A jam about the stars...

  • Thread starter Thread starter SnakeDog5050
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SnakeDog5050

SnakeDog5050

2 headed snake witha rake
Hey everyone,
This one is more relaxed than my usual stuff.
It's a "free jam" about being free :D
and traveling around the galaxy (cause I do that a lot)

How'd it turn out? I tired some new things here & am not sure what works (like several mid-song changes in the entire stereo image)
Any kind of criticism or comments are always welcome, thank you much :)

"Cruising Under the Stars" or "Cruising through Space" (haven't decided yet)
EDIT: new link with softer intro lead tone and distortion on the lead at :42
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=2983332&q=hi

old version:
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=2981222&q=hi

Since it was free jam I plan on going back and fixing things, like bad notes and also maybe adding some synth action
 
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Very interesting. Definitely different sounding. Very "Jammy".... :D
I'm gonna listen a few more times before saying anything....If I have anything to say...
 
Hey Dogman, thanks for listening.
Yeah what I mean by "free jam" is that I just put together a 4 minute random drum track, set the mood, and played whatever came out as each instrument passed through :D There was no actual writing this song... so I'm not sure if this is "post worthy" but I kind of liked the way it turned out and thought I'd give it a shot here. Maybe that'll help me figure out how to fix it up some or rerecord it, or throw it into the vault with a ton of other tunes :confused:
 
SnakeDog5050 said:
Hey Dogman, thanks for listening.
Yeah what I mean by "free jam" is that I just put together a 4 minute random drum track, set the mood, and played whatever came out as each instrument passed through :D There was no actual writing this song... so I'm not sure if this is "post worthy" but I kind of liked the way it turned out and thought I'd give it a shot here. Maybe that'll help me figure out how to fix it up some or rerecord it, or throw it into the vault with a ton of other tunes :confused:
Click to expand...

Pretty cool how you get that "you're in the same room with yourself" sound happening...

Your sound really harkens a lot of vintage late 60s recordings, there's a certain tube warmth, especially in the woofiness of the bass that I'd normally complain about, but it SO fits in here... the gentle "live band" imbalance between sounds, a carefree indifference to convention in your writing/playing. It all adds up to a really enjoyable sound. Yeah, the guitar is pitchy, and the drums are edgy at the very top, but ya know what, who the hell cares. It's part sof the song's considerable charm. :)
 
Well, after a few more listens, very cool. Very free form, and wild. Just a sonic wall of sound. I'd really like to work on a full blown collab with you sometime soon. I like this stuff, and it's way different than what I normally try and pull off. Cool.
Ed
 
Intersting

Very interesting indeed. I really like the drums esp. 'coz they sound better than mine. :) I didn't care for the the high-pitched guitar part in the beginning. But I like all other sounds. The last two main sections I liked better.

I really like the ending ta ta ta'da da da....

The mood changes threw me off at first but then I was anticipating them. Now, why couldn't my drums be like that?
 
Hey guys, thanks a lot for giving the weirdness a listen :) :p

Llarion,
That's cool you got the "live" feel out of it. I love recording like that for some reason, it just puts a lot of fun into it. Usually I have a song written before I play it though... which helps because in cases like this song, I don't know what key I'm in or what notes I played or anything, so it's hard to go back and cleanup mistakes. I like your comment of "gentle "live band" imbalance"... The instruments being off and roughness bothers me a bit, but I think I'll just label this one "Snakedog Live" ;)
Glad you enjoyed it, I meant this to be more of a relaxed enjoyable track

Dogman, master of the dogs,
I went for filling everything up with this one. I have two rhythm guitars, one clean electric with heavy effects panned left, and a normal acoustic playing the same part panned right. Then I have the lead and big woof bass up the middle.
Sure, I'm interested in doing a fullout collab! That'd be fun, we'll have to communicate on some DOG ideas soon :D

bigbubba,
I agree with you, I'll try giving that lead guitar less harshness. I find it funny how I don't really intend to be a moody player, but my songs usually end up like that. About the drums, I take a lot of care into crafting the drum tracks for my songs through samples and editing. I could give you more detailed info if you like...

Thanks again guys, cheers to weird space music :D
 
SnakeDog5050 said:
bigbubba,
I agree with you, I'll try giving that lead guitar less harshness. I find it funny how I don't really intend to be a moody player, but my songs usually end up like that. About the drums, I take a lot of care into crafting the drum tracks for my songs through samples and editing. I could give you more detailed info if you like...
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would like to definitely understand how to make my snares "wider", if you will. But in general I am realizing that a beat is not just a boom-chuck-bu-boom-chuck medley. A drummer is actually important! Who'da thunk!

Ranting aside, I would like to learn as much about programming drum tracks as possible. Also about how to get a good sound. :) - Thanks.
 
I like your comment of "gentle "live band" imbalance"... The instruments being off and roughness bothers me a bit, but I think I'll just label this one "Snakedog Live"
Click to expand...
Dude, if it were prissy and tight production, it would have sounded really fake and pretentious. I don't think your music would lend itself well to someone holding the production reins tightly. The sloppiness (and no, that's not a negative term) is what's just right for the style. Somebody like me could never arrive at the pleasantness of your end result, it would sound "overproduced" for sure with someone like me in the producer's chair.

Hint on making your snare wider: make the snare track stereo, so you can apply stereo effects like an expander, or stereo reverbs that are "imbalanced" let to right. You can't do dimension like that on a mono WAV. See Rami's remix I did for examples, compare his lead vox choice to mine, I wanted "wider"...
 
bigbubba said:
Ranting aside, I would like to learn as much about programming drum tracks as possible. Also about how to get a good sound. :) - Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'll give the specifics for this track since it varies from song to song for me. First off nothing beats the freedom of a real drumset... I used to use my X-girlfriends set and loved it, but she claimed I loved the set more than her. When I think back, maybe I did :p Anyway, that's the end of that rant, I'll start this paragraph over...

First off, you need to start out with decent samples or a decent drum machine. My long search for good samples ended at www.sessionloops.com They cost a bit of money, but that classic rock pack has been more than worth it. This song is a mix of samples from that pack put together and programmed with Guitar Tracks Pro 3 grooves feature.

Once I have the track together I added some reverb which gave it a bigger wider "spacey" feel. Then like Llarion already beat me into saying, try having a stereo version of the samples and using a stereo imaging progrm OR you can try having two or three copies of the snare track on different tracks and panning them wider. Then I compressed the whole track some for more of a "rock feel" Then I used EQ to raise the snare impact around 8khz.

I'm learning too how to get the best "real drum" sound I can out of these samples and that's where I'm at right now... hope that helps some :)
 
Llarion said:
Dude, if it were prissy and tight production, it would have sounded really fake and pretentious. I don't think your music would lend itself well to someone holding the production reins tightly. The sloppiness (and no, that's not a negative term) is what's just right for the style. Somebody like me could never arrive at the pleasantness of your end result, it would sound "overproduced" for sure with someone like me in the producer's chair.
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Hey thanks man. I agree that it fits this style. I personally like the character, emotion, and almost honesty that recordings like this bring to the table. It's just my style to have fun with recordings at this point :D In the back of my mind though, it's outside influences that make me think these things need to be tighter. It just seems if I'd like to sound more "professional" at any point I'd probably have to sit down and tighten things up. At this stage it's not that important and especially for a song like this I'm writing on the spot. But for the future, would you agree though for any serious recording there needs to be a certain level of perfectionism for it to go anywhere?
 
lbanks said:
I didn't know you were a Deadhead! Cool stuff, man.
Click to expand...

LOL, yeah you got me :p Thanks for the listen!

EDIT: (the link to the 30 second clip used to be here, but I deleted it since I updated the whole song on the first post)
 
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SnakeDog5050 said:
Hey thanks man. I agree that it fits this style. I personally like the character, emotion, and almost honesty that recordings like this bring to the table. It's just my style to have fun with recordings at this point :D In the back of my mind though, it's outside influences that make me think these things need to be tighter. It just seems if I'd like to sound more "professional" at any point I'd probably have to sit down and tighten things up. At this stage it's not that important and especially for a song like this I'm writing on the spot. But for the future, would you agree though for any serious recording there needs to be a certain level of perfectionism for it to go anywhere?
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Heh, no, not at all. It needs to be honest, first and foremost, and it needs to be the best playing you can muster. If you have good raw material, the rest is easy...
 
Llarion said:
Heh, no, not at all. It needs to be honest, first and foremost, and it needs to be the best playing you can muster. If you have good raw material, the rest is easy...
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Hey, that's good to hear. It's interesting because when I'm up around, having fun, putting a lot of emotion into a recording I always see it in the end result. I can always tell the difference between that and a recording I just tried to make perfect.
I love playing guitar with as much emotion as I can muster up :D
 
Thats really cool! I love the jam, everyone in a room, live feel you have going on. The sylistic changes really threw me off, which is great. I like not having songs be predictable like a lot of stuff on the radio these days! Very cool, and "spacey." I don't know if you have seen it, but this song brings to mind the part in one of the Tenacious D short films where Jack Black is tripping and totally flying through the galaxy! Great job!!
 
Thanks for the drum lessons man. I think that the first thing I need to do is make my snares wider and more "known". Everyone has commented on the lack of good snares. So that's what I wanna tackle first. Then I am going to pay attention to the rest.

Now one thing I don't quite understand is compression. I understand theoretically how compression works. But why the need? Why on drum tracks from a drum machine? and so on. I am going to try and read up on it a little bit.

Oh, and I like the new 30 second clip. :)

Now to post a PMC12 entry. :)
 
Tourettes, thanks I appreciate it :) Jack Black rocks, but I haven't seen that video. That's cool though, because that's the idea for the song pretty much... Just traveling around the universe having a good time, running into different cool things, never seeing/hearing the same thing twice. Just a party in space :D

Bubba, about compression... I'm in the same spaceship as you are... I don't know too much about it and never thought I'd use it for a drum track like this. Then I tried different types of compression just to see what'd happen and ended up liking the sounds I was getting even better. So I'd recommend messing around with it, making different mixes and seeing which sounds fit your songs best. I don't know too much technical info, I'm just playing it by ear and learning like you are.

Cheers guys, thanks again for the listens ;)
 
Very nice work SnakeDog. Great guitar lines developing from one idea to the next. Lots of 60's thematic stuff but it sounds fresh. Might be nice to have just a little more 300-600 Hz in the gtrs and a little less 3 kHz. I'd shorten and darken the verb decay too but that's just my own taste.

Tim
 
Very cool Snake. As different as all the parts are, they sound great together. Nothing sounds "pasted". I always like your drum samples, though I think the drums are a little more in the background for this one. Which was actually pretty cool, because it really did sound like sittinmg in a big room listening to a few guys jam, with a drummer in the back somewhere.
But I'm not listening to any more of your music until you post something with those John Bonham tracks I sent you!!! :)
 
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