Recently we posted about our new weekly feature, Workshops. This is how it works: you upload your tracks, and each week we publish one here and step away from the podium. The floor is yours to talk about the track and how the artist can fix problems in and improve upon the mix and the song. Here’s our fifth, Presbycusis by Jeffrey James.
There are a couple of rules:
- Friendly, constructive criticism. We’re talking about people’s creative work, and anyone who is destructive and offensive will find their comments deleted — if they slip through moderation, let’s just hope we can catch them before the artist comes around to see your feedback. Negative constructive criticism is welcome. Since we’re only weeding out the offensive stuff, you only get one shot — if you use the comment box to insult people, you’ll find yourself unable to comment at AUDIOTUTS again.
- These comment threads can get pretty darn long. Have a quick read-through of the feedback that’s already been given, and try not to double-up too much.
Easy rules for civilized people to follow. 
Without further ado…
Presbycusis by Jeffrey James
Jeffrey writes: “A short little tune with a lot of vocal layers.”
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Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section. Submit your own tracks using this form.
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I love it…..it kind of has that bright eyes thing going on. Kind of lo-fi like you walk up to the mic and grab the guitar being in the recording and little room noise. My only criticism would be to not have the vocal layers on every single line. Less is always more. I would say bring it in for emphasis parts to make it that much stronger. That’s all, I like it…
good indie, lo-fi sound. I think it works. I agree with Joshua, some editing could really go a long way for impact. The layered vocals are nice, but you could really make a few lines stand out by cutting them for a bar or two.
I noticed some weird p sounds on the main lead vocal (like at 0:29). Sounds like there were plosive problems or something and you just used a low cut filter strip out the low freq bump. This still leaves that transient sound. Maybe it is also the layered p’s constructively adding and leading to that weird sound too. Try automating a few down and see if you can avoid that sound.
Very nice.
I would remove the close breath sounds (e.g. at 23 seconds) , because they’ve been produced to sound more distant than traditional close micing. The breath breaks that illusion.
Don’t be scared to push the high end on that acoustic, it has that bedroom low-mid sound and there’s not much air to it.
I really do think this sounds beautiful though. Great song.
This track really makes me want more! It it possible to download this as an mp3?
Sorry, it’s me again. Where do I get more music by this guy? I’m totally hooked… I’ve downloaded this song and have probably listened to it 15 times already. Reply to this thread. The mailadress I use here is just a spam-eater.
myspace.com/jeffreyjamesmusic
(I’m not sure if the other response I wrote showed up or not)