Here's the story as I see it from the lyrics only (the "Down by the big lake with a broad in a tent" approach)

-- Girl comes from one or more abusive relationships
-- you become a couple and spend two years trying to convince her that you are different and this love will work
-- she can't accept that or decides that she is not in love and "sends you away"

Is that it? The first thing that jumps out at me is that I know nothing about this girl. I don't know the color of her hair, the way her eyes sparkle when she laughs, the way she tilts her head when she smirks at you, how she looks romping through a field of clover (OK, OK, you get the picture). I also know nothing of you and maybe the things you did together. All you have done is string a bunch of words together that are all feeling/emotion with no concrete facts to back them up.

A song has to be around a 3:30 "mini-movie" where you paint visual pictures that let us get into the scene(s). How you watched any of those MAB videos (or visited his forum) where he discusses "visual furniture"? MAB also says there are two kinds of audience listeners to these depressing tales of woe that are just line after line of misery: 1) those who don't care and 2) those who are glad that they are your problems and not theirs (ha, ha). You have to make us care about the characters in the song.

Look, if you are doing these songs as a cathartic exercise, make them five+ minutes all you want. If your goal is to pitch these songs to an artist, then you have to make it easy for the singer to relate to the song -- and make it interesting for the audience.

OK, enough of all that -- just have fun. Now a few comments on the other stuff.

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How many tracks are in there -- and what is your panning? Everything seems sort of centered to me.


8, and everything is indeed dead center.


Any reason why you have to do it that way? Your recordings will always sound muddy and unprofessional if everything is panned to the center.

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Remove all the effects from your lead vocal -- it sounds like you are in a tin can and it pushes the vocal too far to the back.


This track in this take suffers from "equalizus over effectsus" disease. I tried to EQ the vocals using a plug in effect. This was before I have my MOTU working and can now mix outside the software like I want to. Unfortunately there is no "remove all the bad attempts to EQ" button on Real Band that I am aware of. I plan to someday sing it again dry and direct into the interface.


RealBand allows "non-destructive" EQ and effect plugins, so you your original vocal take is never changed. Isn't this true?

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I hope this is helpful. If it isn't let me know -- it takes a lot of time to think about all this stuff in a constructive manner. Just remember that I am no big expert here. If you go through my songs you can point out the same problems (and others!).

Kevin

Now at bandcamp: Crows Say Vee-Eh @ bandcamp or soundcloud: Kevin @ soundcloud