27-06-2012, 01:25 PM
A nice rich sound you've got going here, with an 'enveloping' bass sound and pleasantly retro and understated guitar/ukelele tones. Love the way the flute fits into the puzzle too.
My main concern personally would be that the ride feels rather too in your face as a listener, whereas the lead vocal appears too recessed. If you're using a close mic to bring that ride forward, I'd pull it back a bit, and probably also try to soften the transient edge a little. At the moment it keeps taking my mind off what feels like it should be a vocal-led song. I'd probably also think of applying a little short artifical ambience to the close mic (if it is one) to give more of a sense of hearing the ride in the room rather than from 18 inches away. The vocal reverb also exacerbates the situation, I think, and could be turned down or replaced with something else. It's easy to apply reverb to vocals almost as a reflex action, but in some cases they can be great drier -- more like the flute, in fact, so whatever you're using on that (there's some kind of intriguing delay/verb thing) might actually work rather well there.
In addition, I wonder whether you might have gone a little too heavy on the sub-100Hz zone on the bass, because I'm getting quite a big disparity in the bass balance when comparing large and small speakers. If you want that much of a sensation of bass warmth on the smalls, then you might want to use some kind of EQ or bass enhancer to get a few more midrange harmonics out of it.
All in all, it's a nice listen this, though.
My main concern personally would be that the ride feels rather too in your face as a listener, whereas the lead vocal appears too recessed. If you're using a close mic to bring that ride forward, I'd pull it back a bit, and probably also try to soften the transient edge a little. At the moment it keeps taking my mind off what feels like it should be a vocal-led song. I'd probably also think of applying a little short artifical ambience to the close mic (if it is one) to give more of a sense of hearing the ride in the room rather than from 18 inches away. The vocal reverb also exacerbates the situation, I think, and could be turned down or replaced with something else. It's easy to apply reverb to vocals almost as a reflex action, but in some cases they can be great drier -- more like the flute, in fact, so whatever you're using on that (there's some kind of intriguing delay/verb thing) might actually work rather well there.
In addition, I wonder whether you might have gone a little too heavy on the sub-100Hz zone on the bass, because I'm getting quite a big disparity in the bass balance when comparing large and small speakers. If you want that much of a sensation of bass warmth on the smalls, then you might want to use some kind of EQ or bass enhancer to get a few more midrange harmonics out of it.
All in all, it's a nice listen this, though.