"Go Ahead" - more session work for a friend...

Llarion

Llarion

New member
Here's another song from that set of sessions with my friend Constance. Again, I'm playing everything (drums, bass, keys, guitars) except the guitar solo on the outro, my best friend Jimmy Dacey does that, Constance is singing. Her tune, my arrangement, recording, and production work.

Tough piece to keep reined in vocally; she has a big dynamic range, I ended up having to use a Beta-57 for the vox, it was nearly impossible to control with the condenser...

Upfront comment; she wanted the vox drier than I'd have chosen; I don't think the 'verb curves mate perfectly. But, what the customer wants, right? :) I do really like the arrangement though.

Go Ahead
 
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Everything sounded ok to me. Nice production. Vocal performance is a little boring.
Sound of the guitar solo at the end was awesome.
Can you give me some details about recording and mixing this particular part?
Overall: Very well!
 
Everything was recorded into Adobe Audition through an M-Audio Audiophile 192 card. I use a Mackie 1202-VLZ as the front end. The guitar was patched through a Boss stomp box, but was otherwise dry. I added a little compression (Waves L1 Maximizer) and a smidge of Audition's onboard Studio Reverb (Guitar Amp Stereo), pulled back to about 15% wet in post production. I just love Jimmy's playing. He thinks he sucks. :)
 
sounds ok.

actually, the vocalist could use a little work as far as pitch and dynamics go i think.

some notes just don't sound right. did you autotune/melodyne it at all?

drums sound nice. are they real or no?

strings add a nice touch.

maybe get her to practice a bit more and then re track it.

she's a good singer, but shes missing the touches that seperate good from great. maybe a vocal lesson or two with an excellent teacher would get her to really hit it dead on the nose.

in the end, i would make the guitar solo just a little louder and the vocals just a little lower.

nice production overall.
 
Nice song and arrangement. Good vocal tone also. Hot gtr at the end. It's got a lot of distortion for the song style but it's good. Hot bass line throughout, and that's what draws my ear the most on the track.
 
TragikRemix said:
sounds ok.

actually, the vocalist could use a little work as far as pitch and dynamics go i think.

some notes just don't sound right. did you autotune/melodyne it at all?

drums sound nice. are they real or no?

strings add a nice touch.

maybe get her to practice a bit more and then re track it.

she's a good singer, but shes missing the touches that seperate good from great. maybe a vocal lesson or two with an excellent teacher would get her to really hit it dead on the nose.

in the end, i would make the guitar solo just a little louder and the vocals just a little lower.

nice production overall.
Click to expand...

You work with what you have. :) She has a wonderful raw voice, but zero formal training to help her harness her instrument the best ways posible. I've talked to her about it, but you know how that sometims goes. ;) I touched up a few tiny bits with Autotune, but it's a blunt, crude litle tool. Truth be told, the vocal pass is constructed from best parts of two takes for most of the tune, and the outro is six different dingle pass snippets; her meter needed some, uh, minor tweaking. She ran out of budget, or I'd try to have her re-track it. :)

The drums are my trusty Roland V-Stage kit; glad they sound real enough to merit the question. They record great; but I'd like em more if that had individual instrument outputs...

On the guitar solo, I had to place it there because the descending line he played batled with the held tonic in the vocal, and they are in he same octave; so that's the only way it didn't really get fuzzy. ON the 3rd one, where the guitar gets busier, I did just that; I slid it up a bit and dropped the vox into fade out territory... :)

I love doing string arranging. I love the few bars leading into the transition into the last verse especially... (starting at 1:31, "if you noticed; my heart hold nothing...") I had that one bar at about 1:40 to really gloss it up, so I had fun with it. :)

Nice song and arrangement. Good vocal tone also. Hot gtr at the end. It's got a lot of distortion for the song style but it's good. Hot bass line throughout, and that's what draws my ear the most on the track.
Click to expand...

Thanks Tim!! People always tell me that I have too much distortion on ballads, I got that on my first CD too; on a song called Sunday Morn'. But I am just in love with that really compressed, smooth, L.A style distortion. I try it with more loosey-goosey blues style or mild tube overdrive, and it just never sounds right to me ya know?

Thanks on the bass, everyone seems to agree that as far as my playing goes "That's what Tiggers do best"... I do enjoy playing a melodic and sometimes chordal bass, but one that is unobtrusive... :)
 
LTD guitar (maybe)
It doesn't matter. I am sure that it's always the guitarist who does it.
Not guitar or rig.
 
Llarion said:
BTW, if you want to see the guitar my friend Jimmy uses, the same night we did this cut, we were goofing off and he did this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vooeBPYG8

I can't remember the name of the guitar. His hero is George Lynch, the guy from Dokken...
Click to expand...


Haha....I'm afraid that I do that sometimes when I'm actually being serious.. :p

Anyway, this piece sounds good, and yes - the guitar solo sounds great with all that distortion! ;)
 
I prefer the mix on this one - vocals seem to be sitting in a much better spot.....Great production overall.....
 
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