Looking for your thoughts/advice on a recent live recording of my band Room101

kennedydream1980

Hi folks,

Just thought I would post this up on here for thoughts and opinions.

Last year my covers band started introducing click tracks for keyboards, synths etc on a few tracks in the set. The live band line-up is, 2 guitars, bass, drums, lead singer. Me and the other guitarist also sing backing vox. The idea behind it was to open up our options for new material, and to move towards a more pro sound if you will.

Gradually we introduced a few more tracks each gig to the point where now we have over 60 tracks in the bag.

So far it's worked really well and the feedback we have received from clients and venues has been overwhelmingly positive, with many saying it's enhanced our sound and made us sound a lot bigger and professional.

Anyway with the tracks well embedded into the set now, I have been given the task of producing a recording to go on our Facebook page as well as our Website. No pressure!!

The consensus in the band was rather than have full songs as audio examples, it would be best to have a montage of songs in one long clip, with fade ins and outs. 

The attached recording was taken from a recent gig using our Presonus Studiolive 16.4.2 desk, recorded using Presonus Capture then edited and re-mixed / mastered using Presonus Studio one.

Any opinions and advice on the mix and general sound would be greatly appreciated.

I think it's a good idea to get opinions from other sets of ears, before I commit to putting it up on our Facebook page and website.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/arq41aprx5dhpgl/Halston Montage Mastered.mp3?dl=0

 

uncledick

Overall, I think you've done a great job.  Only listening on PC speakers but the timing is tight and the vox working well.  My only comment would be that the whole thing seems a bit long.  Maybe lose one or two songs and cut the total length down to 4 or 5 minutes.  If you're trying to get gigs, I can't see a bride & groom (insert pub landord etc.) listening to over 11 minutes.

Well done again though, and extra brownie points for 'I will wait' - we gave up trying.

EricTheWeary

I've listened to the first few minutes on my iPad, terrible way to listen to stuff really but probably the kind of situation in which people hear a lot of the time.  Vocals are strong, very clear ( a bit Gary Barlow?) and everything sounds clean which is a good thing. I think ideally it would be shorter and stuck on a YouTube clip (stills of the band if you've got nothing else) - I think people want to know you look the part as much as anything. 

kennedydream1980

Yeah I take on board what you mean about the length of the clip, I just went with roughly 1 minute of each song, will look at cutting this down to 30-45 seconds per song.

The YouTube thing would be something we could definitely do, the bass player in the band has dabbled with a few videos of the band a couple of years ago, so I'll look into that.

PolarityMan

Unlike all these guys I think it should be 7 minutes longer and in 13/8.

Stuckfast

I think for the most part that's a really impressive recording. There are two issues that bother me. One is that the low end seems a bit overblown and uneven in some places. For instance, the kick drum seems very loud on the first little excerpt, and there's a lot of bottom end on the bass in tracks like 'Don't Get Me Wrong'. More importantly, though, where's the audience response? There's absolutely nothing that tells the listener it's a live recording, and because the quality is so clean, I think most people would assume it's a studio recording. Get some crowd reaction in there!

Oh, and if it was me, I wouldn't hard pan the toms like that, it's kind of distracting on headphones, but that's nitpicking.

John_A

Overall it's great, very good vocals and playing.  There's always stuff that could be better and agree with the comments about the low-end, but as an introduction to the band to demonstrate what you are like on a Facebook page it's just the job IMO!

kennedydream1980

I going to look at the low-end issue, I think it may need a bit more compression on the bass to get it under control. I did hard pan the guitars, backing vocals and Toms, but I think I might bring them in a bit so the panning is a bit more subtle.

Stuckfast

I've no problem with the panning of the vocals or the guitars. it's just the toms -- they don't sound like they belong to the drum kit any more.

RocknRollDave

I agree with other comments re length of the overall montage and linking it up to a Youtube video and so forth, but purely based on the audio itself, it's excellent, really outstanding. OK, there are a few technical sides to the production of the audio that could be improved, but it is clear, it is a great performance and it would definitely be sufficient to get me to book your band if I were in the market for a band.

Or to put it another way, even only after a few seconds in I was green with envy - far superior to any recordings I've been involved in myself.....