. There is a a few performance mistakes here and there and the mix is kinda flat with no depth of field.I have the ozone 3 and that thing will kill a good mix if your not carefull.If you remove the ozone or if you use it try the mix master preset that one is pretty even.Remove the limiter on the master buss and try panning out the guitars and keys more.Too much compression will give you harsh ssssssss (Siblance)in your vocals.The drums sound good but take off that snare verb or delay efx.The bass was muddy so eq your drums and bass better.Overall I liked the tune just not the mix or engineering.Sterling Sound Studios

[markiegiscool]

Thanks for listening.

Yeah, i did compress these pretty hard. I will try backing off with it a bit. I forgot to mention that I also EQ'd the mix before the compression and limiting. Just a dip in the mids, and a boost in the low and upper regions. I think I will try without that too.

Not quire sure what you mean about the snare delay? The drums are from EZ drummer, and the only processing done is EQ and compression and the snare, kick, toms and overheads (so pretty much everything ).

As for the performance mistakes, I'm aware of two that are noticable to if you're really listening, but as they're basic demos I'm not too worried about them. We've given much worse demos than this to promotors in the past!

I will post some 'ammended' mixes up later in the week.

Like I said, thanks for listening and for the nice comments on the songs.

Anyone else?

[rockerdude]

That snare is ez funky.There was a delay when I listend to it.Mabey the delay is in my head????? I want to hear more.......

[markiegiscool]

Now you mention it, I can really hear the sibilence in the vocals. Hopefully that's just being caused by the compression in the final mix, rather than the compression I've used on the vocal tracks themselves.

I'll post new mixes up tonight.

[Croix]

Good rock material. I would concur with the others to a point. I think the sound you are looking for requires a fair bit of compression, but not that much. What strikes me is the general lack of separation of the instrumentation. Everything seems to be in one spot both spatially and frequency. The organ is way cool but overwhelming to the rest of the song. I’m not sure if that is because of frequency or db, but the guitar, particularly when the lead comes in, needs to pop out more and stand on its own in contrast to the organ. My other impression is that the vocals are suffering the same fate. They need to pop out. I’m not really sure but my guess is that you are using db when a little frequency carving would serve the song better. Good tunes.

[markiegiscool]

Generally I used quite a few frequency boosts in the mixing, but not many (if any) frequency cuts. I tried the method of boosting the kick drum at a certain frequency, and cutting the bass guitar at the same frequency, but I couldn't really hear a difference to without the cuts.

I did try and boost things at different frequencies (two guitars - one at 3k one at 4k etc).

Thanks for listening.

[Croix]

Try a mix with the ratio of cuts to boosts reversed and see what you think...

[markiegiscool]

New versions of both songs. I've back off the compressing a little, and tried to give the guitars and bass more of their own frequency range. I didn't want to back off the compression/limiting completely, as I quite like the sound it gives the songs.

Hmmm, still not sure if I cracked it yet, as they only sound a little different from the previous versions. But I think they're definetely going in the right direction.