Purge - New Song

[JD01]

Well, newish - never posted any of it before.
Wrote this at the end of last year but kind of forgot about it. Opened up the project the other day and was pretty surprised by it - I had literally no recollection of it! So I finished the lyrics and sung it on Sunday afternoon.

Think I could possibly push it a bit louder - its barely getting compressed on the limiter at all.
Might have to re-do bits of the vocal too.

Purge Mix 1.mp3

Purge Mix 3.mp3

Purge Mix 4.mp3

[Alison]

Oh, I like this! The intro is great, very different! Personally, I think the kick, in the beginning, could use a bit more volume. I think this is my favorite of yours. The ending is apropos.

[JD01]

Oh, I like this! The intro is great, very different! Personally, I think the kick, in the beginning, could use a bit more volume. I think this is my favorite of yours. The ending is apropos.

Cheers, I thought you'd like a bit more keyboard and a generally mellower song.

[Lt. Bob]

Nice ...... I like it ..... a question though:

Think I could possibly push it a bit louder - its barely getting compressed on the limiter at all.

Why? ..... is that a goal?
Is it a need to really see that limiter working?

To me being barely compressed is the desired outcome and in fact absolutely none of my recordings go thru any compression whatsoever except for a small bit on the vocals while tracking.
I think it's quite likely I will go to the end of my life and never use a comp to squash an entire mix.

Compressing things a lot and pushing things as loud as possible is one of the very things that engineers and audiophiles rail against.
I can't begin to count the number of studio engineers I've read about or spoken to who deride having to compress the life out of everything for the sake of loudness.
They pretty much all say they do it because they're pressured to do it and not because it sounds good.

This sounds fine as is.

These things are, of course, a matter of personal taste and preferences but I pretty much hate music that's limited to a straight line with no dynamics.

[JD01]

Nice ...... I like it ..... a question though:

Think I could possibly push it a bit louder - its barely getting compressed on the limiter at all.

Why? ..... is that a goal?
Is it a need to really see that limiter working?

Good question, Bob... you know what the answer is? 'cos I always do it. That's my normal style of quite loud, compressed, punky mixes.

[Lt. Bob]

Nice ...... I like it ..... a question though:

Why? ..... is that a goal?
Is it a need to really see that limiter working?

Good question, Bob... you know what the answer is? 'cos I always do it. That's my normal style of quite loud, compressed, punky mixes.

got it ..... no actual explanation to answer my question ....... but if that's what you do then that's what you do.

But I still say it sounds very good as it is ..... limit it some more so i can hear what it is you're going for .... maybe I need to add that to some of my mixes.

[Armistice]

As my studio is now packed up in boxes and I don't even have a pair of headphones still, I won't bother giving you any mix feedback.

I'd like to have heard the first guitar solo end in a more definite way - it just sort of of petered out a bit to my ears - it was building nice tension, then after about 2.41 it just sort of lost some intensity... I would have ended it on the higher notes. Just my perception... so take it for what it's worth.

Only other suggestion would be to put a high harmony on the last two "This is a purge" s...

Good song though - nice build up throughout.

[JD01]

Good question, Bob... you know what the answer is? 'cos I always do it. That's my normal style of quite loud, compressed, punky mixes.

got it ..... no actual explanation to answer my question ....... but if that's what you do then that's what you do.

But I still say it sounds very good as it is ..... limit it some more so i can hear what it is you're going for .... maybe I need to add that to some of my mixes.

What I mean though is limiting my mixes quite hard is as much of a habit as anything else. I got this one to where I thought it was tidy. It was only when I rendered it I realised it wasn't really limited.

[JD01]

Only other suggestion would be to put a high harmony on the last two "This is a purge" s...

Excellent idea. I actually tried, just couldn't get there.

Best of luck with the house move.

[rayc]

Cool...the vox could be a little louder in the 1st verse.

[musicturtle]

Cool song @JD01. I think the vocals could use a little push or a bit more high end EQ. You are really comfortable being creative with the guitar parts, you usually have a good bit going on between the parts. I think some more experimentation with vocal effects could give you some depth in the vocal parts so they would blend better here. Some plate reverb or punchy delay might sound cool. Focusrite I think gives you a free Tube Delay that I have found is pretty fun to play around with.

[TripleM]

I agree with Lt. It's plenty loud, and not squashed. I'm surprised you're not hitting the limiter hard. That's great.

Guitars and bass sound great. Love the snare sound. Snare can get slightly pushed back in spots.

Also agree with musicturtle on the vocal level. They're behind the guitars. Vocal performance, I think, is pretty good. Bring it out.

[JD01]

Cool song @JD01. I think the vocals could use a little push or a bit more high end EQ. You are really comfortable being creative with the guitar parts, you usually have a good bit going on between the parts. I think some more experimentation with vocal effects could give you some depth in the vocal parts so they would blend better here. Some plate reverb or punchy delay might sound cool. Focusrite I think gives you a free Tube Delay that I have found is pretty fun to play around with.

Cheers, tony. I went through a bit of a phase of never having my two guitars play the same thing, sometimes just inversions, sometimes picking patterns, sometimes different tunings.

Ive actually been recently trying to do less and less with my vocals, maybe I’ve pared them back too much,

[JD01]

I agree with Lt. It's plenty loud, and not squashed. I'm surprised you're not hitting the limiter hard. That's great.

Guitars and bass sound great. Love the snare sound. Snare can get slightly pushed back in spots.

Also agree with musicturtle on the vocal level. They're behind the guitars. Vocal performance, I think, is pretty good. Bring it out.

I’ll see if I get chance to listen loud on monitors today and have another think about the vocal.

[vomitHatSteve]

Ugg. Board ate my post.

I don't remember what I wrote yesterday when I first listened, but I think I said the vox could be bumped up a little.

[Greg_L]

I think this mix needs to go back to the drawing board. It sounds "hollow" to me. It's a lot of top end jangly-ish guitars crashing into each other, and the bass gtr and kick are minimally represented. It's unbalanced and missing a lot of midrange to me. I think the kick has a lot of sub and attack but not much punchy meat to it at all. This could probably be okay if the bass guitar was in there to help out. The jangly guitars are overwhelming everything else IMO. The ironic bit to me is that the vocal line "I had a choice to make, routine I couldn't break" is one of the few clear and concise lines that I could make out because it sounds like you went back to your old ways of vocal processing. And the keys...I can faintly hear them in the beginning, are they anywhere else in the song? I can't tell. I'm not trying to be mean or harsh or overly negative, these are just things that jump out to me because I know you can do better and it's an interesting song. All the pieces are there, just give it more mixing.

[JD01]

I think this mix needs to go back to the drawing board. It sounds "hollow" to me. It's a lot of top end jangly-ish guitars crashing into each other, and the bass gtr and kick are minimally represented. It's unbalanced and missing a lot of midrange to me. I think the kick has a lot of sub and attack but not much punchy meat to it at all. This could probably be okay if the bass guitar was in there to help out. The jangly guitars are overwhelming everything else IMO. The ironic bit to me is that the vocal line "I had a choice to make, routine I couldn't break" is one of the few clear and concise lines that I could make out because it sounds like you went back to your old ways of vocal processing. And the keys...I can faintly hear them in the beginning, are they anywhere else in the song? I can't tell. I'm not trying to be mean or harsh or overly negative, these are just things that jump out to me because I know you can do better and it's an interesting song. All the pieces are there, just give it more mixing.

Cheers. I'll have a good play with this over over next few days. The bass can definitely come up and the rhythm guitars, particularly the left one can probably come down a bit. I'll see where that leaves me and then think about the kick a bit.

There are keys in various spots throughout but I wanted them to be the sort of thing you only notice when they're missing. They're having a quite a bit effect in that regard actually.

[WhiskeyJack]

Chiming in late, I listened yesterday but didn't get my response entered in before my workday shit storm blew up. It's been an unpleasant few weeks here.

Right off the bat the vocal mix needs work. It's not all that smooth and consistent, reapproach your comp job maybe to Smoove out the wrinkles and dips and dives. A bit of an EQ job to get that shine out that you have been having in your last bunch of songs or something would also help. You had that dialed in so well the last few you've done. not sure where it went here.

Cool song though. Some new elements and levels to your songwriting here are very cool to hear. the synths and stuff sound cool. the synth work is a little bit one dimensional it doesn't really pop so much. It just kind of there. Would be cool to see it in some kind of sonic space. I think that's where keyboards get a bit tricky maybe. I did a cover with my brother a bunch of years ago and used my wifes keyboard to plop a few piano notes into the bridge interlude and I don't know what it was about it, I just couldn't get it to have any form or substance. I suppose the listener knew it was there and it did it's job as an accent piece but god dam it had no life.

Stoked to hear a second mix, JD.

[JD01]

Chiming in late, I listened yesterday but didn't get my response entered in before my workday shit storm blew up. It's been an unpleasant few weeks here.

Right off the bat the vocal mix needs work. It's not all that smooth and consistent, reapproach your comp job maybe to Smoove out the wrinkles and dips and dives. A bit of an EQ job to get that shine out that you have been having in your last bunch of songs or something would also help. You had that dialed in so well the last few you've done. not sure where it went here.

Cool song though. Some new elements and levels to your songwriting here are very cool to hear. the synths and stuff sound cool. the synth work is a little bit one dimensional it doesn't really pop so much. It just kind of there. Would be cool to see it in some kind of sonic space. I think that's where keyboards get a bit tricky maybe. I did a cover with my brother a bunch of years ago and used my wifes keyboard to plop a few piano notes into the bridge interlude and I don't know what it was about it, I just couldn't get it to have any form or substance. I suppose the listener knew it was there and it did it's job as an accent piece but god dam it had no life.

Stoked to hear a second mix, JD.

Cheers, Shan. I reckon I'll have another mix up in a few days. I really only ever get to grab and hour here or there for recording/mixing.

I will address the vocals, I already think I know what I need to do with them: Low pass the very top off them and brighten up the upper mids.
I want to address Greg's comments about the bass first to try and fill the whole thing out a bit more.

[JD01]

OK, I've added a new mix above. (I've intentionally skipped over Mix 2 to mix 3).
Bass is much more apparent in this one. The bassline is pretty good actually. I'd forgotten what it was like - must have been pretty much inaudible before.