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hello everyone.

my band watches no compass has recently recorded a demo, and we got the mp3s online. we only recorded 3 songs for the demo, and the quality isnt that great because we recorded it in my basement through my computer but still, if any of you are into music, please let me know what you think so we can work better in our music. i am trying to see what people think so we know what areas we need work in. we play soft, deep, moving music. some songs are fast but we didnt record those for the demo.

anyway, here is our site. please let me know what you think.

http://watchesnocompass.cjb.net/

click on one of the songs, and when it brings you to a new page, click on music, then you can listen to each of the three songs.

also, just a little information about us:

we are from new hampshire which is in the usa for those of you who dont know. we are a 3 piece. i play guitar, my friend mike plays drums, and my friend joe plays bass.

i hope you like our music.

Obviously, even if I know how hard it is to get decent sampling with bad equipment, I'd apply some noise reduction, and some general high-pass.. then try to boost the bass with some EQ tweaking..

Also, you might want to locate drums father away from the microphone, if that's possible...

First song: at points, there could be more material playing, even if only some noises... reverbing the guitars would also help...
I might also add some distortion to the guitars.. A bit boring maybe.. I'd add some more rythmic elements, especially different rythms into different instruments..

Lines and the mud: this has a bit better "feeling" (comparing to first song).. although it sounds a little like your playing it faster than you can =) causing unfortunate "mistakes" and such. Remember that higher tempo doesn't make your music sound faster or more "going".. in fact it can often do the opposite..

mother earth...: this is better, although at times I'd try to calm down with the rythmic stuff.. and I'd try to do some variation with the guitar, especially with the rythms..

General: I'd add some more variation into the harmonies. Even if your base cords go something like I, IV, I, V, I, IV, V, I (or in C mayor that'd be C, F, C, G, C, F, G, C) you could add some variation by using 7, 7maj, 9... so one.. and you can often get away using VII in place of V.. even if only one instrument does the variation..

Also, I'd try to avoid the so-called "taa-titi" syndrome, where you have something like a 4th note, followed by two 8th notes.. although it can work sometimes.. and is usually fine when used by the basist..

Your drummer should definitely try to keep the rythm more stable (with help from the basist, which is why having rythm in the bass helps).. I mean.. guitars (and keyboards and what ever you want) can do pretty much anything they want with rythm if bass and drums are stable and together.. (besides it's hard to be out of rythm when someone's bashing rythm next to your ears..)

All in all, the sound is a bit dry. Some (mild) effects could help, especially reverb, although be careful with that. Variation in rythms and chords would also help bring some life to the sound. Since you obviously know how to play, I'd try to play something easy, preferably some pop-tune or something, and have fun while playing, to get the band better in "sync" with each other.

Also try playing good tunes (by other people) yourself. Listening to something is enough to tell whether it's good or not, but playing it yourself can often teach you WHY it's good or not. Working out things like chords or rythms or who actually plays what part of the tune from a recording (with pencil, some paper, and a lot of patience, although it gets easier), is especially helpful for those who want to compose great songs.. seeing what other people do, and learning from that is very rewarding.

It is often good idea to know your own stuff so well that you can play it without listening to yourself (at least not much), so you can have all your attention in listening to everyone else, so you can act better together. This is one of the easiest ways to make a band sound a LOT more professional =).

Hope this advice is of some use..

alright thanks for the input, ill try working on some stuff.

i should just mention a few things i forgot to say:

1. this is our first little recording, it was not intended to be good, it was just so people we know could hear generally how we sound so they would come to our shows when we have them.

2. it was recorded in my basement using 1 mic and a computer which is why the quality sucks.

3. most of our music is meant to be slow, relaxing, mellow, and moving. some people consider it boring, but others consider it moving, including us. i dont know if you read the lyrics, but there is meaning behind every word.

thanks for the help though. i know those songs didnt have many different parts and stuff, but we are working on new stuff and adding to our old stuff. again, that was just a little basic demo for people to generally get an idea of us. but like i said, we are currently adding more stuff to our music. i played very basic stuff in those songs, i can play a lot better, trust me, and im going to try and add more difficult parts in and add some much better sounds. and we did mess up a lot, but the reason for that was because we had 45 minutes to record, and we only had one shot for each song, and i was kind of under pressure while recording, because i didnt want it to sound like a pile of ****.

again, thanks for the help and input. more is welcome from anyone.

I think it's not so much WHAT one plays, but HOW one plays it. I know people that can't play anything really complicated or "hard" but what they play, they play with the kind of "jam" which causes everyone to think they are much better than they really are

And it's not really the hardest things to do that affect the sound the most. Like basic riffs, even with no rythm beyond tata-tata-tata-tata become much more interesting if one plays different parts with different dynamics.. like "Tata-taTa-TATa-tata" sounds very different from "tata-Tata-taTa-tata".. and I'm talking about guitars now. It's even more interesting what you can do with drums

Just remember to keep fun when practicing together. Almost without exception, music that is fun to play sounds better. Pushing one's limits when practicing alone is ofcourse important, but when playing with other people, it's even more important to play well together than to play as well as you can. You need some hard work ofcourse, but if you are always on your limits, the result will sound tense, no matter how interesting it would otherwise have been..

Finally, I know some good players, who can't play well with others, and I know some "not-so-good" players (read: bad) who can bring some much life to a band that it really doesn't matter.

Also, change the font color on the front page. Black on Brown's hard to read.

yeah you are right. i need to practice a lot more too by myself. i havent been practicing by myself nearly as much as we practice as a band.

Joey wrote: yeah you are right. i need to practice a lot more too by myself. i havent been practicing by myself nearly as much as we practice as a band.

Hey, you get better much faster through playing in a group.

mother earth, under my fingernail

That's the only one I have listned so far and I can say that even though I don't like that kind of music, that is pretty good.

hahaha thanks man. we have one more song that is about 10 minutes long that we did not record that you might like. there are some fast parts in it. it is my favorite of all the songs, but again, we did not record it.

Oh, cool, try to record it sometime then

But one thing is really sucky, that I have to listen the mp3's online.
Maybe you could just upload them to some server. Because well, I can't connect these songs very much, and when I do get it connected then it plays for like 10 secs and then buffers again. Because of that some people might not listen to your music. So you lose some "fans" because of that ;D

Oliver wrote: But one thing is really sucky, that I have to listen the mp3's online.
Maybe you could just upload them to some server. Because well, I can't connect these songs very much, and when I do get it connected then it plays for like 10 secs and then buffers again. Because of that some people might not listen to your music. So you lose some "fans" because of that ;D

I totally agree with this... I got managed to download the mp3 as well (without registering , look at the stream3u.m3u )
Anyway, I downloaded the same number as Oliver..., and I think it's 50% good, and 50% bad, because indeed your recording ain't that well, and it's not my type of music...