I received an email requesting a review. If you are a beginner in home recording and music production producing your own songs; I would strongly encourage you to read this review. You will learn a lot of things. The details are shown below:
I am a committed follower of your website, and this site made me to start my own home studio. Attached is the song and your honest comments will be appreciated. What should be done to make it sound more professional? It was done at my home studio.
-Mixed down using Adobe Audition 1.5
-drums/percussions were done using FL studio 10.0.8
-Pc used was P4 Ram 512mb, running on Windows Xp sp2.
-Behringer 502 Mixer was used,
-Shure Sm58 was used for recording
-the room/studio is not acoustically treated
Regards,
My reply:
Thanks for following my blog and I appreciate your interest in music production. I made this review so that others would also have a realistic idea what “quality” music production should be regardless of where you are creating your music (at home for example). This will minimize the guess work during the process and would allow the producers to create their best quality work as possible. Below is the MP3 sample provided:
Copyright info: “Blessing from above” by Peter Banda
I will give my suggestions based on the provided audio. These are my honest assessments and some recommendations that could help improve the song and the recording. To make this as complete as possible, I will group the review according to the following aspects:
Songwriting aspect
The songwriting is unique and original; however one way that this song can be improved is to add more lyrics. Although the song hook “Blessing from above” sounds OK; too much repetition throughout the song can be annoying and boring to listen.
To provide more lyrics, try to think of words that could add more value and meaning to your song. It could be reasons why you need a blessing or healing from above. Praising songs usually have great and inspiring lyrics, and this is lacking from the song. Listeners of this song are expecting more meaning. To get the listeners truly engaged with the song, put substantial lyrics to catch their attention. It is why lyrics are important in any songs; it cannot be ignored or underestimated.
Why I emphasize the importance of great songwriting in any music production projects? It is because if you want to make it sound as professional as possible, it should start with the song. An awfully written song would still sound awful even if recorded in top/high end professional recording studios. If the song sucks, no other recording techniques or audio mixing tricks can save the damage. As a producer of any song, you need to put strong importance and priority on the songwriting aspect before heading to the recording studio.
Top producers know this importance. It is why they are very selective with the songs to be included in the artist album project. Remember that recording does take time, money and resources, so make sure you are only working with the best songs as possible.
Spend some time to examine the song. If you find that the song has a problem or deficiency, fix it before recording with the artist in the studio. This is a rule of thumb. One common mistake with home studio producers is hurrying on recording without thoroughly examining the songwriting aspect for further improvements.
Useful resources on this topic:
a.) Six effective tips for writing hit songs
b.) Attaining your goal as a professional songwriter
Recording and Mixing Aspect
The song starts with a drum beat. It’s OK on that part. However the moment the vocal starts to come in, I sense an imbalance on the part of the vocal levels, drums and the background instrumentation. Why?
The vocals are strong on that section while the background instrument rest sounds weak except the bass and drums. You should pay attention to the level balance to all of your tracks when mixing. For example, the vocals are too dominant and too upfront. You might want to push them a little back at the mix to attain the balance. This takes some experimentation and critical listening. You can also add a small reverb or EQ to your vocals to get that balance. The following are some tutorials that can help you:
1.) Guidelines in attaining vocal clarity in the mix
2.) The proper way of vocal reverb implementation
3.) I also sense some clipping or distortion somewhere on the vocals. Probably you clipped it during recording or you are tracking too hot. You should know the correct method of tracking vocals.
4.) The blending of the backup and lead vocals is not properly done. The backup should sit at the back of the mix. So a little EQ and reverb on the backup vocals can make this possible. Checkout this article on mixing background vocals.
The stereo image of the mix is also very poor. I cannot sense instruments being panned left and right which are characteristics of professional music production. The reverb is also not properly being used. The song is too dry. Refer to the following tutorials for help:
a.) Tutorial on attaining proper stereo image.
b.) Beginner’s tutorial on reverb processing
c.) Treating your mix like a soundstage
5.) Some EQ problems do exist. For example, the bass is too dominant/strong in the mix. This can be hard to fix during the mastering process. Since your room is untreated, it will be harder for you to make accurate EQ judgment. Refer to the following tutorials for more details:
a.) Detailed mixing EQ guide
b.) Studio setup acoustic design
c.) Evaluating room acoustic performance
Also I find the arrangement boring and tiring. I only hear some drums, keyboards and that’s all. Why not add more instruments such as a guitar, additional keyboard arrangements? This makes the song very interesting and spacious to listen.
Mastering and Post-production
I also find some severe issues on the mastering as well. Guess what? Clipping and loss of dynamics; see the screenshot below of the waveform:
clipping
It clearly shows that some aspect of the waveforms exceed the maximum 0dBFS resulting to clipping and distortion.
no dynamics
The song is lacking in natural dynamics, almost all the sections are loud. This sounds bad and find out why.
Conclusion
The song really needs a lot of re-work particularly on the songwriting and production aspects. It seems that the production really misses a lot of important aspects and good practices for quality sound. As you can see, none of those problems are the results of low end hardware/recording equipments.
This is where a lot of beginners can go wrong or being misled. They blame the poor sound quality due to their low-end/cheap recording gears that in fact that the number one reason for poor quality lies in the skill of the songwriter, engineer, producer and the artist. This is the most important aspect where you will concentrate the full efforts for improvement.
Major recording label projects sounds good because they have great writers, experienced engineers, top producers and high caliber artist. Even if the production would take place in a home studio like yours and using your own gears, I bet the project would still sound great!
Content last updated on October 24, 2012