Two Acoustic Songs

[BrandonS]

HI all

Please rate my two mixes here. Two brand new songs fresh out of the OVEN!

http://brandon.rainwound.com/mymusic/in_your_eyes.mp3

http://brandon.rainwound.com/mymusic/life.mp3

These are two new ones. Details:

-Adobe Audition 3.0 recording
-Takamine TK-40 Acoustic through an SM57
-Direct input bass
-Mixed and mastered with AA 3.0 using tube-modeled compressors / parametric EQ / etc

 

[BrandonS]

bumpasaurus

I see the forum is very active but you guys are shying away from the acoustic stuff.

 

[Nebulous]

Pretty cool. Everything sound pretty appropriate for the style. My only gripe would be the main/ lower vocals are slightly too dull IMO.

 

[KeithTidd]

I'm impressed by the sound of the acoustics. What pre did you use? I also agree about the Vocals sounding alittle dull. You might wanna try a baxandall shelf on them (thank you bob katz). The drums are a bit cheap sounding, so anything you could do to polish them up would help - maybe bring the kick and snare louder.

The mix distorts a bit when the vocals come in.

 

[BrandonS]

For the vocals I used an SM57 with dynamics processing in Audition 3.0 -- I just used the regular "Smooth vocal" setting, and then normalized the volume to 80%.

I used the same mic for the acoustics, but used the Tube-modeled compressor and studio reverb / Parametric EQ on those. I'm not sure what you mean by baxandall shelf or 'pre'...

I'm still not too sure of how to properly produce vocals, so I probably have the EQ wrong on them which causes them to distort with the music. Probably colliding frequencies there. When you say dull, do you mean the EQ or effects, or the actual performance?

The drums are Drumkit from hell 2, which a lot of people have been telling me sound tinny and cheap lately. I searched them out because everyone was saying they were fantastic. Opinion sure changed fast! Now everyone is going on about BFD. I used M-Audio Keystation 88 to perform the drums... I already have the kick and snare up pretty high so I would probably have to use the EQ to get it higher... It's probably just muddled by other frequencies... You think?

 

[KeithTidd]

pre amp.

Alot of the guys on the forum get pretty good results with DFH, so maybe you could find some tips.

 

[BrandonS]

Here's a new one released today: http://brandon.rainwound.com/mymusic/swallowed.mp3

Any improvement you think?