International Collaboration !!

[dres]

Hi people,
WAYTF posted a song "Everyday" here a week or so ago. I liked the song so much that I asked if he'd mind me adding bass, drums etc...... some time later, here are the results.

www.nowhereradio.com/dres

Now the mix is a little rough, but you get the idea.

If you like the song and you think you can do a better (different ?) mix we can post all the separate mp3 tracks for you to have a go.

So we have an American Born Song + Australian additions, how about a European Mix ?

I think *that* would be a real celebration of technology !!

Free for all comments / advice also appreciated as usual

[theron]

Nice job guys,

I liked the drums but, thought they could have been a bit bolder in the level and busy department. Maybe some more prominant fills and harder cymbals to emphasize the songs dynamic momentum. The bass sounded good to me.

Drums and bass are a weekness for me in recording so take my words with that in mind.

Hope you had fun on the collab. I had fun listening to the results!

Peace,

Theron.

[WATYF]

My first "critique" is that you spelled my name wrong in your post...

O.K. so that's not really important.. As for the mix... wow.. it's really weird hearing how different someone else (let alone someone else on the other side of the planet) interprets a tune. I think you will be really surprised when you hear the final version (that goes on our CD). We're a bunch of psycho youth band players, so our version is gonna be a bit more.... edgy.

I liked finally being able to hear it with a beat and some backbone (i.e. bass). Though I agree.. an open high-hat (or something) on the lead part or the last chorus would have helped fill it out a little more and build the dynamic. And I liked how your BGV parts covered up my crappy voice... It's amazing what a little harmony part can do for a song.

WATYF

[mixmkr]

totally cool, and totally two thumbs up.

watyf...do you see something spreading?? I do!! great job.

[dres]

OOps, I knew I'd get your "name" wrong if I guessed it. I'm just deslexic I guess !

Even though I barely know you it's been good fun tinkering with your tune.

The drums were a pig to record... took a good 2 hours trying to figure out your timing foybles and rehersing the changes. I would like to have been more adventurous but A) my drumming's not that good and B) I struggled with the strange timing of the guitars at the changes, I kept ending up with kick on the off beat .. so I kept it simple.

Bass too was tricky. The rhythm of the guitars is quite different to what I've played with before so it took a while to "get inside your head" and find something that fitted. I was particularly pleased with my llittle bass solo thingy at the beginning.

Vocals had me stumped too for a while so I opted for the easy route and doubled yours first. The second BGV took a while and I ended up with a "less is more" approach.

Good Fun... any takers for mixing ?

[mixmkr]

how would you go about that?...you say you can post the separate tracks as mp3's?

[WATYF]

You're right... the timing is weird.. and sorry to tell you this.. but you got it wrong on the intro.. The rest of it was fine (once the verse kicked in)... but I could tell you were hearing it "backwards" during that first part. I almost expected you to, though.. when I first showed it to the band, It took literally an hour of explaining before I could get them to "hear" what I meant by "It's all on the up-beat."

Basically almost all the guitar picks are on "and"s.. (i.e. 1 and 2 and three and etc..). The very first note starts on the 3 "and".

It's easier to discern when you hear the drum beat I put to it (when we play it live.) Once you get the hang of how the beat goes, you actually find that all the hits are in time and I don't divert from standard timing anywhere in the song.. it's just a little "goofy" as far as the way the guitars weave in and out of the "beat".

I'll be sure to post a sample of the final product from the CD so you can see what I'm talking aboot.

WATYF

[theron]

Just out of my own curiousity. Did you fellows talk about the collab and then go forward or did dres grab the mp3, add to it and post?

No judgment, just wondering how this collab went down as far as production.

Theron.

[WATYF]

No.. he PMed me about it and we talked before he did anything...

P.S... For dres (and anyone else who cares ) I made a two second recording of the timing of the intro and how the guitars fall in... I tried to tap out how the beat would go on the intro. As you can hear,.. the snare hits fall on the second note of that three note "lick"... hope that explains it...

Click Me

WATYF

[dres]

mixmkr:
after reading the thread from Lt. Bob on his collaboration I believe all I need to do is post all the tracks separately with a common timing blip a few seconds before the song starts... to allow realignment at the other end. I might even generate a single 2 sample square wav in cool edit, I think it allows manual editing of individual samples.

I use cubase so it would be a simple matter to export single track wavs with the pre timing blip embedded at the start.

Just download the separate mp3's convert back to wav files and reallign them in your favourite multitrack program for mixing.

Yes there'd be some degradation in sound quality but I think it would be pritty minor.

Come to think of it the encoding process might have a fit encoding a 2 sample blip... quick enough to try though.

WATYF: Thanks I'll have a listen

[dres]

WATYF:
Thanks for the explaination... it's a subtle difference, I'll have to listen at home tonight to get the gist of it.

Strange hearing your voice... not what I expected.... I didn't recognise your cantor without all the smilley faces !! ;-)

Thanks mate

[WATYF]

yeah.. I know.. it's so hard to convey my goofiness with these smiley things.. I offend a lot less people in person.. since they can hear the "levity" in my voice when I say stuff...

WATYF

[Track Rat]

Excellent! Sooner or later I want to do one of these with someone. Nice lead on there.

[dres]

Anyone interested in mixing it ?

[Track Rat]

Send me the waves. I'd love to.

[dres]

Brilliant Track Rat ! - I'll PM you when they are ready in a day or so... it won't be wav files but high quality mp3's you'll get due to my bandwidth problems... see instructions further up this thread.... you'll need a program that let's you convert mp3's to wav's.

Three-way collaboration coming up... stay tuned. Another homerecording first perhaps ?

[muzeman]

Cool song!

I like your voice.
Good writing too.

How did you record the acoustic guitar?
Sounds really full.
Pretty awsome for collaborating over half the world!

Can't wait to hear Track Rats mix.

Best to you,
Pete

[WATYF]

I recorded the guitar the best way you can with a measly SM58 and a cheesy little Behringer mixer...... any way that works.



O.K... so I had the SM58 to the left of the soundhole (aboot 4 inches away) and ran that into one channel on the mixer, then I used the pezio pickup from the git (my beautiful Taylor ) and ran that into the second channel on the mixer and "blended" the two signals together till I got the "color" I wanted... then I recorded that as one track in n-Track.

and I'm sure you're talking aboot liking dres's voice.. not mine...


WATYF

[dres]

It's a good question museman ... WATYF could you refresh us exaclty on how you got that guitar sound ... signal chain etc. ?

I have a Taylor too (could only afford a 310) but I've never had it sounding quite like that ! What strings you got on ?

[WATYF]

I'd love to have Track Rat do it.. but he doesn't meet your "international" criteria... he's only aboot 15 minutes away from my house...

oh well.. you can still do it Track..



WATYF

[WATYF]

Originally posted by dres
It's a good question museman ... WATYF could you refresh us exaclty on how you got that guitar sound ... signal chain etc. ?

I have a Taylor too (could only afford a 310) but I've never had it sounding quite like that ! What strings you got on ?

I have a 414CE. You can see my chain above. The sound card is a Delta 44...

and I use Elixir strings... the only strings that should ever grace the fretboard of a Taylor...

seriously though.. I love Elixirs.. I can't believe how much nicer they sound then every string I've ever used. I gave em to some kid in my youth group who just got his first guitar (some cheap Talkamine) and they even made that thing sound good... (sort of)

WATYF

[muzeman]

Iv'e used the Elixers,they do really sound good.

Sliders sound good also,no protective coating though.

I always used Martin Phosphers till the Elixers came out,now Martin has an SP+ with a protective coating,I just put them on.
Sound pretty good,have to see how they record.

Best to you,
Pete

[Vegar]

I'd love to do a mix too

[B.SABBATH]

I went to listen to it but it seems the complete song isnt up there anymore? It's all broken down into seperate tracks?

[dres]

Fabulous Vegar !!!! Now it's getting exciting ... a three way international collaboration !! Hot dang

I don't want to put you off trackrat ... we can compare the european and american mixes at the end ... just remember this is NOT a competition.... just a bit of fun.

Sorry B. SABBATH I had to make room for the next phase.

Time zones aren't helping but I'm trying to sort out with WATYF the technical issues with realligning the separate tracks. Basicly:

1. I've chosen a reference point to align the other tracks with. This is the very start of the first guitar pick sound on the song.... it's fairly easy to pick out (no pun intended).

2. With all the tracks synced in my software I've added a small blip to each individual track in exactly the same time position as the reference point. This blip was manually created and consists of 2 samples fully positive followed by two samples fully negative ... it survives encoding well and is very easy to see.

3. Once all the individual tracks have been reconverted into wavs and imported onto separate tracks in your software it's simply a matter of shifting the tracks in time to allign all the blips to the reference point.

4. Finally when all is aligned simply mute out the blips.

I hope this is clear... any questions ?

My individual tracks are now ready and can be downloaded from

www.nowhereradio.com/dres

WATYF's mixed tracks are available from

www.nowhereradio.com/watyf

I'm currently trying to convince him to post all his individual tracks.... but there are a lot (10) so we'll wait and see. You can still reconstruct the song with his submix.