Life Force - Various Stages

[Lie Mf B]

I'm working hard on a long new album of retro rock/progressive/funk versions of NES songs, and I'm planning to post most songs here, one at a time, to get some constructive criticism before they're finished.

So here's one of them -- a 3-minute medley of a few stages in Lifeforce. I'm especially curious about what you think about the tempo and the timing of the rhythm/drums in this one.

http://www.update.uu.se/~lidbjork/dvd/LieMfB_-_Lifeforce_mixdown_2008-10-19.mp3

(Please don't spread the song on the internet before I get the chance to release a final version.)

Thanks in advance!

Mutherpluckin' B

http://lidbjork.homelinux.org/nintendo

[evktalo]

"Funk/progressive/retro.." now that sounds good to me! And the track doesn't disappoint.

Tempo and rhythms, no problems with those. I like the drum/bass arrangement. It's busy, it's not your standard rock groove, but it's not "look what I can do!" either. :) The guitars are more straightforward, they keep it solid and not that "difficult" to listen to. But yet the rhythm backing gives a lot of interesting stuff to listen to. Great there imho.

At the first listen the sound bothered me a bit. The mix feels sort of hollow and the instruments, I felt, were too separate from each other. On the second listen I've gotten used to it and it conveys a sense of space. Which is appropriate for the source.

On the first listen I also was going to comment that the playing didn't sound 100% fluid and relaxed (something like 95% anyway), but now I have a hard time pointing out where exactly those 5% are.. Maybe it's that it's got a "recorded in bits" feel rather than "live" feel - I'm really just nitpicking. Good, versatile playing, great sounds, nothing to complain about.

I really, really, like this. I hope to see you finish it up soon. :)


--Eino

[Lie Mf B]

Thanks a lot for your extensive response. And it always makes me happy when other people point out things that I've thought about myself.

I agree about the "hollow" sound. I think it comes partly as a reaction to my many dense and "crowded" mixes with many instruments. But I think I'll try narrowing the stereo field a little and thicken the EQ, while keeping some "sense of space".

And "recorded in bits" ... you bet! The channel window in Audition looks like a rag carpet, as with all my songs. :) But this usually goes unnoticed when one listens to the song. I think the fragmented feel of this track stems more from the structure/arrangement, the many guitar and keyboard parts. I might rerecord the wah-wah keyboard solo with another sound to knit the thing together more.

Thanks again! Feedback like this is wonderful when you record albums!

[Dafydd]

I personally like to have a solid bass to hold on to, but that's just me. The bass is not only everywhere (which is really cool), but it's also a bit weak compared to the rest. 1:45-1:50 seemed to have slight timing issues. 2:20 and around there was a little messy. At 2:40 things didn't really feel like they were in tune.

In general, I think this could use some tightening and beefing up, especially in the lower frequencies, but that's me.

[Rozovian]

an all-nordic thread. yay.

The first minute is messy, but it gets pretty cool after that. Balancing the parts a bit more would be good, you've got a lot of different writing on guitars panned opposite each other. Some panned delay or plain ol' reverb might even out the balance a bit.

The phaser on the synth is pretty annoying.

The drum writing sound fine to me, but they're mixed kind'a quiet compared to the guitars... compared to pretty much everything else in the track.

Other than that, it's pretty enjoyable. Good stuff, good luck with the album.

[Lie Mf B]

Thanks again, ya'all!
I've been looking into most things mentioned, but there isn't much I wanna spend too much time on in this track. I've raised the bass frequencies, narrowed the stereo field a bit, raised the drums slightly. Might fix some timing issues here and there.

I will probably re-record the break in the middle to make it better. I've also considered stripping the intro and just make smooth succession jam kind of intro to get rid of some of the mess there. Depends on the preceding track on the album.

Either way, I think this is the weakest track of all of the album tracks recorded so far, and it might not even make it to the album. (Will be on my site eventually, anyway).