New song - Here Beside You

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thehenderson
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Re: New song - Here Beside You

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touche

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by badmotor »

I have to say... I never saw the thread going in THAT direction :|

Anyway... back on topic: Good effort Sam (although not my cup of tea) - I thought you were going to do a more NIN influenced thing, and then come out with THAT? That's the thing about alot of Kiwi's I think (not just muso's) is their versatility and adaptability. Oh, and the ability to make good beer and pavlovas. :D
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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by shinenz »

badmotor wrote: Oh, and the ability to make good beer and pavlovas. :D


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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by shinenz »

Nice mix on the track
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by voice of reason »

Thats not bad, agree with some of whats been said so far. Certainly it would sound good on radio, film or tv soundtrack. Arrangement wise its good, builds in the right places, musically I think it would hit some emotional buttons. The only thing is that to me the vocals sound a bit contrived, eg I dont hear an emotional hitch between vox & arrangement ....... which maybe down to the usual sterile studio environment ?? eg signing with cans on?? I think if your re-record the vox then have a few beers beforehand and maybe get just a bit out of control.
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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by sambrowne »

badmotor wrote:I have to say... I never saw the thread going in THAT direction :|

Anyway... back on topic: Good effort Sam (although not my cup of tea) - I thought you were going to do a more NIN influenced thing, and then come out with THAT?
A good friend suggested I take a different direction about six months ago after hearing a bunch of acoustic demos I had done, and in the end it was a better fit for my writing style. I still have plenty of industrial rock style demos lying around...

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by Timi »

Roundhead looks like a fantastic studio, of course no matter how nice a room sounds and what gear is used, a recording is only as good as the engineer, but sounds like you had that sorted too.

The hats and crash at the beginning could be "nicer". The hats sound a bit cheap and the crash sounds like samples from a drum machine, but once the song is in full swing they sound really good and blend in well. The snare is very consistent, almost too consistent.... Maybe you had a REALLY good drummer, but to me it sounds like some snare replacement is going on, and thats naughty :wink:

I also think the vocals are a touch too loud, but I have a preference for non-dominating vocals and people often tell me I put vocals slightly too low in my mixes. For the kind of style it is the vocals are at the right level I guess.

Musically I agree with what Mark said, I've heard this before but this is obviously what you are going for and you do it well. Its quite busy sonically, gotta say I would personally ditch the strings and use some really lush pad sounding delayed guitar or something in their place to give the extra layer.

As others have said I am merely voicing my opinion. Its not my thing but you have done really well. I wish you all the best!

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by sambrowne »

Timi wrote:Roundhead looks like a fantastic studio, of course no matter how nice a room sounds and what gear is used, a recording is only as good as the engineer, but sounds like you had that sorted too.

The hats and crash at the beginning could be "nicer". The hats sound a bit cheap and the crash sounds like samples from a drum machine, but once the song is in full swing they sound really good and blend in well. The snare is very consistent, almost too consistent.... Maybe you had a REALLY good drummer, but to me it sounds like some snare replacement is going on, and thats naughty :wink:

I also think the vocals are a touch too loud, but I have a preference for non-dominating vocals and people often tell me I put vocals slightly too low in my mixes. For the kind of style it is the vocals are at the right level I guess.

Musically I agree with what Mark said, I've heard this before but this is obviously what you are going for and you do it well. Its quite busy sonically, gotta say I would personally ditch the strings and use some really lush pad sounding delayed guitar or something in their place to give the extra layer.

As others have said I am merely voicing my opinion. Its not my thing but you have done really well. I wish you all the best!
Timi I agree with a lot of what you've said. The hats at the beginning are ok but I always find that crash at the start a bit overwhelming and trashy for the song.

The engineer for the session was Clint Murphy, who has worked on a ridiculously large amount of NZ releases. He is a total pro.

The drummer is really, really good (Mike Tan, who has been playing drums for longer than I've been alive and has played 40 hours a week with the Navy band for the past 12 years). Mike is very consistent but sampling would have been used to tidy things up a bit, I think.

Most people have found my vocals tend to sit too low in the mix as my voice is too warm and not overly present (compared with say Sean's in the background, which cuts through better even though it's quieter). We are planning on redoing the vocals with a more present, "aggressive" sound.

I pretty much agree with the strings, and what you're suggesting is how we'll do it live, but I think for the recorded version it will remain as strings. I can't see myself ever using strings on anything else though as (as I found out after doing this session) having strings means having less of everything else in order to accomodate the strings. I found it frustrating to work around a group of instruments which I had so little to do with (I did not arrange them), and yet they were treated as the main instrument of the song. Live and learn I guess.

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by thehenderson »

I agree with tim about the vocals sitting too high

Also, the drums sound heaps like BFD. I don't really understand the point of recording a real drum kit when you want it to sound that smooth and slick. It's just I understand how time consuming it is micing up and performing drum parts right, so I'm confused. I mean, how do you feel about using live drums and samples and stuff?

Also, I don't know if those strings were real, but they sound to me like software. I mean maybe they are real and it's just the arrangement, but again I know it's time consuming to record live strings (writing out the music and such) so I don't really understand

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by sambrowne »

The strings are the real thing. It's a quartet recorded in Wales.

Same with the drums - I guess that's what a great drummer playing a great kit in a great studio sounds like. Definitely live it'll be a real kit and that'll be that!

Interesting about the vox...I'll post the updated version with new vocals when it's done, and you can see what you think at that point.

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by thehenderson »

Cool, keen to hear


unrelated side note, your avatar is really similar to shinenz's one and I constantly think that he's you, haha

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by sambrowne »

thehenderson wrote:Cool, keen to hear


unrelated side note, your avatar is really similar to shinenz's one and I constantly think that he's you, haha
It's too small to tell but I painstakingly replaced Michael Angela Batio's head with my own, taken from a photo when I am mid-note at a gig so I have a nice emo facial expression. The larger version came out rather well.

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Re: New song - Here Beside You

Post by thehenderson »

Haha cool. For the avatar you should cut it down to head and shoulders or something

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