Two tracks offerings

[dlm21uk]

Here are two tracks that I did a couple of years back with a friend of mine & I would be greatful for any comments (good or bad).

Both tracks use, polymoogs, Roland 106, Moog Liberation, Novation Nova, Korg M1, Roland MC303 played by me and feature guitar & vocals from my mate.

Track one "Fall Out" Is about a nuclear attack on the UK & uses two samples (recorded on a tape player cos I havent got a sampler) from the British made film "Threads". All the music is ours, the samples are of voices, screaming and the sirens !

media.putfile.com/Fall-Out

Track two "Paranoia" A track that builds up in layers and is about the paranoid mind !

media.putfile.com/paranoia40

These were both recorded on an 8 track tape recorder & I am not the best mixer in the world but I hope you get the feel of the songs & like the mainly analogue sounds.

Any comments would be welcome.
Thanks.
Daniel.

By the way. Most of these streaming sites do actually download the mpeg or whatever to your computer's temporary int files, you just need to know where to look for it. So if you want to keep a copy, a good method I use is to play it via the web and then press "START" on your desktop, then "FIND" or "SEARCH" and look for all files created on todays date. When the search is over sort the list into time/date order (by clicking on "modified" toolbar, and your mpeg, mp3 or avi should be near the top. Just copy it and paste it into "my docs" You've then got the full version on your pc ! Cheating the web is such fun ;D

Daniel.

[secretagent]

My pc keeps crashing halfway through both songs,must be a spyware thing,but i enjoyed what i heard ;D

[dlm21uk]

I've checked them from another computer & they donloaded/played fine ? It may have been that the server is/was busy & it was the server that crashed ? The files are about 5 megs each so could it be a Firewall issue on your PC secretagent ?

As far as I know the Putfile site is safe, but if anybody can recommend another upload site I would be happy to send them there instead, but it seems ok to me.

Daniel.

[dlm21uk]

Comments ? ? ?

Anyone listened to either of these yet ? Are they so terrible as to be not worthy of a comment ?

sniffle sniffle

Be gentle with me !

[Minimoog]

Sorry terribly rude of me. I did give them a listen and I was deffo impressed, but I need to go back and try 'em again to offer anything more specific. Busybusybusy y'see.

Will post more when I've a few mins!

[secretagent]

I have managed to listen to fallout all the way through but still having problems with paranoia.
"
I do like the track,i kept feeling "being boiled by human league,but myself and i suspect most others on this site are not qualified to give a technical review of the tracks,so i guess most people will listen,enjoy and thats it.

Shauns your man for the honest,indepth appraisal but i find he doesnt just listen once and then say the first thing that comes into his mind,so if you bide your time i,m sure he will let you know whay he thinks. ;D

[secretagent]

Why not put the tracks on marvs electromancer site.

Sorry,you,d have to clear any illegal samples first.

[vortex]

just managed to download them. I want to burn them to cd and listen to them. Then I'll get back to you

[vortex]

Right Danny

Thanks for posting your tracks. Here is my honest opinion which of course, is for the most part subjective with I hope a few objective elements.

Ok I’ll start with the negative and then onto the positive.

Yes, as you know the mix isn’t to hot. But if it were easy then I guess it wouldn’t take years to train a decent sound engineer. There really isn’t much space in the mix and in the car at least it can sound almost mono at times. (Obviously some of your instruments have stereo ouputs. As an amateurish, amateur I’ve often wondered how you mix these. Do you let the synth finds its own stereo separation or tweak it and if so how)?

As for the singing. I think the aphorism “if you can’t sing don’t” is a load of bollocks, cf lou reed et al. However! The vocals are poor and not hidden by the processing. I get the impression the limited range of your singer has actually compromised your melodies. The lead lines seem much less imaginative and musical than the rest of the track. I wonder if you had decided to make them instrumentals if you would have gone with the same lead melodies over your very strong backing? The vocal’s timbre remind me of a cross between “the likely lads” and “fools and horses” theme songs. Sorry!!!!

Finally and at my most subjective. I hate the sweet plain piano (M1) chords at the start of Paranoia. They don’t seem to sit with the rest of the track.

Onto the good. ( may be less volume of text than the bad, but then it doesn’t need as many words of exposition does it?)

Great instrumentation. You really are a smart programmer or at the very least a shrewd selector of presets. Getting lots of depeche mode, numan, foxx vibes but done in a fresh way, much as goldfrapp has reused analogue sounds effectively.

Nice break/middle in Paranoia (2.40) with Guitar and M1? Generally the guitar seems to mix well so you don’t need to sack your mate, just gag him.

Hope I haven’t pissed you off. I’d be pleased with them if they were my efforts.

Summary: Hire a singer get shaun to do the mix.

[dlm21uk]

That's a very constructive review Vortex - Thanks for your honesty. It was great to hear the good points and bad points cos you can't always see either of them for yourself.

The mono issue has always been a problem because all my tracks (so far) have been recorded on an analogue 8 track tape machine, so if I stereo track it I have to use up 2 tracks. Therefore most things have been recorded in mono. In the mix down I try to pan things about to fill in spaces etc but it's never as good as a full stereo mix.

The vocals side of things would have been better if we had some dedicated vocal effects (vocals were put through a guitar effects unit). My mate has always thought his voice was quite thin, but I kinda liked it. His guitar playing is his best atribute (lead & bass guitar ya know).

Thanks for your compliments on my programming etc. I try to create my own sounds or tweak presets until they feel personal, but some presets are perfect as they are (Vox Humana!)

I don't see this mate much anymore (these tracks were recorded 3(ish) years ago. So the next batch of music I hope to make will be mine - ALL MINE ! neaaah haaah haaah!

I'm hoping to do some music soon, so any other comments would help me to focus on what I appear to be good (or bad) at.

Thanks guys. ;D

[Dubsounds]

Hi Danny,

Finally... I got some time to sit down and listen. You already know from our PM's that I liked one and had a hard time with the other. Lets start with the one I liked.

Fall Out:

The intro does little to grab my attention and I think it would have been better to kick straight in at 0:19 after a drum roll or some mood setting effects (or possibly the film sample). The sample when it does come in is cool but noooooo... if I hear another bubbling bass breakdown (aka PURE) I think I might scream. Dan... mate... no need! Its too obvious and too Numan! When it does kick back in its nice but the guitar is out of tune and not very well recorded in so much as the EQ and distortion clash in a bad way making it sound wooly and about as menacing as a wet loofa! There's a whole school of thought about detuned guitars (The Cure being an excellent example) but in this instance it isn't "musical" or pleasing.

I'm not keen on the vocals Daniel. Technically I don't think the guy has much experience as a singer, lacks technique and he isn't helped by your swamping everything in delay/reverb (a common mistake that doesn't actually disguise a weak vocal - quite the opposite). In my experience getting the vocal to sit right in a track is paramount and yet it's so easy to get it horribly wrong. A better mic and processing, (EQ and compression) would have made a big difference but with an inexperienced singer you still have a problem with your source. Vortex's comment on the vocals are spot on but I would just like to add that even Lou Reed has a trained voice and uses proper breathing and microphone technique to get the best out of his range.

Ah.. now what's going on here? At 1:47 you should have hit the hook by now. Is there a hook?

Oh yeah... there it is at 2:37.

Now that is lovely, really catchy. So why did you use the best part of your song only once and right at the end Daniel? Are you mad LOL. Or... perhaps you didn't realise that was the hook??? Easy to do when you have your head inside a track and can't hear it as "a song" anymore but just a load of stuff to be mixed.

Technically, the mix does sound rather "boxy" and is weak for that. I would seriously recommend using more narrow band EQ as a means of separation between all your sounds. The drums as they are are nice enough but don't jump out at you. How easy would it be to break out a parametric and notch the kick, snare and overheads? Get what I'm saying Dan? If you liken a mix to a painting - equalisation is your colour palette. If you don't give your sounds unique colours they become washed out and merge with each other in a grey muddy sort of way. Ooo get Mr. Analogy

Danny, your strengths are your synth sounds and your sense of melody. You know how to use nice combinations of synth voices, you play well and you know how to write a good hook. What you need to look at is your mixing (which you already acknowledge) and also I would start thinking seriously about things like arrangement and pacing.

Whilst I may have concentrated on what went wrong with Fall Out it doesn't mean that it was shit. Far from it! Of the two songs presented here, I liked this a lot. A shorter intro and a bit of re-jigging of the song structure (get to the hook and milk it boy - you know the score ) and you would have a great track here.

I gather you aren't working with the guy who did the vocals and guitar at the moment. In the nicest possible way I would suggest that it might be a good thing right now. I believe your abilities would be compromised in a negative way if the relationship continued. I would like to sse you concentrating on what you do best... oh and make use of the net. You don't have to form a band with your mates from a down the road anymore. By hooking up with people on the net you get a far greater chance of finding the right people to work with that can compliment your music.

Paranoia:

Err no! I'd love to hear the tasty synth sounds you have there and that nice piano hook but I can't get past that horrible vocal harmony mate. I'm sorry but the vocals kill this stone dead for me mate.

Can we have an instrumental version please?

Dan, I think what we're all really looking forward to is the next step you take. You got a lot of positive feedback from "Asylum" but its time to put that melodic sense to work and do something 100% you. ;D

[dlm21uk]

WOW ! Thanks guys for your very constructive and helpful comments. In-fact after reading Shauns comments I went straight off and fired up the keyboards with my headphones on and started working on a new idea ;D

I will aim to use my own "hand crafted" sounds as much as possible, as well as some more Vox Humana (of course!). When I did "Into The Asylum" it was from the heart and I did it just for me (at the time), so I will try to write from the heart again and see how it goes.

Shaun, I will search back through my masters and see if I can work on an instrumental mix of Paranoia, cos it has got some lovely sounds on it. In-fact before we laid the vocals down on it I remember listening to the track in my car and thinking "yeah this is gonna be cool".

[vortex]

Go's to show doesn't it. I'd rather listen to an instrumenal version of paranoia. Doesn't look to good for you guitarist, ex-chum though. Good luck with the next one "danny twotracks".

[dlm21uk]

For those of you that said they'd like to hear Paranoia without the vocals, here it is - The same just with no vocals.

I am aiming to play around with this soon and try and make an interesting instrumental track out of it becuase I like the foundations if you know what I mean ...

media.putfile.com/paranoiaOrig

Thanks again for your comments...

Daniel.

PS. For those of you who want to keep a copy of this (or any other "putfile" file) Let it run/download once then use the 'search' or 'find' facility on your pc to locate all recently created files The full file should show up in your temporary internet files. Just copy it and paste it into a folder of your choice to keep it. If this doesn't make sense, feel free to ask and I will post in more detailed instructions.
Cheers