Aqueous Asphyxiation

[drstawl]

I wrote this tune in 1976 and have wanted to re-record it digitally ever since. It's a solo guitar piece about drowning in sorrow so please excuse the very sad mood.

http://members.home.net/drstawl/midi.html

#13 in the MP3 Gallery. 4149 KB 192 Kbps.mp3

It was Dobro's acoustic guitar post that got me thinking about this more seriously. There was a moment in my home studio today when the background noise dropped off into the "recording zone" so I fired up the Rodents and the 386 and took a stab at it. I fucked it up 6 times in a row, took a break for about an hour and tried again. It still is far from the performance I'd like to see on a CD but I'm convinced I couldn't get it any better given my current guitar skills.

I used a software noise gate to remove the residual hum that never goes away in my studio from neighborhood noises- I also waited about a minute before the start of this to let a twin-engine prop aircraft from John Wayne Airport go past.

There's a weird snare-like sizzle from something vibrating. It wasn't the recording; that was there in the room. Haven't tracked it down. Also a click at ~1:17.5 whose source is still unknown to me. Marilyn needs new strings and by the time I got to take 7 she was somewhat out of tune.

Any EQ suggestions?

Other comments are welcome as well.

[GT]

Hey Doc,

That's absolutly beautifull. I really couldn't find anything wrong with the recording, except that it ended abruptly at 1:53. Very nice fingerpicking, great tone!! Whatever EQ your using sounds great to me, wouldn't change a thing.

Slight out of tuneness, actually seems to add to the charm, feel free to quote me on this when you listen to one of mine.

Would love to hear proper ending.

GT

[drstawl]

GT: thanks- and: please try again. The ending is really there. Compared to my usual habit of ending my synth tunes very abrubtly, this one has a more accessible type of departure that I spent some time getting quiet. The same noise gate that rescued my intro from the ambient noise messed up the ending BAD until I reset the release to 5 seconds.
My apologies for my lame server. I hope you didn't have to spend a lot of time getting just a partial. I've always posted full versions (of my stuff at least).
The tune is really 2:56 and it does download correctly from time to time. They clipped me on my first test download and then served it up with no problemas every time since, so I dunno.

[flattop]

wow, drstawl, that is soo nice,,,,,i really enjoyed this piece, u play guitar great man, the tone really reminded of that 70's sound, like "fluff" by sabbath, or listen to ritchie blackmore's verson of "scarbough fair", i don't know if ritchies version is from the 70's but he is another one of those heavy attitudes dudes,,,,,,, metallica has that sabbath influenced tune called,,,,,,nothing else matters,,,,man u got them beat all the way lol, yer right from the era!!!, so what kind of eqin' did u do?

[Bow]

Very nice tune...wow...
I am crying in my morning coffee!

Excellent job, very nice....

Really amazing, the tone of the guitar reminds me of "Jade's Song" by Jake E Lee/Badlands on their first ablum [but that was recorded in '89...so maybe he ripped off your tone? :^)]

Very nice job though... beautiful.

[LI Slim]

Doc-

Very nice piece. And I think the performance is solid. I can't hear the background noise that you are concerned about sitting here in my office listening through Yamaha multimedia speakers.

I don't know fer sure, but if I wanted to experiment with EQ with this I would try boosting at about 3K to try to get the treble strings a little fuller.

[Meshuggah]

lovely

[drstawl]

Thanks to you all for your very kind comments.
This tune was a very personal piece for me which is the main reason I haven't re-recorded it all these years.
My motivation was to get this tune out and move on to something more recent. Thanks again.

[secondtake]

I'm having problems getting the whole song...I've tried several times and all I get is about the first 10-20 seconds of it. Firewall??? Well from what I did hear the tone is great on it!

[bball jones]

Yes doc,
A strong case you have made for the NT-1 and 386. Any nay-sayers should be pointed in this direction.

This production, reveals the perfectionist in you. Shimmering, pristine and emotional. I enjoy the song and the story of how it was recorded. Nice tip on the software n-gate too, never thought to use mine until you mentioned it. Thanks for sharing.

[dobro]

Damn, I'd like to listen to this, but downloading from your site invokes Windows Media Player on my system (which doesn't work). If my system decides to use Real Player, no problems. I don't know how to designate which one gets used - is it possible?

[Emeric]

dobro, you tried right click, save as? I haven't gotten around to checking this one out yet.. intend to my BW sucks.

[drstawl]

Dobro: WMP sucks royally.
At least it did until version 7.00.
Now it just sucks ordinarily.....
Get thee a copy of Winamp!
Just installing this (free software) should automatically change your default player over to Winamp. It's got a pretty cool frequency spectrum analyzer that, while fairly crude does give some useful indication of where the meat of the song lies in the frequency range.

[Edited by drstawl on 12-08-2000 at 20:33]

[LI Slim]

Dobro, when I loaded Real Player it designated itself as the default player, and I undesignated it in favor of Music Match Jukebox (although I can't remember how I did that). Maybe you should just download it again and or ask them to help you. Somebody here must also know how to do it via your operating system....

[gibs]

7 seconds all I get no matter what...even "save as"....yes, winamp is my god dick player of choice...

Great...just great.....haven't posted a reply to a tune in weeks, and this reply is a bust....

ok, here goes..seven second review/critique/comment"

"Wow, really sweet melanchol........."oops, time's up, download seems to have severe constipation.....gibs

[gibs]

Persistence is its own reward.....downloaded 3 more times...first got 58 sec...an improvement...next got 2.41MB of 4.05MB.....and then...YES 4.05 finally......


I LOVE this one....liquid, but definitely not strangling.....love the note changes around :33 and repeated elsewhere.....

Two downloads from you today, both with superb endings as well...gibs

[memo]

drstawl this has a real warm earthy, human and "home" feeling to it. The whole thing sounds like it was played right here on the couch, in a carpeted room; which is really cool. The NT-1 and the 386 does really perform as well.

I like this one and that little jazz number you did much more than your synth stuff. Don't get me wrong, your synth stuff is cool, esspecially the compositions and the sounds; but I just like acoustic stuff more.

Looking forward to your new stuff..

[drstawl]

Gibs: Thanks for hangin' in there. I'm hoping for an answer soon from my ISP as to why they've been dissing the dial-up crowd. The title was an (almost) alliterative rephrasing of "drowning", not strangulation...
That arpeggiated chord ~0:30 is one tough bulgur to play.
I'm not a pro so getting that four fret stretch on the four fattest frets and the four fattest strings (I use a pretty thick set of strings on Marilyn) to not buzz is a workout.
LI Slim: the reason you can't hear the noise of which I griped is that I artificially removed it after the fact with the Vegas noise gate.
Memo: Yeah- I like the acoustic stuff better than my synth stuff too. It's just a whole lot easier to crank out a synth tune since I can control it completely without having to get past the performance issues. And it WAS done in a carpeted bedroom with a pair of NT-1s about 12" away from Marilyn.
BBJones: And Ed says the NT-1 is "sucky".
I say: compared to what? AT 4050? TLM-103s? a U87?
For the price, they rock.