Food Eater by the WTFs

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chuckduffy

Well-known member
Hey all. I haven't been recording much lately, outside of covers for fun and to practice. This track started out as a cover of one of my buddies 4track songs from about 20 years ago, but morphed into a whole new song. It's all of 1:29 long so it won't take up much of your time. When I do record now it's all single takes, no edits, played end to end and videoed with a flip camcorder for posterity(lol). No real mix per se, just rough in the levels as I go, export and make a quick video by ligning up the video and audio using phase as a guide, then upload to utube. So this one is a little garagey with my Gretsch through my little ampeg 15 watt recorded with a 4033 - two parts panned L and R. J-bass on 100% neck pickup, all tone at neutral. My little simmons midi kit triggering SSD for drums and a couple vocal tracks. Totally goofy song - but I thought it came out fun. I think the low end is somewhat lacking, but interested in any ideas anyone has. I am calling my fake band the 'WTFs' on this one. Yes I am 45 years old lol - the HD setting in youtube has better quality. Thought u guys might like to put a face with the name...................

 
lol


excellent...its like a one man Happy Mondays...groovy wee tune and the video was cool, though the drummer seems a little over excited :D

Im sorry im just on my laptop, the wifes got uni work, so nothing on the mix other that I could hear everything fine

oh yeah, and too much autotune!!
 
kcearl said:
lol


excellent...its like a one man Happy Mondays...groovy wee tune and the video was cool, though the drummer seems a little over excited :D

Im sorry im just on my laptop, the wifes got uni work, so nothing on the mix other that I could hear everything fine

oh yeah, and too much autotune!!
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There is no autotune within a country mile of my tracks, if I was gonna autotune would I leave my voice sounding like that lol. You must be messing with me :-) I can't even watch the drumming - it's like I'm not even fooking moving...
 
chuckduffy said:
There is no autotune within a country mile of my tracks, if I was gonna autotune would I leave my voice sounding like that lol. You must be messing with me :-) I can't even watch the drumming - it's like I'm not even fooking moving...
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:D yeah I was messing


you are the John Entwistle of drumming!



no way Im filming myself doing anything, I look like a fucking mentalist half the time, and I do most of my recording in my boxershorts!!


like I said though, cool groovy wee tune :)
 
Ha, very good chuck - an enjoyable lo-fi ditty. Impressive that you got each part in one take - no way i could manage something like that. Around 95% of my recording time is spent messing up, cursing myself and swearing at crappy old malfunctioning equipment for being crappy, old and malfunctioning :cursing:

The bass sounds very far back in the mix to me - with more pick frequencies than the line itself. Given my well documented battles with low end though, take that with a pinch of salt ;)
 
robgreen said:
Ha, very good chuck - an enjoyable lo-fi ditty. Impressive that you got each part in one take - no way i could manage something like that. Around 95% of my recording time is spent messing up, cursing myself and swearing at crappy old malfunctioning equipment for being crappy, old and malfunctioning :cursing:

The bass sounds very far back in the mix to me - with more pick frequencies than the line itself. Given my well documented battles with low end though, take that with a pinch of salt ;)
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Hi Rob - thanks for checking it out. I do want to point out that the reason I mentioned '1 take' was not to brag or *anything* like that. I practiced each part until it became second nature and I could replay it end to end, removing the need for any kind of punchin, edits or comps (a normal practice of mine). I'm sure that most people do their tracks in 1 continuous take end to end.

If there is a problem with the bass sounding very far back in the mix I need to get a handle on that right away :-) This entire exercise is based on honing tones, grooves, levels and tons of practice in preparation for recording my next batch of real stuff. For example - I want this tune to have a huge in your face bass that grooves with the drums. If that's not happening I'm back to square 1. There is no way I'm going to struggle through my next batch of recordings and not have a handle on a good bass sound :-) Thanks for bringing it up and hopefully others will chime in with suggestions.
 
Great little song - I really like your singing style. Not sure I can give any constructive feedback beyond that! Thanks for posting.
 
jonny deep said:
Great little song - I really like your singing style. Not sure I can give any constructive feedback beyond that! Thanks for posting.
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Hi Johhny. Thanks for the listen! In the area of constructive feedback - basically I'm wondering - for anyone who cares to comment - does it sound like a cohesive 'thing' or a bunch of parts thrown together. I want my next batch of tunes to sound like they are played by a group, not built up layer upon layer by a guy in a daw - i.e. more organic.
 
Cool, fun tune and cool video. Exactly what I'd like to do with a video. The mix and sounds are good, too. I'd bring up the drums a little bit, but then again I'd always bring up the drums, so don't take that too seriously. :D
 
RAMI said:
Cool, fun tune and cool video. Exactly what I'd like to do with a video. The mix and sounds are good, too. I'd bring up the drums a little bit, but then again I'd always bring up the drums, so don't take that too seriously. :D
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Thanks for checking it out RAMI! As far as drum level - I do think the kick could use some more whomp and the crash more level. Also really curious about the bass/drums relationship as that is what I've really been practicing. I guess we will see what others come up with. I'm sure it's pretty obvious that I am not a drummer in any way (just look at my grip and my panic to hit a single tom note, then the crash lol), but I could no longer live with programmed drums and I don't have the environment or space for a real kit. I practiced the drums over the course of about 3 nites, playing with a click and moving progressively from 100 BPM, 105, 110, 115, etc, settling on 130 in the end I think.

The video process was ridiculously simple and kind of low tech once I got my mind around it. I use a flip handheld, a web cam and Sony Vegas 11 HD video software. I think the total cost for everything including a tripod was under $200. Basically I do a four count on the base track (hat on the drum track for example - which as you can see I didn't even get a 4 count right!). This get's picked up in the audio track in my daw and the audio of the flip. Then every subsequent track do the same 4 count. On the bass, guitar, vocals (with the bongo), etc. you can see me do it in each of the clips. Then dump a WAV mix into the video editor, dump all the videos from the flip in and visually align the 4 counts on the audio mix and the camera audios to rough it in. Then 1 video at a time solo and nudge/slip each video track until it is in phase with the WAV audio track. Then mute that videos audio and move on to the next. Then you basically just resize and move each clip around on the video canvas to get it where you want it and render. Up until this past year I had absolutely no photographic evidence whatsoever of me recording. Not that it matters all that much in the end, but it is kinda cool to be able to capture the moment on 'film' too.
 
I have an older vegas...how do you get four different screens running at the same time, video canvas? Was ist das?
 
kcearl said:
I have an older vegas...how do you get four different screens running at the same time, video canvas? Was ist das?
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Maybe a picture is worth a 100 words.

The actual feature used is called 'Track Motion'. It is accessed from the button that I circled on the video tracks. What I refer to as the video canvas is the preview pane in the upper right. If you create an HD project you will have a very large 'canvas' to work with - perfect for placing smaller low resolution videos on. The 'Track Motion' feature allows you to resize, scale, rotate and position each video on the preview window. There are a number of tutorials on youtube regarding this that had me up and running in minutes.

food eater.webp
 
I never knew that existed, im gonna have a look...thanks chucksters
 
Cool video. Looks like you had some fun putting it together. Mix sounded fine to me, not lo-fi at all. Bass could come up a bit, esp in the 'I've been searching...' parts you could make it pump & throb a bit more
 
If it's FOO(D) Man CHU, Chew, chew.'That was fun & well done given the description of the process.
Nice to put a face to the word I read so often.
Good fun one son!
 
Bulls Hit said:
Cool video. Looks like you had some fun putting it together. Mix sounded fine to me, not lo-fi at all. Bass could come up a bit, esp in the 'I've been searching...' parts you could make it pump & throb a bit more
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Thanks Bulls Hit. I think part of the description of low fi comes from the guitars, due to it being an hollow body played through an ampeg tube amp drowned in the on-board spring verb and tremolo. The other part is probably youtube, where you never quite know what the person is actually hearing - listeners generally get different quality based on their connection speed and preferences. As rayc pointed out on another thread, youtube is not the best for critical listening - but I did want to share the video.

I'm 99% sure you are right about the bass. Pump and throb is a good description of the kind of sound I want it to have, especially in the searching part.

I will experiment with bumping it up, and trying to get a little bite with a slight overdrive or eq. I'm also gonna spend a little more time actually mixing and post a 320 mp3 later.

I do think I made some progress getting over my chronic addiction to drowning everything in a huge plate reverb, and I understand now why people have been asking me to stop for so long :-) I used a single SIR2 stereo reverb (master ambiance preset) on this and fed small amounts of each of the instruments to it (except bass). I like the result much better.
 
rayc said:
If it's FOO(D) Man CHU, Chew, chew.'That was fun & well done given the description of the process.
Nice to put a face to the word I read so often.
Good fun one son!
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rayc - too funny - I could totally hear myself singing that first line you wrote. It fits :-) I'm enjoying the process a lot. It's great practice, and a refreshing change of my normal process of recording a song bit by bit over a month or so then perseverating on the mix for weeks at a time, circling back over and over and re-working for no real net gain in most cases. The practice is what I need more than anything. I'm probably going to close out the summer recording covers and oddball stuff and then get back to my next set of 'real' stuff this winter. Thanks for checking it out Ray!
 
I like this a lot. I wish it was longer though with an extended jam in the middle and/or end.

I wish the drums and bass came up a bit, but the whole thing sounds great. Why no piano footage?

I love the guitar sound. That is exactly the kind of sound I go for a lot of the time. Nice looking guitar too.

I think the bass tone is great. Tons of attack to it. I think you could bring it up some without fear of clouding things up, 'cause it isn't boomy at all now or anything.
 
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