new track advice needed

i have a new track that a guitarist and i recorded. i would give great thanks for feedback on the mixing. we didnt have a drummer so i had to pull off a drum track with all of my 2 months experience playing drums so bear with it (its not that bad). i guess you could call it jazz fusion. have a listen if you please. we dont have a name for it yet so it is appropriately named "no name yet"


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/3/nihilitymusic.htm

ok so i posted this to see what kind of feedback i would get with such a horrible mix, but to my surprize no-one responded. i guess that it was just so horrible that it left everyone speechless. the song that was posted was something i did about 7 months ago. this new one i have posted is hopefully alot better. i put alot of time in this one (mastering and recording, not playing) so i would surely love to get some feedback on this one. check it out here:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/3/nihilitymusic.htm

sorry for the last song, i wanted to see what kind of listeners we have here. but again it didnt work.

feedback please!!!

Dude, check your PM's.

i have none. what are you talking about?

I don't know what happened... I thought I sent you a PM a few days ago, but it must not have gotten to you.
Anyway, the first file you posted wasn't so bad - rough, but workable. I liked the musical idea you were laying down, nice progressive style.
The new track is definitely of better quality. Good jam, too. However, when I load the file into Nuendo, the waveform looks almost flat-peaked. That leaves no room for dynamic range, and explains why the drums have no impact. The depth seems all wrong, too. For instance, the first few seconds feel as though the listener is in the middle of a room with guitar amps along the walls and the drums far off. The change starting at 0:09 puts the power chords closer, but the drums farther. At 0:31 the closed-hat becomes the predominant image, but the drums vanish again at 0:42 (which is also where the waveform begins to be severely maxed out). The lead guitar projects nicely here, but the bass and rhythm guitars are hard to discern. 1:21 starts the sweetest part of the mix - balanced guitars and a punch in the drums. The change at 2:05 sees the toms pulling away from the listener, while the ride cymbal is right up front (which conflicts with the "distant" crash cymbal). The big build-up at 2:29 doesn't seem to go anywhere due to the lack of available dynamic range.
EQ, imaging, and balance are the main issues here. Did you record to multiple tracks, or to a two-track stereo mix? If you have multi-track files, I would love the opportunity to work on them for you. If not, perhaps I could fiddle with the mp3 file and send it back to you. Keep in touch.
Samo.

good god man, you really listened didnt you. that is the best detailed response i have gotten yet.
yeah i know what you are talking about with the maxed out levels. i ahve been getting complaints about my stuff being to low in volume so i compressed the hell out of it and used the L2 limiter from waves on it and peaked it about 0.0 and set the threshold about -4.5. i acomplished what i was after but in the process i killed the dynamics.
the drums were rocorded on 4 tracks:
1 over head miced with an AT4040
1 tom track miced with the shure pg series mics
1 snare track miced with an SM57
1 bass drum track with a PG 52 (shure)

i did an a/b comparison with some nirvana songs off nevermind. i like the tonality and levels of the songs. but also understand that this was only my 5th time really trying to mix and master anything. i used the diamond bundle from waves to do all my processing but i have not become familiar with them yet. i would love for you to work with the tracks but because of lack of processing power i had to multiband compress and limit every track then render it and open in a new project. that could be where i lost all of my dynamics. so the tracks will have already been compressed and limited, but i did leave quite a bit of head room on each track. get back to me if you still wish to help me out and we will find some way of sending these 12 files back and forth. if you have AIM i could zip it and send it to you that way. anyways thanks so much for your feedback.
later.

Notice my shiny new AIM button? I just signed up this morning. I'm stuck on dial-up for now, so I do not stay connected full-time, but I'm on alot.
The AIM zip idea sounds like it should work. I didn't know you could transfer files over it. Let's see what happens...