Audio Recording

I received a request from Mfour Band representative Mr. Sambit to review their catalog posted here:

There are a lot of songs to choose but I will give more emphasis to the song “Durotto” since its in the first track. I will provide general and detailed feedback based on the following criteria:

a.) Songwriting
b.) Audio Mixing
c.) Audio Mastering

Songwriting: First, I can say that the songwriting is good. But not great enough to grab listeners attention to get addicted to the song hooks. After listening to it, I can hardly remember any of the melodies of any song.

This is where a great hook is very important to a song. A great hook is the most memorable part of the song. It helps your fans and listeners to easily remember your song. The song is good enough but effort should be made to make the song as memorable as possible. This is what separates “ordinary songs” from “great songs”.

You know this is often the hardest part in the songwriting process, even I had a hard time perfecting the process. But the following are the techniques that works:

a.) Spend a LOT of time writing or composing a great chorus. Focus on the most memorable 5 note lines. If the memorable part of your chorus is more than 5 syllables, it will become harder to remember. Take for example the song “Yellow Submarine” by Beatles. The hook of the song is simply “Yellow Submarine”, and that is 5 syllables or 5 notes. These five syllables makes it very easy for common listeners (even kids!) to remember.

For example, if I listened to the first track “Durotto”, the arrangement and instrumentation are laid out very well. But I could hardly find the chorus of the song. And if there is a chorus, I could not find the hook. At the end of the song, I could barely remember any single tune out of the song particularly in the chorus section which is very important.

If you have noticed that in most commercial songs, the song hook is very important. It is one of the primary reasons why the song become a “hit”. Its not enough to write a chorus, you should put strong emphasis to make it more memorable and catchy.

Audio Mixing: Well, the mixing sounds good for some songs (like “Durotto”) but I find it inconsistent with other tracks. Instrumentation wise, the arrangements are laid out nicely (the band performance is great, no question) but below are some of my constructive comments:

a.) Lack of strong punch in the kick and bass. The kick sounds great in the starting line, if the bass guitar lines and the rest of the instruments are not yet added in the song. But the kick loses it power throughout the song when other instruments are added.

I think there is an EQ issue here. Also I think that a reverb has been applied to the kick drum. It would be much better if the kick drum is left dry so that it won’t lose its punch through the reverb.
The bass lines are not prominent in the mix. In general there is a problem with the low end mixing (kick drum and bass). I suggest you can try the suggestions in the mixing bass tips to improve the bass guitar and kick drum clarity.

b.) The vocals are drowned in the some parts of the mix (particularly chorus)– although the genre appears to be rock; I find the vocal clarity to be still very important. I think there is a conflict between the vocals and the guitars. Maybe it can be solved by cutting some of the guitar frequencies at 800Hz to 2000Hz -6dB to increase the clarity of the vocals.

Audio Mastering- the song isn’t too loud or too soft and the dynamics are well preserved, so I can immediately say that the dynamic aspects of mastering is done well. But take note that since there are issues in the mix, no matter how effort are made in the mastering, it cannot fix the audio mixing issues.

Some tracks like “Mukti Dao” have some annoying high frequencies starting from 1:10 probably due to over-EQ of hi-hats. The tracks appears imbalance because the high frequencies are too high but the song lacks substantial bass frequency response. The solution is to cut some of the high frequency but too much of it since it will become a problem also.

Overall, Mfour catalog passes the basic indie music production standard, but a lot of of those tracks can still be improved with respect to the songwriting aspect and the music production techniques.