Just set up a lounge band.

[AndyBob09]

So, I just set up a band that I hope to take on cruise ships within the next 8-10 weeks.

I'd be more than appreciative if people could crit us and our promo video. We're going down the route of easy listening and jazz and want to sell a classy, high end product. Whilst doing this, we want to stay away from ever being compared to a "party band". Do we do this well?

Any feedback (good and bad!) would be more than appreciated.

Cheers!

http://youtu.be/DjhZFX5MmKE

[alibabu]

Hi! It is obvious that you guys know what you are doing. The song list is varied with a good mix of old goodies and new stuff, the piano player doubling as as a sax player works well, and at least most of the time, you sound tight and well rehearsed. One major issue though, is that I would try to improve the audio on the video. It sounds like it is a single mic (maybe stereo) recording, with auto gain (or really high limiting/compression going on), which is ok for recording speech, but a real pain to listen to for music recordings. Preferrably, I would like to hear a multitrack recording, but a decent stereo recording can also be achieved with a couple of good mics and a digital recorder. But no auto gain please:-)

[Lord Sausage]

[quote name='alibabu' timestamp='1414567697' post='2590651']
Hi! It is obvious that you guys know what you are doing. The song list is varied with a good mix of old goodies and new stuff, the piano player doubling as as a sax player works well, and at least most of the time, you sound tight and well rehearsed. One major issue though, is that I would try to improve the audio on the video. It sounds like it is a single mic (maybe stereo) recording, with auto gain (or really high limiting/compression going on), which is ok for recording speech, but a real pain to listen to for music recordings. Preferrably, I would like to hear a multitrack recording, but a decent stereo recording can also be achieved with a couple of good mics and a digital recorder. But no auto gain please:-)
[/quote]yeah, what he said!

[AndyBob09]

[quote name='alibabu' timestamp='1414567697' post='2590651']
Hi! It is obvious that you guys know what you are doing. The song list is varied with a good mix of old goodies and new stuff, the piano player doubling as as a sax player works well, and at least most of the time, you sound tight and well rehearsed. One major issue though, is that I would try to improve the audio on the video. It sounds like it is a single mic (maybe stereo) recording, with auto gain (or really high limiting/compression going on), which is ok for recording speech, but a real pain to listen to for music recordings. Preferrably, I would like to hear a multitrack recording, but a decent stereo recording can also be achieved with a couple of good mics and a digital recorder. But no auto gain please:-)
[/quote]

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, the video is shot with only the mic from the camera as the input. The video was shot with the view of sending it to agents and believe it or not, they wanted it to be as live as possible, and not a too polished product. This is kinda what they were after, I believe.

[alibabu]

After working in the software business for more than 20 years, I know that the difference between what customers [b]tell [/b]you that they want, and what they [b]actually [/b]want can be rather big:-).
I absolutely understand the "what you see is what you get" approach, but I still think that the quality of the audio does not match the quality of the playing and pictures in the video, mainly due to the auto gain issues that I mentioned earlier. After checking your comment in the youtube version, I see that you are using the Canon 60D, and I actually have the same camera. It is excellent for video, at least for fixed focus like in this one, but you will find a lot of complaints online about the auto gain control (AGC), which cannot be turned off with Canon's own software. There is a third party software from Magic Lantern that support turning off AGC, but I haven't tested that. If you have access to Adobe Premiere CS, there is also a possibility to improve the audio a bit from AGC after the "damage" is done, as explained in this video: [url="http://tv.adobe.com/watch/short-and-suite/batch-processing-with-ame-adobe-media-encoder-adobe-audition-cs55/"]http://tv.adobe.com/watch/short-and-suite/batch-processing-with-ame-adobe-media-encoder-adobe-audition-cs55/[/url]. But of course, the best is to have a good digital recording in the first place.

Anyway, best of luck with the promotions, there is nothing wrong with the music, which is the most important part!