I think you're on a great learning curve if you say that!
you seem to use reverb pretty good, (which is just as tempting to abuse) if you can reach that level with compression it should be great recordingwise!

talent (which you got plenty)  it self is not enough, it should be educated 

Well thank you.

I wish one of the colleges nearby taught an audio production class geared toward people like myself, who had a fair bit of knowledge, but were self-taught. It would be nice to learn some tips-and-tricks with trickier bits, like compression, some way other than trial-and-error-and-guessing.

MaxDB explained things very well.

Actually it sounded great from the beginning with the instrumental part but when you started singing that's when it sounded pop.

It felt like the singer and the person doing all the guitar and others are 2 totally different people.

Maybe you're too used to covering pop songs and when you sing that's what comes out? Maybe try getting the melodies down with your guitar to fix that?

I don't cover that many songs. Well, lately I suppose I my cover-to-original ration is close to 1:1 but that's only a recent attempt to get more notice.   

So it's the melody and not the vocal quality/timbre?

i am not sure you will find what you need there, but you have to find out for yourself i guess

http://www.sonicacademy.com/Training+Videos

some of their earlier(starter)vids are for free,also on their youtube channel,  all the rest is payed, but quite worth it! although i'm not sure how deep they go especially with compression..
i know for natural sounding vocals usually lo ratio's are used, lets say 1.5 for starts, then treshold till you hardly notice(or not at all) the working and when u turn the comp óff you may notice the difference.., somehow

this all depends on the recorded material and your taste and goal of course..
:p

There are lots of good tutorials here, many excellent ones on you tube.
Here's one I posted on compression - it gives you an understanding of it.
http://forum.bandamp.com/Recording/15146.html
I love learning new production tips, I'd be happy to help you with any technical issues you may have.
One thing you can do with layering your guitars is simply duplicate the track pan hard left and right and move one track by up to 12ms, just play around with it till it sounds right, also you can add different Eq, compression, reverb to each channel thus giving it more separation. In the trade this is know as the ''haas effect' - try googeling it, it will give you detailed information on how to get the best results.
Edit***

There´s not much left by the previous commenters for me to add.
Perhaps something about song structure : I think not every piece needs a "classical" song structure as described above . For me the song works fine. Maybe a lil gitsolo or so could perfect this song.
Your vox sound pretty comfortable, warm and "poppy" as JieXiang mentioned, but I can´t see what wrong with a popvoice.
I think you´re quite talented and on a good way to evolve your music (and yourself as a musician)up to higher grade in future.
So, keep up working.

U.L.I.

Thanks for the links Max and Denis! Can't wait to check them out. I'll try to be as sponge-like as I can.

And thanks U.L.I. for the kind words.

Sorry I think it's a combination of both the timbre and melodies for me.

When I said that It felt like the singer and the person doing all the guitar and others are 2 totally different people,

I definitely like what you do with instruments but not with your voice, and since it means you definitely have the ability to sing something I like (I mean less common and overused pop voice + melodies) I should have made it clear earlier that I know your have potential to sing "better".

All under the assumption that you agree with me that the pop voice singing + melodies is uninteresting. You vocal control is nearly perfect as far as I can tell.

Based on what you can do I have a strong feeling you don't want to waste your potential on poppy sounds.


I was sleeping in a room 1 day and 2 guys came in practicing some Chris Daughtry but 1 of them was improvising on some really really nice blues as fillers. Later I suggested that they perform some blues and he went blank.

"Let's jam some blues." "What song? "  "Just some 12 bar blues." "Wha-?"

He could just improvise naturally but he isn't exposed to blues at all and was finding some songs that are not overplayed to perform - among the stack of pop songs that he knows. I played a bit with him and I left before long not wanting to intrude. I hope he looked up 12 bar blues on youtube like I suggested.
That's how I feel about you too in certain ways, wasted ability.

(Again under the assumption that you don't want to sound pop - generally synonymous with boring for my taste. Of course there's nothing wrong if it's your intention and your job is not to please me, but I just have a feeling that you don't want just that.)


And very nice links posted! The stereo phase shift one wowed me :O Damn, it works like magic! Going to do it for everything I'm going to upload in the future!