Zombie - Cranberries Cover

[JD01]

Please can you have a listen and see if you can spot anything that I could easily improve upon.

Obviously can't get the swing that the original has - when I was listening to it to program the drums I noticed how much the tempo wanders, the original of this was definitely not recorded to a click!

Oh, its my niece singing - I haven't suddenly turned into a 15 year old girl.

MegaMac - Zombie Mix 1.mp3

[Bubba]

This hasn't turned out too bad at all! I think the drums and loud guitars should kick in with more of an impact. Perhaps have the intro guitar a little quieter and turn up the drums a bit. I also think the guitars are overall too smooth sounding; one of them needs to have more grit, like a proper old-fashioned fuzz tone. She sings this really well, by the way.

[JD01]

Cheers, she actually sung it pretty easily. Took us about an hour. I'll look at getting a bit more dynamics into the intro to heavy transition.

Hmmm, smooth guitars.. I thought about that a lot, I don't actually like the sound on the original! Agree mine is probably too "nice" though

[rayc]

Less click in the kick.
Resurrecting the zombie.
As Bubba said - some boom as the things come into the intro.
Otherwise fine fine fine.

[JD01]

Cheers Ray,

For a start I think I'll just try turning down that intro guitar for now to get a bit more wallop when the heavy guitars come in.

[WhiskeyJack]

I am at the office now listening on buds but stoked to give it a one over on the monitors when i get home. Will reserve comment till then.

[liv_rong]

Sounds great to me, nice work!

[JD01]

Cheers guys

[musicturtle]

Really nice man. As usual guitar sounds are great.

I would agree with ray on the kick being a bit "clicky" and in the verses where it's just the clean guitar I am wanting some more reverb or something to blend it all together more.

As far as the vocal goes, she is really good, and you did a great job capturing. My only nit pick would be on the word "Zombie" - I would have her make more of an "eh" sound on the last syllable, adding the "ee" sound at the very end. It sounds more like "Zomb-ee" which is different than the original. Again just my two cents.

Good work.

[JD01]

Cheers Tony.

[Armistice]

Bit reverby on the vocal in the quieter bits for mine and she's buried a little relative to everything else, but pretty good effort. Agree on the click in the kick too...

On the vocal, it's a good rendition but it's not Dolores O'Riordan bleeding everywhere - IMO it falls into the "really good for a 15 year old girl" category, and there ain't nothing wrong with that at all, but it's down a bit on power and emotion compared to the original, which, let's face it, would be a really tough ask for anyone, let alone a 15 year old. She'll be a good singer though, and she's done pretty well here.

[WhiskeyJack]

MAn shit this is good. You guys did a really good friggin god job. I didn't ever go out of my way to put this tune on back in the day or anything but i am familiar with it and weather or not you were staying true to the original what you have here is pretty cool. I may disagree with MT and Armi though, i think i respect you guys for not carbon copying the Cranberry chicks inflections. Especially your niece at her age. It is very very easy at that tender age to take and wear an influence on the sleeve and roll them into your own over time. I think this is a glowing homage to the song and artist without actually going full facsimile. Kudos to you both. She is doing her thing and making it hers. She sounds far more confident and fluid than the last song ya'll did.

- Zero nits on any of the guitars work. I like the way that amp breaks up! Your bass sounds good i might like it turned it up a little bit though. It is sort of sitting behind the drums to my ears.
- 1:24 - Slight Feedback seems to come in on the rightish and then it sort of disappears not to return. Intentional ?
- Vocals sound saturated to the point of being slightly distorted. Was that intentional? Also i agree with it being a bit verby and soaked with effects in the clean parts.
-That kick does have a click that jumps out at ya when it varies in velocity. And the toms have no meat really.
-Over head smashies sound good. They don't seems as separated as they have in the past. The end smashies might be a tad loud?

fantastic job none the less.

[JD01]

Cheers Guys, I'll spend some time picking up the minor nits later in the week:
Kick,
Make the intro quieter.
Less reverb in the verses (Everything in this mix has way more verb than I am used to)

Yeah, she's not Dolores, she's not an angry grown woman from Limerick, she's a skinny middle class girl from Wales who's only real concern his that she's not quite as good in school as her big sister. She's doing OK though and she really enjoys singing, I think she was just trying to do it as well as she could - I did try and get her to do the more snarly bits but she had no idea how to. Might take her to a couple of open mics at some point. One thing I was impressed by was how close her double tracking was, timing was good and all the inflections were pretty much the same throughout which was cool. She said she wants to try writing a song next so we'll see how that goes.

Guitar feedback, I just did four runs through, clean, left, right and lead and didn't edit anything - its not a complex song. The feedback will just be me altering the volume knob to make sure the feedback didn't get out of control. I figured 4 straight takes was the best way to capture a song like this - its not exactly tricky!

The vocal is a little saturated - its an tube emulator that I like using on vocals, use it on my own too. I just like the sound of it, maybe I've overdone it here - I'll check back later.

[vomitHatSteve]

+1 on toning down the FX on the vox. They end up a little tin-can-y, especially in the quiet parts. Otherwise, seems a solid cover.

[SweetDan]

Sounds very good. One thing I noticed was that the rise in energy at the choruses (@1:31 and others) isn't balanced between the vocal / accompaniment. The energy of the accompaniment comes up a lot, not so much in the vocal. The accompaniment doesn't drown her out, but it's taking center stage there, and it probably shouldn't.