The Pastafarian

fritsthegirl

fritsthegirl

Taste of home
I'm not religious, but I probably think about it as often as someone who is. I didn't know at the time of writing this song that Gong had dedicated a whole album title to Bertrand Russell's idea of Flying teapots. It's such a brilliant analogy.

The lyrics are ambiguous, even by my standards.

I'm sorry about the corny/crap hi-hat or whatever it is. But it really didn't sound like jazz without it. :D

Anyways, I expect this song has a wee way to go. I got it sounding as good as I could, but I'd be ever grateful for any suggestions you may have to improve it.



The Pastafarian

In the mad hatter's lecture
There's a pinch of conjecture
with a slice of his fruitcake
That he only cared half bake

Feast, feed, dine
Swallow this loaf divine

Lalala

A pastafarian
and a Rasta nun (I know this isn't strictly speaking a rhyme but my accent made it possible)
in orbiting teapots
seen only in blind spots

Bye teapot high
Fly with the pie in the sky

lalala

Look up those long sleeves
in your magical tea leaves
Enjoy the confusion
in the honoured delusion
of the cock eyed conclusion
 
Seems mostly alright. The slightly out-of-time twinned vocals are an interesting choice; sounds alright though.

I'm not super-excited about the high hat. If you're going for a jazz sound, I've usually heard a ride doing those patterns; plus you'd usually have some kick and light snare. If you don't go with the kick/snare option, maybe switch it to a shaker or something?
 
Considering I played jazz drums for many years....

....yeah, a ride pattern is what you should be going here. I wouldn't say snare and bass unless you were emphasizing hits, which is more effort than its worth if you are programming. If you want to emphasize beat then you can add hi-hat on the 2 and 4.
 
FINALLY, it's playing for me tonight. It wouldn't for simple ages.
THis is a nice light play on words and sounds.
I love MJQ mainly for the vibes and your metalaphone/glok sounds come close to that.
There def. are lements of Donovan - he played with light jazz approaches - a bit Nick Drake too though I honestly couldn't get into him much.
I reckon you could relax a little bit on "Fly with the pie in the sky" as you seem to have cramped you flow a little on that line.
There's a bit of essing but not much & I didn't hear any lips smacking so you're improving you mic technique with each recording. the essing is emphasized by a soft voice - & you do sing quietly. When you have time try a few singing exercises to the mic & lift your volume whilst backing away from the mic. have a listen for the differences.
Cool stuff FTG.
You really are a happening thing!
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Seems mostly alright. The slightly out-of-time twinned vocals are an interesting choice; sounds alright though.

I'm not super-excited about the high hat. If you're going for a jazz sound, I've usually heard a ride doing those patterns; plus you'd usually have some kick and light snare. If you don't go with the kick/snare option, maybe switch it to a shaker or something?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the listen Steve. I don't blame you about the high-hat, I don't really like it either but didn't have anything else to hand and I also brought this into the song waaaay too late. Should have done at the start. I plan to try a bit more drum looping and samples on my next tune. But I might have another go at this is I can get some decent samples and figure out what you guys are saying about this ride business. :D
 
Seafroggys said:
Considering I played jazz drums for many years....

....yeah, a ride pattern is what you should be going here. I wouldn't say snare and bass unless you were emphasizing hits, which is more effort than its worth if you are programming. If you want to emphasize beat then you can add hi-hat on the 2 and 4.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback, I'll look up a ride pattern on youtube after work and try that. :)
 
rayc said:
FINALLY, it's playing for me tonight. It wouldn't for simple ages.
THis is a nice light play on words and sounds.
I love MJQ mainly for the vibes and your metalaphone/glok sounds come close to that.
There def. are lements of Donovan - he played with light jazz approaches - a bit Nick Drake too though I honestly couldn't get into him much.
I reckon you could relax a little bit on "Fly with the pie in the sky" as you seem to have cramped you flow a little on that line.
There's a bit of essing but not much & I didn't hear any lips smacking so you're improving you mic technique with each recording. the essing is emphasized by a soft voice - & you do sing quietly. When you have time try a few singing exercises to the mic & lift your volume whilst backing away from the mic. have a listen for the differences.
Cool stuff FTG.
You really are a happening thing!
Click to expand...


Thanks Ray. I really love Donovan, like a lot, a LOT! He's probably influenced me a fair bit. I'm glad you didn't mind the lyrics, I was wondering what you might say about those. They turned out a touch weird but I think that's just how I feel on the topic, so I went with it. .

You're spot on about that one line being a bit cramped though. I tried it a few different ways, rewrote it, before deciding this was best but yeh, I guess I'll have to revisit that one after all. Steve said the doubling was a bit loose, which wasn't really intentional. So, that'll make it take number....stopped counting at 20. :D

I am using the new interface that JonnyDeep VERY kindly donated to me. I used it on 'Watch' too. The levels are much better on this thing, I can hear myself clearly through the headphones when I'm singing now. This means I can hear the lip smacking as it's happening so I can kind work on reducing the behaviour that causes it.

There are still some that I had to cut out, but a lot less. I think the quality of the recording is much better with this new thing though. It's really great to have it. Feels like I'm actually hearing the truth now, when before it was a lot of guess work because what I was hearing through the headphones was really muffled.

Great idea to do a few exercises. I should really do a lot more of that kind of experimentation/training. I'm a bit lazy like that.

Thanks again Ray. All really helpful stuff, much appreciated. :)
 
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Cool to hear something in a slightly unexpected style from you Frits - the vibes are a cool addition. I don't know much Donovan (I think I wrote him off as a pale Dylan imitation fairly early on), but I could definitely hear the Nick Drake. He has some nice vibes on his Saturday Sun song.

The song has a bit of a psych twist to it that I really enjoyed. I think there are still a few that you could make though. Firstly, I think the vocals are too dry and up front - I'd mess around with some more reverb (not too much and with a short tail - just enough to glue the vocals in the mix) and maybe bring them down a touch (though you might not need to do this with a little more reverb). It's probably mainly a symptom of close micing in an untreated space.

The other thing I noticed was some of the vocal phrasing was a bit off, on the the "Bye teapot high" and "fly with the pie in the sky" lines and in the last verse. Ray described it well as cramping the flow.

Hope this helps :)
 
robgreen said:
...I think the vocals are too dry and up front - I'd mess around with some more reverb (not too much and with a short tail - just enough to glue the vocals in the mix) and maybe bring them down a touch (though you might not need to do this with a little more reverb). It's probably mainly a symptom of close micing in an untreated space
Click to expand...

I agree with this. That's kind of how I hear most of your stuff though vocal production-wise, so it may just be a stylistic choice of yours.

Your voice sounds great, but it kind of has this air of you singing over a backing track to me versus being part of the mix as a whole.

It's cool to hear you using different sounds and I hope you keep experimenting as I always look forward to your new stuff.
 
I really like this one. Mixwise, two impressions on a first and second listen: that echoey percussion way in the background sounds a bit odd; the guitar on the left and the vibes on the right could be panned in a way that balanced better. Really nice tune, ftg.
 
I like it as-is. Stuff like this doesn't have to adhere to the typical rules of mixing. The vocals sound considerably better than usual. Well done.
 
Seafroggys said:
What the hi-hat is playing is fine, it just needs to be on a ride cymbal. Darker, the better :) Then it'll be coooool.
Click to expand...

Ah cool, thanks for the tip. :D I thought the rhythm was a bit weird or wrong maybe. I got a bunch of samples and will try looping them over the weekend. As you can tell I do not know much drums or drumming.
 
dobro said:
I really like this one. Mixwise, two impressions on a first and second listen: that echoey percussion way in the background sounds a bit odd; the guitar on the left and the vibes on the right could be panned in a way that balanced better. Really nice tune, ftg.
Click to expand...

That's a dub sample that percussion. It does not really belong in jazz. Maybe I'll see what it's like without it. I kind of grew to love it after a while, but I might have just got used to the oddness. I'll check out the balance, thanks for the listen. I wondered if you might like it, glad ya did. :)
 
Greg_L said:
I like it as-is. Stuff like this doesn't have to adhere to the typical rules of mixing. The vocals sound considerably better than usual. Well done.
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Cool, cheers. I'm glad you give my music a free pass as far as the hard and fast rules go. :D Ain't no secret that I'm just mostly still dicking around trying to find out what stuff does. I really appreciate you guys putting up with my experimentation.
 
robgreen said:
Cool to hear something in a slightly unexpected style from you Frits - the vibes are a cool addition. I don't know much Donovan (I think I wrote him off as a pale Dylan imitation fairly early on), but I could definitely hear the Nick Drake. He has some nice vibes on his Saturday Sun song.

The song has a bit of a psych twist to it that I really enjoyed. I think there are still a few that you could make though. Firstly, I think the vocals are too dry and up front - I'd mess around with some more reverb (not too much and with a short tail - just enough to glue the vocals in the mix) and maybe bring them down a touch (though you might not need to do this with a little more reverb). It's probably mainly a symptom of close micing in an untreated space.

The other thing I noticed was some of the vocal phrasing was a bit off, on the the "Bye teapot high" and "fly with the pie in the sky" lines and in the last verse. Ray described it well as cramping the flow.

Hope this helps :)
Click to expand...

Yep I think I hear you on the reverb. I didn't want to go too far, but really I might be able to push it a bit more. I'm still getting used to this new interface. I need to play around with it a bit more to avoid getting too much of the room in there. I just put everything on 50% with this new thing, and I moved myself to get it sound about right.

Yeh, same with the phrasing. I'll run through it again this weekend.

Thanks for the tips, and I'm glad you liked it. I had those 3 odd jazz chords in my head for ages, so it was kind of cool to get them into a song. Now I'll probably forget them forever. :D
 
heatmiser said:
I agree with this. That's kind of how I hear most of your stuff though vocal production-wise, so it may just be a stylistic choice of yours.

Your voice sounds great, but it kind of has this air of you singing over a backing track to me versus being part of the mix as a whole.

It's cool to hear you using different sounds and I hope you keep experimenting as I always look forward to your new stuff.
Click to expand...

Thanks Heat. :) Yeh, maybe it sounds a bit breathy because I'm kind of scared to sing really loudly into the mic. That mic feels like someone's ear, and then I don't want to sing too loudly, it's a total mental block. I sometimes have to imagine I'm singing to a person a couple of metres away, you know, to try and project my voice a bit more.

I also find it really hard to know what effects to put on the vocals as to where they sit in the mix. I pretty much rely on you guys to guide me with this, but I am slowly hearing the difference myself. I did add a touch of reverb I think, but I'll try it with a bit more.

Thanks again, really appreciate your feedback. This is like 'Mixing for Dummies' right here but like I said to Greg, I sincerely appreciate you guys putting up with my experiments and me trying to learn all this stuff on the fly. :)
 
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