Big Band era styled piece

My machine maxed out before I was able to edit this one correctly, too much information on this one for
my ancient laptop to handle so I will be doing the tedious job of loading the nearly 2 gb's of files for this
song and my daw onto another machine.. I want to share it in this state so I can get ideas before I do final mixing anyways.

The only fake instruments in this one are a vst piano and a vst trumpet.

I know it needs a lot of work still, but I am pretty proud of it so far, it has indeed been a lot of work
for this hack to try and even get it to work..

Along with my face being sore from blowing more horns yesterday than I should of, I am real happy with
the bass line recorded real time all the way through with absolutly no editing.

I'd like to hear any thoughts... I know it needs tightening up and some re-instrumentation, but then again
don't we all.

Hip Hop (big band)
lo-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7329015&q=lo
hi-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7329015&q=hi

Peace!

I've totaly remixed this one.. unfortunatly I had to introduce some more VST horns which is counter to the original idea of my having all real horns.. still, more are real than not..

I would like to hear any feedback from those who heard the original as if I am heading in a better direction, or if I have ruined the integrity of the very organic original offering..

Any thoughts if you can find the time would be very beneficial as this is very much a work still in progress.. and I am a bit out of my range of having a clue what I am doing with this type of music.

Thanks

Hip Hop Don't Stop (big band)
lo-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7329015&q=lo
hi-fi URL: http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7329015&q=hi

Sounds really good :)

I've been trying horns and strings on some of my own recent stuff so I've been learning first hand how hard it is to recreate the originals on a keyboard.

You can definitely hear some parts where they are obviously VST instruments. (although I might only be noticing it because I've spent the last few days working on horns myself)
Mostly on the attack of some of the horn parts.

If this was one of my own recordings, I'd probably tighten things up more if possible. There are some parts of the recording that are out of beat and they're distracting.
It could also do with remixing with a more natural room sound and tweaking some parts where multiple lead parts are clashing with each other... either by creating their own EQ area to lie in or boosting the better sounding lead part while pulling the other back temporarily.

The vocal parts need more energy... kinda like guys in a real club, smiling and having fun.

Last but not least, I'd run it through some mastering software and using a compressor and limiter, add a little more energy to the whole thing.

It's great as it is. Just needs a little tweaking, tightening up and EQing.