Across The Miles...

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Llarion

Llarion

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Hey gang!

Hope you've been enjoying my reviews! Wish I had time to do more, but it's been a very busy fall. (Yes, for those who remain nunnamed <Lt. Bob ;) > waiting for me to cut some rhythm section parts, I'll be on them shortly... :D )

Swoopin' in with another tune for your discerning ear... Celebrating my personal anniversary (Gak! 38!) by getting my Artistlaunch page back in order...

Would love to hear your thoughts on Across The Miles, my first attempt at Acid Jazz... The lead muted trumpet is Proteus 2000, as is the Rhodes sound and the acoustic piano, all triggered by my Roland RD-500. The bass is a fretless patch on my RD-500. The drums are a TR-808 kit on my DR-660 computer. The guitar is chorused and reverbed by Zoom RFX-1000, and compressed by Radius Fat Man 3 tube compressor. Final mastering is in Cool Edit, using Waves plugins...

www.artistlaunch.com/llarion is the place! Across The Miles is the song! Hifi and Lofi streams available!

Thanks!

Phil "Llarion: The Jazzinator" Traynor
www.llarion.com
 
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Hey Llarion,

Interesting composition.

The muted trumpet is a bit harsh to me, maybe some EQ on it to tone out those fingernails on chalkboard frequencies.
Maybe replace it with a different instrument all together.

Difficult for me to comment on this, it's all samples - except the guitar. Overall it just has a fake sound to it. Maybe you were after an electronica Acid Jazz sound, don't know.

With parts of the instrumentation replaced with real instruments it would rock! or Acid Jazz!

Cool tune!

Happy Birthday to!
 
Hey Llarion,
Nice tune man. ....verrrry laid back. Im on my 'puter at the office, so i wont go into the mix, ....but the composition is very nice. It would have been nice to hear the squeeze of a real fretless in there but the bass patch was nice enough. I didnt mind the trumpet. I cant hear a good representation of its eq on this computer, but i thought the instrument itself was fitting to the song and its genre.

Nice stuff man


g
 
Phil,
Listening now.............

Smooth as usual. The fretless comes off pretty damn good. The muted trumpet has a tad bit of high end for my ears, but this
IS how they usually sound for real.

I like the occasional bongo pops that sail through in the changes.
In fact, the changes are as smooth as the jams.
You are very gifted!

Thanks for sharing and Happy Bday
Joel
 
Thanks guys! If ony I had access to a real trumpet player; that would have been the ideal situation indeed... but you work with what ya got, right? :) Frankly, I did the fretless on keys bacause I couldn't pull off the licks I wanted on my real fretless. I should be ashamed. :)
 
i like the bass line. you should mic up that real bass and play it! a less impressive bass line on a real bass always beats an impressive performance on a midi bass imo. all the messy string slap noise and occasional buzzing of a real acoustic bass are the endearing qualities of it to me.

overall it's a nice composition, but i really wouldn't call it acid jazz. i think of medski martin and wood when i think of acid jazz. very organic, dissonant, angular, etc. this is just too smooth. don't get me wrong. it sounds nice as is. maybe tame the highs on the trumpet a bit?
 
I couldn't get it to work earlier, but it's working now.

This is like cool daddyo! I felt more like Joe Sample than Miles Davis, but that's ok too. Nice job as usual!
 
Nice piece. I'd have to agree with the other comments though...A little more realism in the instruments would make a big difference. Its difficult to get past the synthesized sound to be able to listen to the music.

I'd agree its not typical acid jazz. I'd normally expect a little funk blended into jazz to be 'acid jazz'...this is more 'modern jazz ballad'....very miles davis...

Anyway...nice piece, nice arrangement and well played....

Peace

Nick
 
Very Interesting

Thanks a lot guys, for all your input. There has been some debate as to the proper definition of "Acid Jazz". The way it has been explained to me by several purveyors of the craft is:

"Jazz chord theory, melodic elements and improvisation over a hip-hop styled beat. It is closely related to, and is sometimes confused with, Smooth Jazz."


Do you perceive it differently? If so, how would you liken it. If I'm describing this piece wrong, I'd like to correct that.
 
38? Hah! just a child.....;)

Well you beat me to my question about our collab. :)

You already know that I like your stuff a lot and this is no exception. I found the bass to be a little loud....not much, just a little. The muted trumpet works for me but I agree about the tone....although it does have the basic quality of a muted trumpet, it's a bit thin sounding. I bet if you bumped up the EQ at around 800hz it would flesh out the trumpet a bunch. Or better yet, why aren't you getting your favorite sax player to do some of these?!

Oh BTW......labels mean nothing.....to debate whether this is acid jazz or whatever seems meaningless to me. After all, terms like R&B, for instance, can mean drastically different things to different people and all of the different definitions can be valid. It's all a matter of veiwpoint and background. So let's just call this Llarion music.
 
ya' know...I listen to just about everything you post, and it's all very good. I don't ever have anything to improve your mixes, mainly because you're light years ahead of me in terms of getting full, unharsh, ambient mixes. I'm not a purist by any means when it comes to using midi stuff, I just don't know how. Your arrangements are great, and you get some of the coolest percussion sounds anywhere. I just felt like gushing a bit. Plus, I'm using CoolEdit with waves plugins, so I can't blame my mixes on that.

Keep doing what you love.
 
Re: 38? Hah! just a child.....;)

Lt. Bob said:
Well you beat me to my question about our collab. :)

You already know that I like your stuff a lot and this is no exception. I found the bass to be a little loud....not much, just a little. The muted trumpet works for me but I agree about the tone....although it does have the basic quality of a muted trumpet, it's a bit thin sounding. I bet if you bumped up the EQ at around 800hz it would flesh out the trumpet a bunch. Or better yet, why aren't you getting your favorite sax player to do some of these?!

Oh BTW......labels mean nothing.....to debate whether this is acid jazz or whatever seems meaningless to me. After all, terms like R&B, for instance, can mean drastically different things to different people and all of the different definitions can be valid. It's all a matter of veiwpoint and background. So let's just call this Llarion music.
Click to expand...

Lt. Bob,
Well, the stuff I've prrsesnted herein is mostly in "can't go back" finalized form, because the majority of it was recorded on my old VS-880EX, which I don't have anymore. So, I can't actually fix any mixing, or EQ just one instrument, I only have the stereo masters to work from. Only Dewpoint was done on my 16 track that I've posted here. The stuff you and I do will be ground up reworks, so I will be able to fuss more before release. I'll definitely be getting my favorite sax player to do some, I've just been SO consumed with getting this CD released that it's taking precedence over all new writing.

I agree with you about labels, but because they *are* indeed important to some, I though I'd try to tread a conservative line there and see if I wasn't misinterpreting what might be a relatively standard definition. Llarion Music huh? :) I refer to my stuff as "Calgon Music"; stuff you want to sink into a Jacuzzi with while holding somebody cute... So yeah, I guess that works.

I had the bass kicked up a notch to reinforce the implied bottom-heaviness of "hip-hop" themes.

Chris,
Don't sell yourself short, you do just fine, my man. I'm a fan. And I don't know crap about MIDI either. I dont' use it, with the exception of the drum computer programming nominally qualifying. But, I wouldn't know what to do with Cakewalk if my life depended on it. Sorry to blow your cover on the CoolEdit thing... :D :D :D

I really like the cross section of opinions I get here, it's sort of a microcosmal cross-section of the real world. My music polarizes people every time, but here, unlike in the real world, I get to find out WHY you like or dislike something, not just "I love it", or "You suck"...

Funny thing, I've gotten two really slam public reviews in my life, and thy were both on Riffage:

"What porn movie is this the soundtrack to?"

and

"I've heard worse. Right now, I can't think of anything though..."

BWAHAHAHA!!! Gotta love it. :)

Anyhow, thanks again.

Lt. Bob, rest assured, I have NOT forgotten you. The nanosecond I have something worth looking at, you'll be the first to know. :D If your flute is in good shape, that changes to "I have a backing track ready now". But it's definitely a flute piece, not sax.
 
Llarion...nice one man! Lot of talent you got there for sure! Enjoyed it bro...
 
more Bob Ross' "Joy of Painting"...

They'd roll this music during the after-credits, right after he says "God bless and bye bye, my friend" ;)

Not gonna comment on the mix, since the PC's got the internet connection, and the Mac's got the monitors....

Sounds really smooth in hi-fi... the percussion sounds kind of bother me, but otherwise it's a very nice composition... the other synth sounds sound pretty good... even the synth bass... Seems like the mix would open up some more with some front-to-back depth using reverb on only a few elements, but that's a preference.

If this were done with a nice, live jazz drum kit (brushes and all) and some judicious reverb, it could hit the airwaves no prob. Very nice display of talent, and toonage.


Chad
 
That's not jazz! ;)

Oops, sorry, there I go off again...

Nice effort, the mix is overall very nice. I didn't think the trumpet patch was all that bad. There's something percussive in the bass part, I think, that perhaps is affected by the MP3 encoding and has too prominent of a snap to it, to my ears. I really like the chord progression in the bridge this time, but the melody throughout sounds a bit like a throwaway to me, like a first pass at finding some notes that fit over the chords. The "trumpet" solo doesn't sound anything like what a real trumpeter would (or could) do. Nobody has lungs like that! Break it up into natural phrases, and use some more space, and it would be more believable.
 
AlChuck said:
That's not jazz! ;)

Oops, sorry, there I go off again...

Nice effort, the mix is overall very nice. I didn't think the trumpet patch was all that bad. There's something percussive in the bass part, I think, that perhaps is affected by the MP3 encoding and has too prominent of a snap to it, to my ears. I really like the chord progression in the bridge this time, but the melody throughout sounds a bit like a throwaway to me, like a first pass at finding some notes that fit over the chords. The "trumpet" solo doesn't sound anything like what a real trumpeter would (or could) do. Nobody has lungs like that! Break it up into natural phrases, and use some more space, and it would be more believable.
Click to expand...

AlChuck,

If only I had a firmer grasp on how trumpeters phrase things. You're so right. Incidentally, the only hard and fast melody is the head. The bridge is improvised each time.... (that's probably why it sound more like keyboard player than a trumpeter, come to think of it... :) )

Chad,
Thanks man! I'm getting mixed reviews elsewhere on the use of the TR-808 sound, but I just hadda do it. :) I hadda. It was in the stars. :D
 
If only I had a firmer grasp on how trumpeters phrase things. You're so right.
Click to expand...

Not that I could do any better, I'm a guitar player, what's breathing? ...but maybe just listen to a few of Miles' solos, or some other trumpeter you like -- maybe Mark Isham or Chris Botti in the kind of bag you're in. Maybe learn one or two just to play through the notes and I bet some of the phrasing will start to rub off. Maybe actually take a physical breath at the start of each phrase and release the line before you run completely out of breath.
 
AlChuck said:
There's something percussive in the bass part, I think, that perhaps is affected by the MP3 encoding and has too prominent of a snap to it, to my ears.
Click to expand...

That IS percussion.It's not the bass.Listen closely.

I take it you dont like slap style percussive bass playing?


Nice toonage Llarion.The whole groove is happening.I agree that real horns would be the way to go.easier said than done when you're not a horn player eh?

Nice recording all the way around.
 
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