sneak preview of my new band (Female Fronted!)- how's the song/mix?

[Fragle]

hey guys,

i've recently formed a new band....musically it's mostly in the melodic death realm, but with clean female vocals on top.
we've just recorded 2 demo songs and plan to do an EP in the course of the next few months.

anyways, here's one of the upcoming demo songs....you're actually the very first to hear this ;-)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1296348/Backslash/Inception - A Reason To Believe mix v3.mp3

some info:

-addictive drums, with replaced kick, slightly augmented snare, and 50:50 toms (all slate).
-guitars are my freshly aquired robin medley custom shop which i bought from lasse (MAJOR thanks, the deal was smooth as silk and the guitar is kickass) -> countryman DI/rme fireface, two tracks tse x30 v1.6 two tracks solo C, all through spres8 impulse (note: i originally planned to reamp this through my live setup (engl fireball 100 and peavey 5150). since the other guys/gal digged the sound so much as it is i decided to leave it at amp sims for the demo...ep will be the real amps obviously.)
lead guitar is my peavey vandenberg through tse x30. note that the main lead is still a scratch track, some bum notes.....
- yamaha rbx 375 bass, DI for the lows lecto on raw for the dirt. the usual stuff
- vocals....nothing fancy, rode nt-1a through fireface pre, the usual compression etc, NO AUTOTUNE.


any comments on the song and the mix will be greatly appreciated

aside from re-doing the guitar solo properly i think the first vocal part should come up a bit, and maybe some more additional automation here and there. otherwise i'm pretty much deaf right now

 

[CSMadden81243]

mix sounds pretty damn good dude. really digging the drum and guitar tones a lot man. i think the vocals could have some more ambiance to them (but not much more of course), definitely for the versus at least. cool song as well!

 

[Fragle]

thanks for the comment!

the guitar has a LOT of impact on that sound actually.....definitely one of my better ampsim sounds.

as far as the vocal ambience goes, i tried a lot of things, including more ambience, but that only seemed to push them further back in the mix, and i want them to be as upfront as possible without sticking out unnaturally. as i said, i *think* i could go a little further, but it blends pretty well right now...dunno, technically i could make this pretty vocal centered but it just doesn't feel quite right when i do it.

 

[Cyanide_Anima]

I'm diggin' this! It's pretty old school! I love her voice, she reminds me of a female Bruce! The mix is fucking awesome too! Guitars sound awesome!

 

[fader198]

I like it alot. vocals sound a little buried to me but other than that it's great!

 

[Fragle]

thanks for the comments!
yeah, guess i'll give the vocals another db or so.
that old school comment is really interesting though....i deliberately tried to stray away from that. probably just the fact that there's no cookie monster and breakdowns to be found here....

 

[CubanDude]

Really good, man... And to me "oldschool" would maybe be the latest association i'd have with this sound

 

[smy1]

Yea, the vocals are too dry and the voice sounds far too thin and separated from the rest of the music.

 

[Fragle]

well...more delay, reverb, or both?

 

[Fragle]

any further comments?

i'll upload an updated version with the final guitar solo and tweaked vocal sound tomorrow.

 

[Mago]

Ears fucked, no comment on the mix yet, just wanted to say that I was really keen to hear that and that I like the music!
I love it when female fronted bands decide to go down the non opera but powermetalish vocals road

 

[Peludismo]

Sounds very good!, i like the guitar tone!

THe voice.. yeah, you can bring it up a little more, so that is on top of everything, but it's cool, i like it there, i can understand everything in the lyric, so there's no masking or anything.

 

[Fragle]

Ears fucked, no comment on the mix yet, just wanted to say that I was really keen to hear that and that I like the music!
I love it when female fronted bands decide to go down the non opera but powermetalish vocals road

you're gonna love the other ones then. this is actually the most "radio friendly" /(if you know what i mean) song out of the bunch.

and my thoughts exactly on the non-opera route thing. i mean, she can do that, and can do it really fucking well, but that style is best used for accents or certain backings imho....i just don't like it when FF metal bands rely on that style to carry the whole song....just doesn't have any balls.

thanks for the comment(s)!

 

[Fragle]

update:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1296348/INCEPTION/Inception - Reason To Believe Final Mix.mp3

some more automation, tweaked a few velocities, a touch more ambience on the vocals, re-did the solo (still not satisfied but you have to let go at some point), also added some lows to the vocals to give em more fullness.

how's it sounding?

edit: fixed link above, PLUS:
i did another version, since the vocals were still pretty dry....so i set up a half note delay and automated it throughout the song, especially during the refrain.

whaddaya think?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1296348/INCEPTION/Inception - Reason To Believe Final Mix (DLY).mp3

 

[Mago]

vocalwise the more ambience is pretty nice, the vox could be louder, they are quite burried (main vox, not the backing vox in the refrain, those sound awesome)

not a huge fan of the guitarsound tbh, but if it is just for demo purposes and the following will be reamped then it's enough I suppose
not a fan of the kick, but it works, snare is also pretty dry
also songwise, the telephone intro is cool, but it's quite long but I guess theres not much to do about that now...maybe fade it in to make it a bit more interesting?

really nice solo man!

 

[Fragle]

vocalwise the more ambience is pretty nice, the vox could be louder, they are quite burried (main vox, not the backing vox in the refrain, those sound awesome)

not a huge fan of the guitarsound tbh, but if it is just for demo purposes and the following will be reamped then it's enough I suppose
not a fan of the kick, but it works, snare is also pretty dry
also songwise, the telephone intro is cool, but it's quite long but I guess theres not much to do about that now...maybe fade it in to make it a bit more interesting?

really nice solo man!

thanks for the comments!

yeah, i'm digging the delay stuff, too. the old version sounds more in your face, and i don't want to bury her in effects. i absolutely adore her voice, and i don't want people to be like "well, she can sorta sing, but you don't know because it's so wet"

i hear you on the guitar sound, too....it works in the mix, but it sounds fake, because it IS fake. but then again, this is just the first demo, i'll reamp them when i'm doing the EP. people won't notice anyways....
might look into automating the snare ambience....right now it's a compromise between the dense parts (refrain e.g.) and the spacy ones (solo section).

regarding the intro, i see where you're coming from, but i feel it works when coupled with the second song on the demo, and works really well live too.

anything else?
i'm thinking about cutting some low mid rumble and maybe adding a tad more high end shimmer to the whole thing, but i'm afraid of thinning it out too much and overmixing in general. the other guys/gal already loved it 3 revisions ago, so i guess the whole thing works...it's a fine line between improvement and just different.

 

[Mago]

thanks for the comments!

yeah, i'm digging the delay stuff, too. the old version sounds more in your face, and i don't want to bury her in effects. i absolutely adore her voice, and i don't want people to be like "well, she can sorta sing, but you don't know because it's so wet"

i hear you on the guitar sound, too....it works in the mix, but it sounds fake, because it IS fake. but then again, this is just the first demo, i'll reamp them when i'm doing the EP. people won't notice anyways....
might look into automating the snare ambience....right now it's a compromise between the dense parts (refrain e.g.) and the spacy ones (solo section).

regarding the intro, i see where you're coming from, but i feel it works when coupled with the second song on the demo, and works really well live too.

anything else?
i'm thinking about cutting some low mid rumble and maybe adding a tad more high end shimmer to the whole thing, but i'm afraid of thinning it out too much and overmixing in general. the other guys/gal already loved it 3 revisions ago, so i guess the whole thing works...it's a fine line between improvement and just different.

she has a really nice voice, very powerful
haha do people really say that ambience is to cover that one can't sing? It may work live for guitarsoli, but I dont think that it works on a record...neither for guitar or voice
went through hell with vocals levels/vocal ambient myself lately during mixing my (also female fronted) bands debut album...seems everyone got a different vision of how those kind of vox have to sound :Spin:

ah ok, if the intro works coupled with the other song it should be fine.
I just thought that for a first song it would be a bit long until the action starts

yeah the low mid and high end stuff seems like a good idea..its worth a try imo

 

[Fragle]

seems everyone got a different vision of how those kind of vox have to sound :Spin:

yeah the low mid and high end stuff seems like a good idea..its worth a try imo

my thoughts exactly. i'm trying to compromise here....musically it's not the standard female fronted stuff, quite a bit faster and heavier, hence i'd like to keep it dry-ish during the verses at least....the added ambience during the refrain was a good idea though - sneap forum rules.

i'll look into the master eq stuff.
right now the mix is clear as fuck yet punching on my adam nearfields and beyerdynamic cans, same thing goes for my car with subwoofer. it's kinda wooly on my home stereo and AT cans though....guess the eq tweak should be pretty subtle.
how's it on your end?

 

[Mago]

my thoughts exactly. i'm trying to compromise here....musically it's not the standard female fronted stuff, quite a bit faster and heavier, hence i'd like to keep it dry-ish during the verses at least....the added ambience during the refrain was a good idea though - sneap forum rules.

i'll look into the master eq stuff.
right now the mix is clear as fuck yet punching on my adam nearfields and beyerdynamic cans, same thing goes for my car with subwoofer. it's kinda wooly on my home stereo and AT cans though....guess the eq tweak should be pretty subtle.
how's it on your end?

I'm more into vocals that sit nice in a good amount of ambience in the mix, and less in your face in general...but that's only a personal preference
but the compromise you made here is working really well so I'd leave it at that, just turn the vocals up a tad
for me it could some more clearness in the highs...the low mid is only a bit strong on the chorus...I guess due to backing vox or the lead/melody guitars?
rest sounds fine here, considering it's "only" a demo

 

[Fragle]

reading through your comments again i think i understand what you'd be shooting for.
while that song could really work with larger than life sounds, the other one is just way too fast/thrashy to work with such a mix, so i got to compromise.

anyways, here's a last update. reduced some low mids, added some upper highmids, upped the snare verb/drum room a touch, upped the vocals a tad....my ears are officially shot now. gonna take a shower, look through the comments again, and upload it to myspace if everythings fine.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1296348/INCEPTION/Inception - Reason To Believe.mp3