Honest feedback on our band's first studio attempt

We just got out of the studio yesterday with one of our originals finally recorded. It's not mastered yet. Just a rough cut out the door for us to start promoting ourselves with.

Feedback (good or bad) is greatly appreciated.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=264448&songID=4910813

Our band page.

www.myspace.com/chromeheartband

Sounds almost exactly like creed to me. I'm not a big fan of creed at all but this wasn't too bad.

We've gotten several creed comparisons as well as nickelback, stone temple pilots and alice in chains.

Our singer grew up worshipping layne stanley from AIC and I guess his vocal tendancies lean a little that way.

Well, to start with, it's almost impossible to offer criticism concerning a recording that's downloaded as a low bandwidth mp3, played on computer speakers, and hasn't been mastered yet. Having said that, here are some observations:

From what I could hear, the overall mix is decent. Guitar tones aren't bad at all, drums and bass sound pretty good. One thing, though, is that the intro guitar is slightly out of tune; you can hear it in the sound waves when the unison notes are played. A small thing, but stuff like that drives me crazy. And speaking of tuning, your singer has some pitch issues; one line he's a bit sharp, ever so slightly; other times he's flat.

Overall, it's recording quality sounds better than a lot of stuff I hear out there. The only thing is, and I hate to say it, it sounds like a dozen other bands that were popular 5 years ago. If you're going for a nice, safe kind of sound, then you've gotten it. It isn't pushing any boundaries or saying anything that hasn't been said hundreds of times already. If I heard this on the radio, I'd likely not remember it by the middle of the next song. But I don't think you'll have any trouble developing a modest fanbase and getting gigs.

It's a tough thing to do, to find that delicate balance between being marketable and being fresh and different. I certainly don't know where that balance lies. I don't think any of us do, because no one can predict what the public will like. I mean, the first time I heard the White Stripes, I remember saying to a friend "This is a joke, right?"

Shows what I know! So take what I say with a grain of salt for what it is, a free opinion by some anonymous ass on the internet.

Thanks for the input Bluestrat.

Our rythem player is a bit heavy handed and for that intro, he used a Hamer hollow body with light gauge strings. We tuned it several times with a peterson strobe and it was spot on but he just puts a little too much pressure on the strings when he plays sometimes that the strings sometimes go sharp. I offered to play it but he really wanted to so I let him. It bothered me but 99% of the people out there aren't going to notice.

the singer worked on that all night and drank quite a bit of throat coke to help him out. There hasn't been any pitch correction done yet to the vocals. The sound guy that recorded us has anteres autotune for that but he said he'd let that get done in mastering.

The guy who's been doing most of the song writing so far has been sticking to the "typical rock music" formula and we've had nothing but overwhelmingly postive reviews. The existing songs are a bit generic for me being a big progressive rock (TOOL, Dream Theater, etc) fan so I'm doing what I can to spice up the songs but there's not a whole lot to work with.

Our new songs we're writing, I'm doing most of the acutal music writing. It's a big challenge for the guys since they're not used to playing complexed stuff with mode changes and what not but it's really taking the music above that cookie cutter mainstream rock genre.

Well, you definitely have the raw material to work with. It's hard to judge any band on the basis of one song. All of you seem pretty good on your instruments, so that's a big plus. You also seem to know what you're doing in a studio, which is another big plus.

All the best~

my 2 cents,

maybe tighten up the groove a bit. Guitar intro and and some of the drum work seems (ie beginning of 1st verse) to be a bit ahead of the beat, subtle stuff but enough to give it that slightly tense feeling and not a solid relaxing groove. You could probably correct that without re-tracking, but a solid live take sounds better any day. Tone/sound/intonation wise, hard to tell on this format but maybe work on the intro guitar sound and feel. The comment about the heavy left hand touch translates to the recording. Not aweful, but like I said earlier, not solid enough not to notice. Also maybe bring the vox a bit more to the front, eq possibly. For this genere music they seem a bit buried. Best of luck

I had some vocal pitch issues as well, and the opening guitar riff took a little time to grow on me, but I did listen to the whole song which I usually don't. I thought the dynamics were great and I wish ya'll well.

I'm not sold on that outro, though. Kind of a let down after that soaring vocal crescendo.

The outro was a sort of last minute thing. I wanted to do something along the lines of how Aerosmith ends "Livin on the edge" but not completely cop Joe Perry's riff.

I think any millisecond discrepencies with the tempo can be fixed easily. Everyone played to a click the whole time and the recorder was extremely anal about timing. Most timing slip ups were fixed post recording though.

I also have to keep in mind that I'm getting feedback from fellow musicians who hear these little things and can pick them out. Every non musician who's heard it has said it was awesome. They don't know what problems to listen for but for me, having one string a hair off pitch is like fingernails down a chalk board.