1960s-style psychedelia

  • Thread starter Thread starter jpmorris
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jpmorris

jpmorris

Tape Wolf
If anyone's curious, I did this last night (very late last night). It uses four tracks, tape slapback and flanging. A total of four tape machines were running during the mixdown.

It has a few problems. There's too much bus compression, the Tascam 32 badly needs recapping and was hissing like crazy, the mix itself isn't particularly great and I think I overdid the flanging slightly.
Nonetheless, it was tremendous fun to make.

 
cool :) !

heh heh , nice "I don't care"-attitudo' :p ! :)
This session bloodily fishingly cries for a video :D
 
Thanks, guys. No video I'm afraid, but I have taken the time to do a new mix which solves the compression problem.



If anyone has suggestions for hosting the things that would be handy, as space is at something of a premium on this host.
 
jedblue said:
Why, www.youtube.com, www.mp3.com and www.photobucket.com of course.
Jed
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Thanks. I'd feel a bit guilty about putting something up on Youtube without a video. I have lots of people watching for other things, mostly game-related and spamming it with songs and a blank screen or something seems a bit off. Also, the audio track is usually mixed down to mono and they have had a tendency to apply dynamics compression. Around July they suddenly whacked it on full and many videos uploaded around that time had their soundtracks destroyed.

Photobucket only accepts images or video, not audio - and has a limit of around 5 minutes, but it might be worth a go. I can see that being a problem for people who want to download it, though.

I'll investigate mp3.com, though.
 
Cool!!! sounds a bit like the small faces crossed with the who sell out. i don't know if you've done this as an exercise in recording or as an actual song but i really like it. in terms of composition i think you emphasise the first beat of the bar a little too often in the middle 8 (works well for the chorus) but tends to make it drag slightly in my opinion. i think you could make the piano arpeggio's into something a little more interesting as well, maybe some rhythmic variation. time signature change into 3/4 works excellent. pause is effective. when the fuckload of flanging comes in as well is cool, really intense, very small faces. the organ sound is nice and melancholic, a hammond without leslie? i don't like the sound of the bass drum though, got a bit too much attack and not enough low mid i think. get your drummer to re-tune his bass drum. overall a really accurate attempt to create a sixties psychedelic pop song!
 
James John said:
i don't know if you've done this as an exercise in recording or as an actual song but i really like it.
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Thanks. It was a bit of both, really.

i think you could make the piano arpeggio's into something a little more interesting as well, maybe some rhythmic variation.
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I've always had problems writing the drum parts. They tend to be a little tacked-on and this one is no exception. The intro on organ and the middle parts were cannibalised from a different project entirely, but they do seem to fit nicely.

the organ sound is nice and melancholic, a hammond without leslie?
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It does have leslie (Rotosphere MK1, actually) set on low speed. I considered changing the speed partway through, but didn't do so in the end. One thing which bugs me is that I suddenly realised I was using exactly the same chord structure that I did in this song:

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/125723
(I was aiming at 1970-71 on that track, which I kind of blew at the end with the obviously-digital synth)

I don't like the sound of the bass drum though, got a bit too much attack and not enough low mid i think. get your drummer to re-tune his bass drum.
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Now that is a very interesting comment. I don't actually have a drummer and one of the things that does bug me is that it's fairly obvious (to me) that the drum track is programmed, using the Korg Triton sound set. If you honestly thought it was a live drummer, that does give me some hope :D

overall a really accurate attempt to create a sixties psychedelic pop song!
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Thanks. If you're interested, I think what inspired me to do this was a combination of two things.

Firstly, the "Dukes of Stratosphear" collection I bought last year which did a very good job of emulating the 60s material-wise, but it seemed fairly evident to me that it was done on a 24-track machine (it was recorded in 1985 and 1987)... it sounds to me like they recorded the drums individually instead of in mono or with a stereo pair.

What really brought it to a head was a 3-CD set of psychedelic songs which I've been listening to a lot this year. That was what really gave me the push to try it myself.

Oh, and also 'Valentyne Suite' by Colosseum. That gave me the idea for flanging the piano around 1:44, also the notion of applying flanging to the entire thing at mixdown. Some songs of that era applied it only to a single track somehow.
 
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