Body Thief. Critique?

I thought the meter on You Suck was fine. On "Don't Let Go,"your opening pick up is a little ahead, and some other tom work sounds a little on the front side. So yea a little metronome work wouldn't hurt. But it's not bad. Every drummer can benefit from a little met-work. Your beats sound fine, time feel isn't too rushed or dragged. I couldn't find anything that bothered me enough to mention on "Perfect Stranger" either. The only thing, IMO, that stood out as not feeling quite right were some of the fills on "Don't Let Go".

I think the other drummer dude just had some sour grapes. In his mind, he probably thought he could have done a better job. You have to ask yourself why then isn't he drumming on the track?
 
Thanks for the input. The singer laughed the other guys comments off, cuz I guess his time was up and down. But the more I listened, the more I started nitpicking myself. The slower songs are the ones I feel the least comfortable playing, so some metronome time is probably in order. I'll listen to those fills with a different set of ears, too. Thanks again for the feedback. I love this site!!
 
Overall I liked it. To me the songs seem well worked out. Are they unique? Not really - but they're nice to the ear and seem organic which to me is one of the most important aspects. That guitar riff on the 3rd song is really driving!

Sound and timing wise there's still potential though. Still nice to listen to the songs.
 
On "Don't Let Go,"your opening pick up is a little ahead,
That's one obvious, but minor one. the other one for me is on "You Suck". 1:20 - 1:26 a slight speed up, that serves to highlight a fairly big drag from 1:26 - 1:40.

But let's just put these "hiccups" into perspective for a moment. You took a ton of time away from drumming. Same here, it doesn't help. I thought the bass drum sound & level in the mix was weak. That doesn't help anchor the groove. Most importantly, this is drummers picking over the bones. Frankly, the vast majority of listeners won't pick up on these. Certainly some sour grapes from the previous drummer, that's for sure. If this was the tracking for a big budget album, sure, you'd do it again, but as a "comeback" recording to stimulate interest with the fans, it does it's job well enough. Certainly, the songs & overall band performance stand up.

The only playing hint I can give, & I think this would help anchor your time too, is to simplify. You have a lot of syncopation snare work going on. Perhaps a bit more concentration on back beat & bass drum placement would drive more consistently. Just my 2c :)
 
It's nice to be critiqued by people who know what they're talking about. I really appreciate it. Just a quick background here. The singer got a hold of me, wanting to put some of his songs on a CD. He'd just set up this little studio in his basement. There was no real plan to do anything else. The last time I was in a studio was '95, so I was floored by the sound we got from a mixing board the size of a computer keyboard. (Drum sound was an issue. I didn't find this site til we were almost done. I learned a lot about miking here after the fact.) By the end of it, things had changed. We're getting good reviews locally. The local paper wrote a little article about us. So now we're working on playing some shows. Looking back, though I'm happy with it, I wish I would've put more effort into it. I've always hung my hat on my timekeeping, so I was surprised to be called out for it, even if it is sour grapes. Thanks again for the input!
 
I hope that doesn't sound like excuse-making, I just wanted to put a history to it.
One more thing. I've been on golfing forums where the scratch golfers seem to talk down to the high handicappers. The thing I love about this site is that everybody seems to treat everybody else as equals, regardless of experience. Makes it very comfortable to post on here. Great group of people here!
 
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