I somehow made it too! I finished both my Calculus III homework and my essay. I slept for 4 hours this morning, and then slept again from 1 to 5, but after having reviewed my essay with the Writing Center, I'm feeling more accomplished than I ever have so far in college. Now after I do my chemistry homework (which is short and easy), I can just chill until 11:00 PM when I get to listen to Pawns & Kings!
Thanks for all the help. I really didn't expect anyone from here to be paying that much attention to my music. Here's what I have to say about your advice.Crumbso wrote: ↑Thu Oct 13, 2022 11:36 amI've listened to your stuff when you posted over the past few months. There are some great things about your playing and some really good ideas. If I have any constructive criticism, here are the following points:
- Production really needs to be upped (go DI, use plugins, midi drum programs etc)
- You really have to put bass in these songs, you could really drive the melodic centre throughout and anchor the melodies. Without bass, if feels unfinished
- Your lyrics are written in very proper grammar and you tend to try to shove all those syllables into a bar, it can come off awkwardly. Try dropping some articles and prepositions (i.e. instead of "And My Guitar sitting on the back seat" try "Guitar on the back seat") let the rhythmic needs of the song drive the number of words and make sure every word NEEDS to be there. Less is more.
- Get some more vibrato and variation of delivery/tone/intensity into your vocals. If you're using any kind of pitch correction, then stop using it (I can't really tell but you're directly on pitch almost 100% of the time).
You've got the meat and potatoes of some good songs here, they need polishing and other elements added to make them stand out a bit. Get some guitar hooks, complementary/counterpoint instrumental parts and atmospheric stuff in there to help it stand out.
Remember, the medium is the message. You could write potentially the greatest song in the world but unless it's polished and complete, nobody would know it. Keep at it and get out there again with a band now that you're at college. Other people will have things to add and keep things interesting and road-testing the material will help refine it.
- I recorded most of these in a day or two and rushed the mixing. For most songs, it wasn't a problem, but the mixing of Sanity Insanity really bothers me. Also the drumming sound of Take You With Me. That being said, I wasn't really trying to produce them too much, because these recordings were intended to be just demos in case I wanted to work on the songs more before recording them in a higher end studio than my basement. I applied to work at our college's radio station yesterday, and they're working on a studio, so hopefully I can use it to record some stuff. I met the head of productions there, and he's produced songs for other artists including his own stuff. So definitely I'm going to put more time next time into making the songs as well-produced as possible, and it's probably going to help that I have another set of ears to guide me along.
- Once again, the reason I didn't bother recording bass was because these are intended to be just demos. I've shied away from playing bass ever since the school musical because I'm afraid of bringing back memories of it; additionally, I can't really play bass like a bassist. Real bassists know how to add bass lines that stray away from the riffs and chords while staying with the groove of the song. I can't do that myself. I almost play it just like a guitar (and it doesn't help that I play with a pick). So if I was to add bass to the songs, I would need someone else to play on it. Our band currently doesn't have a bassist to play live with, though, so that's one thing I'll be searching for soon.
- This is something I've never heard before. And it's probably the reason why most of my lyrics suck. I started seriously writing songs in 2017, back when Joseph and I were a "songwriting team", if you will. Joseph doesn't really know how to write songs either and I think his style of writing in proper grammar rubbed off on me. His lyrics worked for Sanity Insanity, but not for Losing A Friend. And the songs that I wrote the lyrics for like Long Live Metal and Gray suffer because of this same problem. Interestingly, the example that you cited (Roadtrip Song) didn't seem to me like one of those times where I crammed too many words into one line.
- Yes, I use autotune in my studio recordings and in my live performances whenever I'm running sound. Having run sound for other people at open mics (and at my graduation party), I've learned which voices sound good with autotune and which don't, and I always thought mine sounded better with it. I'm still a beginner singer considering that I only started singing lead vocals seriously in 2020, so I know that I still have a long way to go in terms of tone and delivery. I think studying and imitating my favorite vocalists has helped greatly (one of my favorite songs to sing nowadays is Until The End by Breaking Benjamin because it pushes me to switch between soft and aggressive vocals and pronounce words in a way I would never do in my speaking voice).
- I didn't quite understand the suggestion about guitar hooks, complementary/counterpoint instrumental parts and atmospheric stuff. Could you provide some examples of those? Admittedly, I'm still inexperienced in crafting songs.
I'm looking forward to rerecording all these songs, some with reworked lyrics and music. Hopefully I can get Carson and Ashton to give some more input this time (I wrote most of the songs by myself), and we'll see what the final product is like.
By the way, did I ever share the final mixed recording of our graduation party performance? It's one of only two times the three of us played live together, and the only time we played electric. I think it would be interesting for you to see what we're like live.
