Unfinished, but would like comments from mixing and arranging experts.

[Joseph]

It's an experiment.

I haven't been around in a while since I've been busy with non-musical projects. But I had an

itch to do something, and this took an afternoon, with instruments and vocals.

I will get back to it when I have time ..... but I would love some feedback. Critical too .... the

goods, bads and uglies.

wav file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/33co6i6qvij6gta/OOU%20%28in%20progress%2C%20unfinished%29.wav

mp3 file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxxxppw0y4dg41n/OOU%20%28in%20progress%2C%20unfinished%29.mp3

[gno]

Interesting recording. Nice musical performance. The wide HAAS delay effect on the lead vocals is a little distracting, but that's purely subjective. I like the way you varied the instrumentation throughout the song. I would cut out the non vocal ending completely. The backing tracks need to be brought up significantly in volume.

[Joseph]

Thanks much Geno. I have much to learn with mixing .... you could say this is my first attempt ever.

The vocal delay is not Haas ..... it's a double take. I had to leave town the day after I did this last week or else I would have done another take. I may do it this week if I can. With more time and the right mood I can get the two vocal tracks to match better. I was interested in the accidental effect though, because I had not encountered this before.

I have to mix the background better, I know.

Thanks again! It helps.

[gno]

Ok - you did a good job with the double take - it has a slight haas effect. My audio engineering teacher would say not to pan the vocal tracks hard left and hard right, but there are no rules of course, and if that's what you want then do it. Instead of doubling, you could actually set up a true haas effect but keep the delay closer like 25ms. I know a guy that does all his vocals like this and it's part of his style and it sounds really good. I'm not a big fan of doubling main vocals - I like one track dead center. I'm just rambling here.

[Joseph]

That's a good idea ..... I will experiment some more. My biggest mixing problem so far is getting the mix decibel peak right to avoid clipping, and yet get clear instruments. I am using Audacity and have no other fancy effects or filters .... it's all Audacity. It's hard to avoid clipping and yet get disparate elements in, due to their strange contributions, but I am learning.

There is likely some Haas yes, because I had two mics. I try to avoid phase problems but I guess they will always be there with two mics. I can't pan the mic outputs left and right because they will move to centre ..... and hence the double take.

Perhaps if I buy some hardware or plug-ins I could get a better mix ..... I am not sure. My gut says I should simply focus on recording better.

[gno]

Ah that explains it. Audacity is extremely limited. Sounds like you need to learn compression to avoid the peaks and then use a hard limiter on the master buss. I'm not sure you can do any of that with Audacity. If you're interested in recording you should think about getting some sort of DAW - even an entry level DAW would give you so much more than audacity. Or you could by $100 audio device like a Steinberg and they throw in Cubase Lite for free.