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Hey there. Got some new tunes for you ladies and gents to check out. Some of you have probably heard some of these already, in various forms, as I've posted them in a few threads around here looking for advice. But a lot of it will be brand new. I started writing this album in 2012, after I put out my first album, which you may recall. It was originally going to be an EP about being lost at sea, but after I had like seven songs, I decided to ditch the concept, throw out a few of those tracks, and make it an album. So I replaced a lot of songs, redid some older ones, and now, more than a year after I wanted to have it done, it's done! I played, recorded, programmed, and mixed everything, except on Teenagers, which features the guitarist from my old band Presh, and Wet Feet, Gum Shoe, which features the Presh bassist. It was mastered by Ryan Foster at Foster Mastering here in Portland.  Kicktone Link Bandcamp Link Soundcloud Link I recommend Harbor, Focus, and Wet Feet, Gum Shoe to start with. I Must Crush You 01. Teenagers 02. Harbor 03. Change Your Shoes/Drive Faster 04. Faded Rose 05. Ballpoint Pencil 06. Eyesores 07. Focus 08. The Flood 09. Riptide 10. Wet Feet, Gum Shoe (Combustion Stains Part 2) It's a lot of heavy indie rock sounds, with some progressive rock and metal and a tiny bit of jazziness. Lots of variety, but I think it's more consistent in quality than my first one. Give it a listen, and if you want to download it, use the promo code 'goonytunes' for a 50% discount. I really hope you folks enjoy it, and I'd love to hear your feedback. It was a huge help last time, and I think it shows in these songs. Cpt. Spring Types fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Sep 8, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 22:00
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:02 |
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Nice work man! I grabbed a copy, I think Harbor is definitely the standout track of the bunch. Honestly the songs where you focused more on creating a good vocal melody are the ones that seem like they come out the best, it's kind of a shame that Faded Rose and Riptide are so short because they have some cool vocal parts that seem like they could have been expanded on. Not trying to be a jerk though, but I should probably say something - the mastering sucks. I'm not sure if you requested the style you got or if the engineer you used is just really terrified of limiting, but your tracks came out incredibly soft, especially considering that some of them are straightforward rock. Pull some tracks back into your DAW and watch the RMS on your meter, and compare it to some other songs that you like, I tried it with a few and yours average a good 4-5dB lower on parts with comparable dynamics. It's not the end of the world since the mixes are decent, but usually you're paying your mastering engineer partially because he's got very expensive dynamics processors that have a sound which compliments your tracks. Those dynamics processors don't actually do anything if you don't let them work though, there's no point in running a track through a $5k Manley limiter if you're not going to hit the threshold on it; might as well just whatever brickwall VST came with your DAW, it'll have the same effect. Dude missed some pretty bad problem frequencies in the low-mids too, which isn't a style thing and more of a basic requirement as a mastering engineer, maybe he's scared of multiband compressors too? I like your album, but that guy is NOT worth whatever you paid him. Even if it was free, I think I'd rather master my own stuff.
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Sep 6, 2014 03:57
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That's really interesting actually. This is the kind of stuff I like hearing about. He seemed torn about pushing stuff. Once everything was done I asked if we could go louder, because I liked the way it sounded louder on several of the tracks, and he thought The Flood sounded like it fell apart at the end when everything was louder, and he'd rather not push it anymore. I don't know the first thing about mastering, so I was like, "well you're the professional!  " My main directions to him were that I wanted everything to be louder and have the levels make sense together, but that I also wanted to keep the dynamics and not go overboard with it. I did mention that my last album had issues with the mastering being pushed too much so it was distorting in places. Maybe that made him nervous about making it louder? No idea.I did think it sounded awesome in his room, but I definitely agree that some of it is oddly quiet. Ballpoint Pencil is actually quieter than the unmastered version, which doesn't really make sense to me. Like I said, I don't know anything about mastering, so I just kinda let him do his thing. That was only a couple of days ago, so I don't think it's too late to go back and have him fix some stuff. If you have any more specific ideas of what could be fixed, let me know. Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed it even with the mastering issues.
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Sep 6, 2014 10:33
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Hmm, my guess is that he's the kind of mastering engineer who got into it because he had "golden ears" and wanted to geek out over audiophile stuff. If one of your tracks actually peaks lower after mastering than before that means he screwed up his gainstaging at some point; basically when you're mastering and you receive an unmastered track that peaks near 0dBFS (which is ideally what you'd submit when mixing in digital) you need to bring it down to a working level if you're going to take it into analog gear to give you some headroom to work with. Afterwards you generally push it into a limiter that should limit its output to 0dBFS again (or probably -0.1dBFS to avoid intersample clips) and the end result is an overall louder track when considering RMS. Do you know what limiter he used at the end of his chain? I can see from the pictures on his site that he's got a Variable Mu which is probably doing the heavy lifting for dynamics, also a Red 3 (not sure why since he's already got a Variable Mu and another limiter there), some kind of para EQ, and some cream-colored things I don't recognize. If he's trying to do all his limiting in the analog domain for some reason it's possible that he's paranoid about clipping, since there's no such thing as a true analog lookahead brickwall. Most mastering engineers will do a lot of dynamics processing in analog and then hit a digital limiter at the end, the guy I've worked with before uses the Waves L2 hardware version for example. Looking at Ballpoint Pencil, it doesn't even peak at 0dBFS ever, and the highest peak in the song was off-balance between left and right so you can tell that it wasn't hitting a stereo limiter there. Maybe he really felt like that track wanted to be quieter than the rest of the album stylistically, but that's pretty drat quiet. Personally I'd go back and bring some tracks from other groups that you know, ones in a similar style and at the volume you want, and have him try to match the RMS levels at least. He should know how to do that, it's the whole point of mastering, and regardless of what type of mix you get going in it's still totally doable to get the levels you want using a multiband. Don't be shy about it either, the guy's got some good gear but he's definitely not as big-time as he makes himself out to be. His site is kinda shady, he's got a bunch of major artists listed but he doesn't list any specific releases that he's credited as mastering engineer on, because he wasn't - I ran through some discogs and he's not credited with any Elliott Smith or John Vanderslice releases, so I'm assuming he's just got them up there because he was involved with one of the studios that did. Those were two that seemed plausible, I know the guy wasn't mastering Prince or Snoop Dogg. If you look him up on Allmusic his credits are very different, the only release he's got that I noticed off the bat was The Decemberists' Castaways and Cutouts. It's well mastered and also noticeably louder than your tracks, even for something that you'd expect to be a bit quieter for the instrumentation, so he's clearly capable of pushing harder into a limiter, you just have to make sure he knows that's what you want. Your stuff is rock music with distorted guitars, it can and should get gritty and broken up at points. If you want I can do a rough remaster of one of your tracks and send it to you to give you an idea of what should be possible from your engineer, the stuff I do is probably more pop-oriented than you want but you can get a clearer picture of what your tracks can sound like.
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Sep 6, 2014 22:08
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We actually did do the RMS comparison, but it was comparing with a couple of random rear end tracks I like, since I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head to compare the levels with. Used Oblivion by Mastodon, and Hate to Feel by Alice In Chains. Obviously those are two completely different styles, and also much different from my stuff, so probably not the best to go with, but it seemed to work fine. However, I just checked it out on my own, and you're totally right that this stuff is way quieter than other stuff that is even pretty restrained. I was surprised that The Flood doesn't even peak at 0dB, and that's the one that I thought would be the loudest. It would definitely be interesting to hear another take on the mastering, if you're willing to give it a shot. Do you want to do it with the track as is, or have me send you an unmastered mix?
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Sep 7, 2014 05:10
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:02 |
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I sent you an email through Bandcamp's contact form with a remastered track.
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Sep 7, 2014 06:06
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