critique my bands reggae cover?

stinger12345 · #1 04-05-2010, 09:13 PM

It's a cover of "Lay Me Down" originally by Dirty Heads w/ Rome. This is the first recording of decent quality that my band has made. We have a drummer, but for quality purposes, I made a midi drum track with garageband. I'd like to know what you think about it, especially the bass. I recorded through the line-out of my LMII into a fastrack pro. The vocals are pretty bad quality, they were recorded by the macbook's built in mic. That said...turn the bass up, and hopefully it's fairly decent!!! onelove

http://www.zshare.net/audio/74648547775e8a9e/

Deluge Of Sound · #2 04-05-2010, 09:41 PM

Well, it doesn't sound like reggae... more like a lukewarm sublime leftovers...

But I checked out the original, and its clear that its not your fault.

The bass is solid, I like the tone & the groove. In fact, I'd say that's the highlight. That and the Dub 101 reverb'd snare at :30-ish. I always love hearing that snare.

Overall I suggest a little less Brad Nowell and a little more Bunny Wailer.

stinger12345 · #3 04-06-2010, 12:19 AM

Thanks for the reply, and I will agree with your crack about it not being reggae, that's definitely bad titling by me... It's the southern cal kind, I push to sound more roots in our originals. Although I wanna hear everything, I'm mostly focused on comments about the bass. This is my first reggae band, and I'd like to know how well I'm doing with the genre.

ebola zaire · #4 04-07-2010, 02:55 AM

i think its good! the bass sounds great! i think you nailed it. the bass was the best thing

stinger12345 · #5 04-10-2010, 05:38 PM

Thanks for the reply. One of the hardest things I've come across while forming a college reggae band is avoiding sounding too much like sublime. It's tough since they pretty much wrote the book on the punk/reggae style I love. It's been hard to find a singer that isn't trying to be too much like Bradley.