• Artificial Night - My Band
    45 replies, posted
So my band, Artificial Night just got a new bassist with a semi-professional studio,and have finally started to record some stuff. We've very quickly cobbled together a basic Myspace. On it is a cover of a Porcupine Tree song that we put together over a couple of weeks, as well as a very very rough instrumental version of a song I wrote, played entirely by our bassist with some sampled drums to give an idea of our writing style. [URL]http://www.myspace.com/artificialnight[/URL] Feedback would be great and I hope I'm not breaking any rules, the rules thread said nothing about making a thread about your own band. I think. I sing and play the lead guitar on the PT song. Edit: I am aware of some timing issues and the fact that the bass is mixed too loudly. We made the mistake of recording everything else before the drums due to it being late at night when we started recording.
I remembered that you once said your band plays progressive groove metal, so I took a listen I was not dissapointed not dissapointed at all
I liked it, I thought the rhythm guitar at the beginning was rather too muted. [editline]06:37PM[/editline] Not sure it's just because it's a WIP or something but I also think the drums should come through a little more as well. Otherwise you sound great.
Sounds alright, I liked the instrumental.
is there a way to get a mp3 of the instrumental? its really good
Wow I'm surprised you guys like Medicated. Personally I thought it was repetitive and boring without vocals. MySpace isn't working right at the moment, so you can't download it. In other news, we have a lyrical theme for the Medicated, we've decided to write a concept/story based EP/album. So hopefully writing lyrics will become a bit easier now.
[QUOTE=kitthehacker;23320456]Wow I'm surprised you guys like Medicated. Personally I thought it was repetitive and boring without vocals. [B]MySpace isn't working right at the moment, so you can't download it[/B].[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure Myspace isn't meant to let you download songs... Which is a pain in the ass sometimes, my friend writes music and has trouble distributing it, Free rapidshare accounts only allow 10 downloads per upload or something. [editline]09:54PM[/editline] I quite liked your instrumental... Crap I sound like an echo :\
Kinda reminds me of Life by Townsend, at least for the first part. My over all reaction: [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/adieu/1239300147791.gif[/img]
[QUOTE=BagMinge101;23279568]I liked it, I thought the rhythm guitar at the beginning was rather too muted. [editline]06:37PM[/editline] Not sure it's just because it's a WIP or something but I also think the drums should come through a little more as well. Otherwise you sound great.[/QUOTE] The problem with the rhythm guitar would be that our bassist sight read it, it was really just a quick sketch of the song. It's also meant to be on an acoustic, so the final version should have more brightness and ring. I agree with the drums, on both the tracks. We used a crappy drum kit to record the acoustic drums on the cover, and the mic setup wasn't all that great, so I don't know if it's that or the mix, I'll talk to Ashley (bassist/backup vocals/production) about it.
Listening to the PT cover, sounds overall pretty nice. I'm going to offer a few constructive criticisms, sorry if you're already aware of these issues. To be brutally honest, I don't like your voice (sorry :v:). However, I think it would sound a lot better if you were singing a bit harder. It kinda sounds like you're afraid of singing too loudly or you're just holding back a little bit. Could make a huge difference. Harmonies were really nice. The rhythm guitar is well played, but in places it should be played harder. There a few transitions where the strummed acoustic guitar is introduced, and it should hit you in the face a bit more. It sounds like a stronger pick attack would overall improve the sound. The acoustic guitar parts are just lacking in tone really. Leads were pretty well nailed for the most part, would sound nicer with a better balanced mix but you said you were aware of that. The instrumental track could come out quite nicely too once it has some leads/vocals. Work on your mixing and it will sound pretty damn awesome. I can offer some assistance if you like, I'm quite new to it myself but I've had some really good feedback on it (I won't steal your thread with my own songs :v:). I really dig this kind of music, it's very similar to my writing style (that is heavily PT and Opeth inspired :v:).
[QUOTE=TheGuru;23329056]Listening to the PT cover, sounds overall pretty nice. I'm going to offer a few constructive criticisms, sorry if you're already aware of these issues. To be brutally honest, I don't like your voice (sorry :v:). However, I think it would sound a lot better if you were singing a bit harder. It kinda sounds like you're afraid of singing too loudly or you're just holding back a little bit. Could make a huge difference. Harmonies were really nice. The rhythm guitar is well played, but in places it should be played harder. There a few transitions where the strummed acoustic guitar is introduced, and it should hit you in the face a bit more. It sounds like a stronger pick attack would overall improve the sound. The acoustic guitar parts are just lacking in tone really. Leads were pretty well nailed for the most part, would sound nicer with a better balanced mix but you said you were aware of that. The instrumental track could come out quite nicely too once it has some leads/vocals. Work on your mixing and it will sound pretty damn awesome. I can offer some assistance if you like, I'm quite new to it myself but I've had some really good feedback on it (I won't steal your thread with my own songs :v:). I really dig this kind of music, it's very similar to my writing style (that is heavily PT and Opeth inspired :v:).[/QUOTE] Thanks for the comments. I tried being a bit more forceful with my vocals but it ended up sounding overly dramatic. We decided midway through that I'm just not very good at replicating Steven Wilson's style of vocals (I have too much power and vibrato), but we didn't want to scrap what we had done. We've taken that in mind when writing our own vocals. I agree with the stuff about the acoustic guitar as well to an extent, although I thought that for the parts where there is acoustic in the PT song required a bit more subtlety, but personal taste I suppose. The mixing stuff, yeah we didn't put a huge amount of time into it because we just wanted to be able to show people what we can do. I've heard some other things that he's properly produced/mixed and it's sounded pretty good. Thanks for actually being constructive, it's nice to hear people saying it was good, but this sort of stuff is really much more helpful.
Hate to be bumping an old thread but I thought I'd let you guys know that we have the proper version of Medicated up now, vocals included, and with proper drums and mixing to be added whenever Ashley gets his interface fixed. We've recorded the drums, he just can't master them and export the audio and whatnot. So you'll have to settle for the scratch take we did. Still, comments would be cool. Thanks. Spread the word and all that shit. [b]EDIT[/b]: Medicated also has a 2 minute instrumental opener now, which we have taken to calling Liquid Kitten. I for one have no idea why.
For your drum tracks do you have a mic on the bass drum? Because I can't even hear it all.
[QUOTE=Mokkan13;23327182]I'm pretty sure Myspace isn't meant to let you download songs... Which is a pain in the ass sometimes, my friend writes music and has trouble distributing it, Free rapidshare accounts only allow 10 downloads per upload or something. [/QUOTE] There is an option on myspace to let other people download the songs
[QUOTE=darkrei9n;24312691]For your drum tracks do you have a mic on the bass drum? Because I can't even hear it all.[/QUOTE] Yeah, it's probably due to the lack of real mixing for the stereo mix (we've mainly been working on a 5.1 mix) and myspace's quality rapeage.
I see you guys are in Australia. If one day you guys ever rock up in NSW and do a show there, I [B]will[/B] be there! Medicated and that other song on the myspace are really cool chill-out songs, and although I never actually listen to the words in lyrics, the singer is good. Love 'liquid kitten', I don't really listen to much acoustic stuff, mostly metal, so it's a nice break from DJENT DJENT DJENT CHUG DJENT CHUG WHEEEEE. Good luck to the band, hope you guys get noticed by some big rich dude who donates all his/her cash to you with no strings attached.
[QUOTE=gnoob;24337194]I see you guys are in Australia. If one day you guys ever rock up in NSW and do a show there, I [B]will[/B] be there! Medicated and that other song on the myspace are really cool chill-out songs, and although I never actually listen to the words in lyrics, the singer is good. Love 'liquid kitten', I don't really listen to much acoustic stuff, mostly metal, so it's a nice break from DJENT DJENT DJENT CHUG DJENT CHUG WHEEEEE. Good luck to the band, hope you guys get noticed by some big rich dude who donates all his/her cash to you with no strings attached.[/QUOTE] Thanks alot man! There is a possibility that some of our shows in the next couple of years will be in NSW and Victoria, still very much in the air but we might be going with another band to do some stuff interstate. Pretty slim at the moment though. If anyone wants high quality versions of the recordings you can give me your email and I can send you the MP3s.
For some reason most peoples bands on here suck balls Yours doesn't; I approve. I'm gonna send the page to my prog buddies
If you want updates when this thread inevitably gets pushed to the back pages you can add us on Facebook. Edit: You can now download a relatively high quality version of the current recording of Medicated here: [url]http://www.mediafire.com/?mye4lxio717rhh9[/url]
A much higher quality version of Medicated with our actual drummer playing on his amazing kit and better mixing is ready now. It can be downloaded here: [URL]http://www.mediafire.com/?17i412kqmo3lxth[/URL] Ashley is working on the final version with even better mixing, vocal harmonies and some synth parts at the moment, and that should be finished in a few weeks. That's going to be followed by a new song that Medicated segues into. In a much more Opeth-esque style with some death metal influences. It's almost finished, and should be demoed within the next couple of months.
[QUOTE=Mokkan13;23327182]I'm pretty sure Myspace isn't meant to let you download songs... Which is a pain in the ass sometimes, my friend writes music and has trouble distributing it, Free rapidshare accounts only allow 10 downloads per upload or something. [editline]09:54PM[/editline] I quite liked your instrumental... Crap I sound like an echo :\[/QUOTE] Torrents are a good way of sharing albums.
[QUOTE=kirderf;24752299]Torrents is a good way of sharing albums.[/QUOTE] Quite an idea. Shocked I hadn't thought of it myself, I shall pass this on to him. Thanks.
This band is not bad at all. I think it can end up really good if all of you are willing to dedicate a lot of your time to it!
I haven't updated in a while as we've been more focused on writing and rehearsing lately, but we have some news. There's now a new version of Medicated with vocal harmonies, and an entirely new song should be up on the Myspace in a little bit after it processes. The new song is an instrumental piece that Ashley, our bassist wrote for his final school music assessment, which we then expanded on. It's very, very prog-metal, with a heavy Dream Theater influence. Everything except the sax in the recording is played by him as he is a crazy multi instrumentalist person. We, for the moment have no plans to re-record it as we are working towards our first real gig and a few band competitions, but as soon as we finish up with these we're going to get down to recording the new Opeth style song and this. EDIT: There we go, new song is working.
Just bumping to see if I can get any feedback on the new song. I'll leave the thread until a new update if I get none.
i don't particularly enjoy progressive rock because it's usually overtly about musicianship and not songwriting but it wasn't too bad if i heard it out of context i would certainly be able to tell that it was inspired by porcupine tree
[QUOTE=thisispain;25355443]i don't particularly enjoy progressive rock because it's usually overtly about musicianship and not songwriting but it wasn't too bad if i heard it out of context i would certainly be able to tell that it was inspired by porcupine tree[/QUOTE] I don't want to sound pretentious, but Prog is entirely about the song writing, progressive music is called progressive because the way it is written is through the progression of ideas rather than verse, chorus, verse structure like in pop and other forms of music. Several prog bands happen to be very technical and half the time it is unnecessary, but good prog is all about the writing.
This is awesome. If you released an album, I would totally buy it. I really like the vocals, to be honest. Although the songs do seem a bit drawn out, I realize it's basically raw music you're working with and an album would (hopefully) be trimmed to 3-6 minute tracks.
I approve of this. Very, VERY great stuff you got there.
I need to have a listen to the new version of Medicated and the other song The version of Medicated I have still sits proudly on my Mp3 player
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