My Album - tell me what you think

[RoadToJoy]

Let me know what you think. If you want a CD copy of the album when it is completed and released contact me.

http://www.savefile.com/projects.php?pid=394250

Thanks, Andrew.

[Six Ways]

I'm going to try to be constructive about this, but there's a few things I have to say first.

I'm sorry Andrew, but stop doing things so half-arsedly. I realise they're demos, but none of them are listenable yet. I mean, it's patently obvious in most of them (that I've listened to) that the guitar isn't even in tune. You can't just sit in front of a mic and expect to be able to shit out good songs with no effort, and these all smack of no effort.

Ok, bad points:
1) Guitar needs tuning.
2) There is no sense of timing in any of them, they're all over the place.
3) You need drums, bass, whatever, just more than there is.
4) You need to stop using things from the first take. Make an effort and re-record bits that don't go well.
5) You need to do every part separately and multitrack them, because the standard of performance for each part is very low, and the mixing is not working.
6) I don't know what equipment you're using, but it sucks. Get some decent software, a good mic, a drum machine, a bass, a synth, a recording interface, whatever you think you need.
7) Concentrate on melodies more; I honestly can't tell in most cases what the melody is supposed to be. Make more of an effort with your vocals; practise each bit and get it right before you record it because at the moment there is no discernable tune.
8) For the most part, the samples don't further the music. They seem mainly irrelevant and badly mixed in; the quality of the sound itself in the samples is also poor. Do them properly or get rid of them.
9) Sorry, but Porky Pies is a terrible name. I know you've had it a good long while, but I suggest you change it.

Basically, if you're not going to do any of the above properly and with a fair amount of thought and effort, don't bother at all. Not trying to promote my band here, that wouldn't be fair, it's your thread, but recording the songs we have on our myspace page (and two others) was probably the hardest thing we ever did. They're not perfect (especially not those versions, most of them have been re-jiggered since for the final versions we're going to put on the CD) but they sound good enough to listen to, and at the very least are a good demo standard of quality. We didn't have a huge amount of equipment, we didn't have a producer and we didn't have a recording studio, but we put shitloads of effort in and got something worthwhile out of it.

Like I said, our songs aren't perfect, but they don't need to be. They need to sound like we've made a significant effort, like there's enough passion gone into their making that it's worth people's time listening to them, even if it's accepted that if we do them later on more professionally, they'll sound a lot better.

Good points:
1) Some of the lyrics I could make out seemed good.
2) Some of the samples DID seem quite good and well placed, but generally they were over-used and the quality is uniformly below par.
3) The second vocalist on Sorry It's Monday is a nice idea, but DO IT PROPERLY. As it was you both sounded out of synch and not sure of what you were doing.

[RoadToJoy]

Thanks for the input Six Ways. I do realise that my songs arn't exactly what anyone likes, I just like to hear feedback, good or bad. Could I get a copy of your songs? I'm always intrested in hearing new music :)

[Fab]

Check either of our signatures.

I'd pretty much go with what Luke said, but add that the use of a sample + the general guitar sound in Porkie Pies was slightly reminiscent of of the Manics' 4st 7lbs, and in my book that's no bad thing.

Out of curiosity, and so we can help point you in the right direction, what did you use to record the songs? As in: guitar, effects, microphone, did you mic an amp for the guitar or just go straight into the computer somehow, recording software... and anything else you can think of. Sadly recording music is one of those things you do have to spend a bit of money on to do well, but it can be done good enough even on a very slim budget. One of the songs on our myspace was done with no proper recording equipment whatsoever (I won't say which, lets see if Peter can tell).

[RoadToJoy]

All of the songs ('cept no1) was recording through my crappy computer mic. The sound of the guitar and vocals were just added by the mic being halfway between the mic next to the amp and me. I was thinking of going into a little studio I have heard about in my town, not too expensive...but I wrote these 2 years ago, fuck knows if I can remember how to play them.

By the way I couldn't play you songs (today anyway) it said "Unable to reach host" ill try another day :)

[Fab]

Here's some stuff to get you going in a slightly better direction:

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/ -multi-tracking program, it's pretty simple but it does everything you'd need it to. I'd advise turning the metronome on and playing with that to work out some songs in time and with some semblance of a structure.

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/ -Drum machine, again it's pretty simple but we've used it on our more electronic songs, you can download extra voices for it on that page since most of the standard ones are a bit bizzare and unusual. I'd make a simple drum beat in that, exporting it to a wav and importing it into kristal, then just copy and paste it so it goes on for awhile, this should help your timing and structure. It make take some figuring out but just click some buttons and voices and chanels and you should get it.

If you're planning on going into a studio, I'd work out some sketches of the songs using Kristal first, just using a crappy computer mic would be fine for this, as long as it's listenable.

It might also be worth you looking into some music or guitar theory books or something, I'm doing so at the moment and it's helping a lot.

Myspace sometimes is rather useless at playing songs, but we're sorting out a proper website with mp3s that should be up in the next few weeks, keep your eyes open, I'm sure we'll whore it like a bastard round here.

[Nak.Nak]

Your album sucks. End of story.

[Nak Nak]

Shut up, it RULES!

[Nak.Nak]

Suck up.

[Nak Nak]

stfu

[Nak.Nak]

hahhha-oh boy
hey, hows the bitch laura?

[somaziro]

Here's some stuff to get you going in a slightly better direction:

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/ -multi-tracking program, it's pretty simple but it does everything you'd need it to. I'd advise turning the metronome on and playing with that to work out some songs in time and with some semblance of a structure.

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/ -Drum machine, again it's pretty simple but we've used it on our more electronic songs, you can download extra voices for it on that page since most of the standard ones are a bit bizzare and unusual. I'd make a simple drum beat in that, exporting it to a wav and importing it into kristal, then just copy and paste it so it goes on for awhile, this should help your timing and structure. It make take some figuring out but just click some buttons and voices and chanels and you should get it.

If you're planning on going into a studio, I'd work out some sketches of the songs using Kristal first, just using a crappy computer mic would be fine for this, as long as it's listenable.

It might also be worth you looking into some music or guitar theory books or something, I'm doing so at the moment and it's helping a lot.

Myspace sometimes is rather useless at playing songs, but we're sorting out a proper website with mp3s that should be up in the next few weeks, keep your eyes open, I'm sure we'll whore it like a bastard round here.

how do you get kristal to import a .wav file. when i use the open function the two choices i get are .waver (for kristal stuff) and *.* (for all files). so i have saved my drum beat as a .wav, so it only comes up when i use the *.* function, but nothing gets opened when i chose my drumbeat.wav... am i missing something here, thanks alot!

[somaziro]

awesome found it... thanks alot!