Your opinions on this recording

[quasimodonyc]

Sounds good, except I don't like that aco gtr sound and the toms sound like they are panned too far to the left and right - kinda took me out of the song when they came in.

[usinare]

nice music and good recording.

[Mark Haliday]

Generally very nice (nice mp3 encoding by the way, played very well on my rotten old laptop !)

Main gripes is, the Acoustic guitar is the driving instrument in this song : but its guts have been taken out by excessive low freq cutoff, this means it stands in the mix like an ornemental piece instead of driving the thing like it should.
If you have too much low mids in the instrument, try homing on the offending frequency range with a bell curve EQ and attenuate it gently, instead of shelf or cutoff eq. If you use the Digidesign EQ, beware of the low shelf eq, it tends to "emasculate" sounds, at least to my ears.
Maybe the guitar should even stand in the center (not sure about that though).
The drums are a little too mid range (this tends to be exagerated by the reverb or whatever space effect has been used), and this feels like lack of "presence" and generally does not sound as open as the rest, like the nice vocal track. They need to have their frequency range "widened", notably snare and toms. Of course it all depends on what sound you have coming from the mics...

Good luck searching

[Jeff Schmidt]

I agree with the above opinions about the acoustic being shaved a bit much on the low end and the panning of the toms.

It's a very good song, well recorded and sounds good. It gives the listener a solid idea of what going to see you live will be like.

However, If your goal is to have the big slick "nashville" sound, my opinion is that you're not done with this track.

You have all the foundational elements but you still need to add many many many many more instruments to fill the song out and build it up.

Guitar parts need to be doubled and tripled with different guitars. You'll have to write some accentuating guitar parts to be added as well.

Add a bigger piano part or 2 and some synths.

Listen to the stuff you'd like to have your sound be in the same leauge with and realize it's not just 4 or 5 people playing a song. They played the song and went back and added lots of filler parts on top.

It's all created by layering dozens of sounds in the right places to build up the big hyper produced "slickness" you refer to.

Beware though. After your done, your songs may just sound over produced. There's a lot to be said for minimalism.

Just ask Norah Jones.

Good luck!

Please re-post if you go back and get slick - I'd love to hear the difference! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[TrippSTRAT]

I posted this same message on the Digi 001 forum to see what everybody thought also. This is a song from my band that I wrote. We recorded in a nice Pro Tools TDM studio and have spent a lot of time. However, a few of the band members are still not happy with the overall sound. They are wanting more of a slick, polished Nashville sound. Anyway, I would really appreciate your opinions on the recording of this song. Tell me everything bad and good about it. Thanks. I'll try to get the link working. Even Angels

[TrippSTRAT]

Thank you for all the comments. We are going to go back and redo a few things and maybe add a little more also. I'll repost it when we get done. Thanks.

[s2n]

Most of everything is either left or right...or sounds terribly auto-panned! Your panning choices are "interesting" at best. That lead would sound better coming in at the middle...and staying there. You might also wanna try the acoustic through PS22 (Stereo grand preset) to widen it a bit. Maybe even re-track it with two mics this time...hard left/right panning afterwards. At least the B3 should be stereo underneath everything!
Pay attention to panning.

[Mack McLaughlin]

I listened to your track too and agree with many of the posts above. I think the most offending thing is the panning, particularly the drums. I also agree with moving the guitar closer to center.

I do not have much experience with country as most of my experience is with big bands or concert bands, but it was nice listening. I am more of a purist and kinda like the simpler sound. From a non-engineering standpoint (most of my experience is live sound...), too much music sounds alike and actually makes you tired listening to it. Simpler (like you have it) may be drastically better than trying to emulate everything else.

I look forward to seeing any changes you make!

Mack