Harsh Criticisms and Brutally Frank Honesty Sought

[Against Will]

So here are a couple of tracks that my band recorded about a year ago and I'm seeking some honest feedback on them. The recording isn't the greatest, though it's not bad considering it was done with 4 mics and protools, and the pair plus a cover of "Scentless Apprentice" were done in 12 hours--from 7:30PM to 5:45AM in a room that is basically a storage closet with foam on the walls. I wasn't super thrilled with the songs that we wrote, though I thought they had some good parts. A few parts that particularly irk me:

On "You're Not a real rockstar" 1:41--Our drummer came up with this beat that we dubbed "digits", it wasn't the hardest thing in the world, but it took us a long time to get it down, and on the recording we kind of messed it up so it doesn't sound as tight as it should.

c.2:40--The cheesy carnival-sounding guitar line...this song was written two weeks before we were hoping to play a halloween show.


On "Lisa needs Braces": My guitarist really liked the intro (where all the parts come in after the violin) but I thought it was cheesy. Also, after that part ends, my guitarist wanted a Lightning Bolt-esque bass-fill. I happily obliged with something more generically Lounge-act style.

Anyway, I want to hear your criticisms, mostly of my playing, but also of the songs themselves would be appreciated. You can laugh at the vocals and the ridiculousness of striving for Kyuss and Kylesa and ending up with Limp Bizkit all you want but the kid isn't with us anymore and his membership was a terrible mistake far to boring to explain.

You shouldn't have any trouble hearing the bass, I mixed all the tracks. One of the few things I think turned out better than I expected on these songs.


http://www.myspace.com/nelsonxmandela

[Mitchell Royce]

Ok, trampling on others feelings has always been one of my defining character traits.

So, lets start with the most important part: Bass has decent tone though I would wish for a bit more mids. Groove is sometimes a bit lacking but that has to do with the songs themselves, I think. Otherwise your playing is fine.

Overall, you guys suffer from the typical early band syndrome, namely that your sound isn't really cohesive yet. You can hear a lot of the bands that are important to you but your own sound isn't quite there. Both songs didn't flow too well(I did like the "breakdown" in the second one, though it might be a bit long) and your guitarist needs to work on his sound.

Keep playing.

[Against Will]

Originally Posted by Mitchell Royce

Ok, trampling on others feelings has always been one of my defining character traits.

So, lets start with the most important part: Bass has decent tone though I would wish for a bit more mids. Groove is sometimes a bit lacking but that has to do with the songs themselves, I think. Otherwise your playing is fine.

Overall, you guys suffer from the typical early band syndrome, namely that your sound isn't really cohesive yet. You can hear a lot of the bands that are important to you but your own sound isn't quite there. Both songs didn't flow too well(I did like the "breakdown" in the second one, though it might be a bit long) and your guitarist needs to work on his sound.

Keep playing.

Much appreciated and I agree with you for the most part. Groove was one of the main things that was bothering me, with all the parts that were going on I was having trouble finding a space to fit in. I've started playing less because now we have even more people in the band and trying to let parts that need something extra get it as opposed to trying to make every part and every verse snappy.

I have an internal conflict between not just wanting to follow the guitar and not wanting to muddy every song with wanking. I want to make each part work well, but I still haven't developed a keen enough sense of when the bass can lend something to a part and when it should just ease on back.


More criticism!! MORE MORE!!!

[Matt Till]

I think your bass tone fits PERFECT, seriously, normally I back the "more mids" idea. But everything else is so tinny, it makes your bass sound huge. If your bass wasn't in that tonally area, the track would fall apart, congrats.

Can't hear the vocals... am I suppose to be able to understand what he's saying?

Considering you dudes are 15 and are virgins, this is pretty damn good/original. It's a mesh of so many styles, the addition of strings is awesome, seriously, it adds so much having strings, they are kind of buried in the mix... well I'm being told there is cello, but I can't hear it, I can hear the violin fine.

Good stuff, it's a little loosey goosey, but once you guys get tight, you'll be a killer band.


But the band name... c'mon, you guys couldn't do better than that? Sorry, but the band name is a big turnoff, I dislike bands named after people. But the music is awesome.

[Against Will]

Originally Posted by Matt Till

I think your bass tone fits PERFECT, seriously, normally I back the "more mids" idea. But everything else is so tinny, it makes your bass sound huge. If your bass wasn't in that tonally area, the track would fall apart, congrats.

Thanks, I played through an Avatar 112, a Fender bassman 100 412 and my ampeg combo (my guitarist did something similar, that's why it's more amps than talent). Ironically, it was the ampeg combo, because it was recorded directly, not miced, that made it sound so huge. The biggest problem when mixing was trying to get it lower in the mix. I felt kind of like an ass, but whatever.

Can't hear the vocals...

Thank God, the less attention paid to them the better. It took the dude 4 months to come up with some dumbass lyrics about cocaine, Houston Rap and doing unmentionable things to Care Bears. If he wasn't unconcious he was high on something (pick a drug). ARGGGH!! Sorry, I have unresolved isssues with this. After I heard the vocals on the track my soul died a little. I promised myself once that I'd never be in a Rap-metal band....

Considering you dudes are 15 and are virgins, this is pretty damn good/original. It's a mesh of so many styles, the addition of strings is awesome, seriously, it adds so much having strings, they are kind of buried in the mix... well I'm being told there is cello, but I can't hear it, I can hear the violin fine.

We're not really 15, we just have the maturity and musical sensibility of 15 year-olds. And the cello didn't make it onto these recordings, he didn't join up until a couple of months after this was recorded and we haven't been in the studio since then.

But the band name... c'mon, you guys couldn't do better than that? Sorry, but the band name is a big turnoff, I dislike bands named after people. But the music is awesome.

We had a bunch of names, none of which were very serious. I thought we should be called The F***** Ass Cowboys. My guitarist was the only one who agreed with me, so that's our side project now. Someone suggested that, in the vein of hardcore bands (as you probably know) named after serial killers and generally mean guys (Ed Gein, Charles Bronson, etc.) why not come up with a name of a nice person. Someone said Nelson Mandela and the momentum just sort of carried it through. I don't know how many band meetings you've been through where you need to come up with a name, but trying to get 7 people to agree on a name is one of the most exhausting and boring experiences I've ever had.


MORE!!!! MORE!!!!!!

[Matt Till]

Well, the fact that it is a parody of those "Ed Gein, Charles Bronson, etc." bands, I guess I can approve.

[brianrost]

Not sure if I should even post as this isn't my kind of music but outside of the mix (no bottom to the drums, buried vox) it's well done but the songs aren't really there.

It sounds like pieces cobbled together, no flow to them. It's very easy to throw more stuff into a song than needs to be there, the real art is being able to keep it simple.

The playing all around was fine.

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Bass tone is great- guiter is pretty nice as well, but as the others said, the vocals are awful- you'd honestly be better off with no vocals than some of the ones on there. Someone mic the drummer!

[Against Will]

I agree the drums sound kind of thin. Part of the reason everything sounds so distorted (besides the fact that it was to begin with) is to help them stand out a little more in the mix, as I said, we only had 4 mics, 3 of which were dynamic, and I have no experience micing drums. And, as I said before, the burying of the vocals was on purpose, as Bryan Tyler points out.

brianrost: That's how I've felt for a while now. We write songs during practice and the method we use isn't the most effective. It's mostly been come up with a riff....play it...think of something to go after it...repeat. Doesn't exactly produce the best results. We're all full-time students and some of us have jobs on the side. So there isn't a great deal of time to come up with new stuff. On top of that, some people are shy about writing new stuff and bringing it in front of people, and others don't really seem that interested in it. But we're working on it.

Part of the reason I put the songs up here is, while I've had a problem with them for a while, I didn't know if I was just imagining things. They don't completely suck, but they sure as hell are great. Friends aren't much help for giving constructive criticism, so I loosed them on the interwub. Where people hate everything !! In the hopes of getting some perspective on my own feelings and also see any other problems I had missed.

Thanks for all the feedback. Tell you friends. I WANT MORE!!!

[Blavelle]

I love the ski mask thing you've got in your band pictures hahaha