I'm always very interested in hearing how people put together their recordings, so if anyone is so inclined, please tell your story of recording this song.
Cock - I'm swirling back in time to being fifteen and digging through my friend's older brother's Depeche Mode records. Not remotely my style, but very well done.
John The Raptist - Generic drum sounds, hesitant rap, song doesn't evolve.
Josh Millard - love the feel of upright bass and piano, but they seem to get out of sync with each other before the intro is over. Intentional? Like the atmosphere. Repetitive, though.
The HATE Noise - I like the static/noise in the intro, dig the intro a lot, would have repeated that first odd climbing bit more, liked that. Rest of the chord progression kinda messes with me, doesn't go where I expect it, which is no bad thing, but seems kinda jumbly when the vocals are in. Jumbly but cool.
Bad Boys At Bat Mitzvahs - more my kind of stringband fun. Is this a band? Intro is great, sets up a nice groove, I'm liking it. Vocals work for me. Talk about how you recorded it? This one I've pulled up a few times to listen to while wandering aroudn the house. vote
Longfellow Street - us. This song started as an excuse to write and record something with a new bass. "Rhonda" is an Ergo EUB4, a four-string electric upright.
www.ergoinstruments.com. Since I've never played upright, the song had to be simple to play. We'd been listening to Robinella and the CC String band do their jazzgrass thing, and that caught and stuck. Mallory came up with the melody and lyrics, and sang them at me while I tried to figure out chords. It got interesting fast, had to decide where to draw the line of trying to follow all her vocal changes with the right chords ("Yeah, yeah, add the 9 there, that matches the melody... no wait, it's harmonizing... arg, that's cool... arrrgg... that's not... arrrg") and keeping it simple enough to actually play. It was tracked in three passes on a RodeK2 set to omni. First Mal and I doing vocals and acoustic guitar together, then Cody doing muffled snare with brushes, then me on bass, ampeg 15" combo amp, mic on omni close to the speaker. No FX except for the mastering EQ, compression and leveling. You're hearin' the living room in my house.
The Elephant Choir - Like the dark feel. Reminds me of Sixteen Horsepower. Waltz time towards the end is fun. Wish I could hear the banjo better, recording is muddy and words hard to understand. Still like it a lot, I'd have fun working something like this up into a full on huge creepy band explosion. vote
King Arthur - vote
Ross Durand - I couldn't get past the lofi boomy muddy, it just doesn't work for this kind of sensitive sounding and delicate song. From what I could tell, the song is great. Recorded on iPhone or something? I love that for capturing ideas, but I've never been able to make it sound "nice". Tried!
Sockpuppet - reminds me of software pirate group intros on cracked games for my 64.
Timing gets weird in the chorus. Full points for SID chip fun, but could be more musically interesting.
Mantzfield - I assume this is a band and not just one dude layering stuff? Sounds like a buncha guys playing so fast they can't pay attention to what the others are doing. Cliche too-fast-metal, nonmusical. If that's your point, cool.
Berkelyn Social Scene - Oooh, love the electric piano. Drums and guitar in the right channel drift in and out of time with each other in the verses. Vocals are a little far back, piano is considerably louder than vocals. Chorus is cool, tightens up. Like it.
Steve Durand - my mind immediately goes "I found a new friend, underneath my pillow." Something about your voice makes me think of They Might Be Giants. Hell, this whole song makes me think of TMBG in a very sweet ballady mood.
Tuur - are you doing that with your voice, or is there some odd modulation on the backing vox or delay or something? That's just weird! I kinda hate that I kinda like this. Fascinated with harmonies right now...
im glad we're cool. i came here to win (eventually), but mostly for the criticism and i do appreciate it, and i promise to try harder not to take things personally. im a sloppy emotional bastard, what can i say. back to the matter of prosody... i read the thread that generic posted above, and it cleared a lot up. i did in fact write the words in a way where i emphasize weird words, or only the second half of a word etc. on purpose to form a rhythm with the vocals that is different than how the words would naturally roll off the tongue. however, i could see this, combined with my horrible enunciation being confusing, and possibly losing me some votes because it sounds foreign. i think that spins main problem was my enunciation rather than my prosody.... or maybe both
