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.