Work in progress – new song to critique

This is a new song I’ve been working on. It’s had almost ten different versions, and this is the rough of the version I’m probably going to go with. It’s almost a bit too “easy listening” for my personal tastes, but I think it’s probably the version most likely to get me in with a chance at a NZ on Air grant (Muh huh huh haaaaaa).

So – my list of work to do on it…

1. Re-record the vocals! In rough versions I tend just to take the first crap take. The vocals need to be a lot lot better. Also if you have good enough ears, you can hear the metronome leaking through the headphones into the mic during the quiet parts of the singing. I have new and much better headphones now, so that shouldn’t be a problem in the future.

2. Record the bass with a real bass. As my bass was downstairs, I couldn’t be arsed to go fetch it for a rough. So all the bass is VSTi and hence it is rather crappy.

3. Re-record the guitars. There are mistakes all through, and you can hear quite a bit of computer noise through the guitars. And there’s this one strum I do where I whack the body of the guitar every so often and it makes a stupid popping sound.

4. Drop the vocals down a bit in the last half of the last chorus and put in a mean guitar solo of doom. My excuse for not having one in the rough? I have a Peavey Triple X head and a 5150 cabinet downstairs – and I’m recording upstairs. Its not that I’m lazy… it’s more that… I couldn’t be arsed at the time. Yeah.

5. Mix it with some descent studio monitors, rather than with stereo speakers from the early 90′s. I think that’ll make a huge difference I really do. My speakers are waaay to flattering, and tend to be a bit lacking in the bass end, so I end up with a mix that’s harsh in the highs, and too bassy, and sometimes just full of other muck I can’t hear through my speakers.

So there we go. Eventually I will do the things on my list above, and I’ll have a finished song. I’ll eventually put in these lists for my other rough songs I guess.

P.S. I noticed something really odd when I converted the wav. to MP3. Windows media player lists the MP3 at being 3:58 long, but lists the .wav correctly at 3:30. The MP3 I’m certain is the exact same length, it doesn’t appear to be playing the MP3 any slower than it plays the .wav file. Perhaps it has something to do with using a variable bit rate compressions? Does WMP use the bit rate to calculate the time or something? It’s really odd. It’s bugging me.

The other thing that’s bugging me is the song sounds too compressed as an MP3, I can hear it ‘breathing’ and it’s really brought out the compression on the vox. But I can’t be bothered fixing it at the mo. It’s just a rough anyway.