Thank you for all the positive comments.
In response to some of the (really useful) critique:
Kwackman:
Are there two guitars (or 3?!) playing throughout this song, apart from the instrumental bit later?
- Just the one, with some delay and masses of reverb.
There's a bass sound under there, but I can't quite hear it.
- Yep, I was really just after some padding.
The boring part of me would like the bass drum a bit louder and a snare chucked in there too!
- But that would require something more competent than just hitting a keyboard on the beat, and previous experience has shown that's not my forte!
Is that shimmer reverb at the end? Very nice whatever it is!
- It's the Ghost Hand Bells from Spitfire Labs, it comes through at the end of the instrumental break as well.
To Eddy:
I felt it could use something to balance the piano which is panned significantly to the right in the end section of the song.
- The second guitar does come back in on the left channel but it's not very high in the mix and doesn't have much FH content. But I have an idea about that.
To Daniel:
The backing sounds “fully professional” in production, but the vocal isn’t sitting comfortably enough into the mix. It sounds too upfront/pasted on to me, and doesn’t meld in as it could do.
- Hmm. I have an idea here.
To Martin:
I personally loved that final hanging chord, and longed for a few others during the rest of the song to 'break up' the verses and choruses,
- Hadn't thought of that previously. Am thinking now.
I do however thing there's a bit of a clash between the jangly guitars and your voice - a few of your words are less distinct and get a little lost in my opinion.
- Have an idea here too. Well, it's the same idea, but it might kill two birds with one stone.
To Sam:
The jangly rhythm guitar is a bit relentless and the delay makes it sound messy in places. I'm wondering how it would be if you replaced that with a sparse fingerstyle acoustic part that would leave more space for other sounds and textures.
- Thinking about this. For me that guitar sound is a core part of the song as it stands out from a lot of the rest of my music. I'm not a particularly imaginative song writer so I need to use other techniques to make up for it!
I wanted there to be an arrangement kick in the middle section, perhaps through adding some more instrumentation there.
- See above, I thought about that but didn't want to a) overdo it, and b) resort to formula.
But perhaps you could try singing something more like 'daaahhg' or even 'dorg' instead?
- I think there's a bit too much risk of either sounding like, to quote, a "local yokel member of the NRA" at one extreme or the janitor from the Simpsons at the other!
To The Elf:
Maybe a stereo (*not* ping-pong - ugh!) delay on the guitar?
- Tried switching the current ping-pong to a stereo dual but it lost a bit of the movement in the part that gives a bit of ear candy.
Maybe replace the electric with an acoustic?
- Considering 'augment' rather than replace.
I could imagine a *really* grunged-up Hammond sitting off to one side to balance up the mix - at least in the latter choruses.
- I did think about it, but as in my reply to Sam above, that's very formulaic for me at the moment.
Kick drum - lose it.
- Ha! Not a chance, it's my favourite bit of the song.
Add a smooth electric bass to balance out the harder guitar and back the guitar volume off.
- I did try some bass work (upright rather than electric admittedly, I haven't finished building my electric yet) but didn't come up with anything I was actually happy with, hence going for the quiet legato and pizzicato parts that are in there.
To Folderol:
Resonance at G3?
- Hmm, not too sure on technicalities but if that's around 200k it'll be the open G string that does ring all the way through. Will think on that.
Right, need to stop writing about it and do something about it!
Thank you all (again).
)
OK, so that gives you an indication of the level of my forensic production skills!!
