Flesh & Bone

"Why did you come to me only to run from me when I tried to protect you? Why did you turn on me when I tried to warn you there were wolves outside your door with rows of jagged teeth and a taste for red meat? I guess that's how it goes when you're only flesh and bone." Get-up-and-dance, old school electro-pop.

Another work in progress from "The Gilded Age." This is about as far removed as possible from what we used to do with Pocket Novel Mystery (e.g., Her Favorite Records). I've been mixing obsessively (literally from the time my son goes to sleep at 9:30 or so until 3:00 on weekends and until 1:30 or so on most week nights) ever since Veteran's Day, when Lori finished tracking her vocals, and this is one of the new products, though I'm still not completely satisfied with the EQ/effects on the vocals.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by saulgoodman (7 comments total)

Obsessively sounds about right (with all due respect). I gotta tell you that I associate your handle here to professional studio like recordings. I guess it is inevitably to worry a bit too much about your own recordings, but I just wanted to tell you that they've always sounded very well recorded/mixed to me.
posted by micayetoca at 8:12 AM on November 25, 2008

I think it sounds pretty damn good. Nice song, too. I think the vocals sound good (on my dinky work headphones); the only mix suggestion I'd have is to push that right-side guitar further out (probably all the way out).
posted by uncleozzy at 9:00 AM on November 25, 2008

thanks guys. i guess i feel doubly insecure because i get so little face-to-face feedback while working nowadays, since lori and i are the only ones working on this stuff anymore (and our son pretty much just likes anything we do, musically). i really want this project to come out well. the last record i worked on (with pocket novel mystery) got torpedoed before we really finished mixing/mastering it because i had to travel to germany a lot to spend time with my mom (who died of cancer around that time), and in the meantime, our bassist and drummer ended up getting divorced in a very public and messy way. and the record lori and i did before that as tangemeenie sounds amateurish to me now. one of the major downsides to not working within a regular band line up is that you start to feel like you're in an echo chamber after a while. this helps. (and i tried to apply a lot of the mixing suggestions i got in that other thread, too. uncleozzy: those articles you linked were especially helpful.)
posted by saulgoodman at 10:01 AM on November 25, 2008

Fun times! I really like this tune. Great guitar part and a very commendable clap track!
posted by CarrotAdventure at 3:59 PM on November 25, 2008

This is great. I really like the vocal melody. Claps are always good in songs. They sound a bit crunchy to me, for what it's worth. I don't think it's a problem or that they're necessarily too loud or anything, they're just a bit crunchy.
posted by sleepy pete at 4:46 PM on November 25, 2008

Hey, you know what, that crunchiness was probably because I had the damn volume level on the soundcard too high.

Heh.
posted by sleepy pete at 6:11 PM on November 25, 2008

The attack you've got on that guitar on the left hand side is just perfect. It's Duran-tastic, in fact. And just while we're saying stuff, I think the whole mix could do with being even more sparse and empty - bring the bass and drums forward, maybe beef up the drum samples some, and let that single guitar carry more than it does at the moment. It'd go more with the vocals.

That's my take anyway. Regardless, this is going straight to my iPod.
posted by Jofus at 1:43 AM on November 26, 2008