HRC - Even the Rocks

  • Thread starter Thread starter dafduc
  • Start date Start date
dafduc

dafduc

New member
Here's a dry dry dry mix of Even the Rocks Would Cry Out, a tune I wrote a couple of years ago. It's contemporary Christian, and was, in part, aa response to the September 11th tragedy. We sang it at church a few times.

Caroline sang into a BLUE Baby Bottle. Rest of the signal chain is Omni/Delta 66 into Cubase 5.1.

Backing tracks were done in Acid 3.0, except for EP, which is an EVP-73 VSTi - I did that in Cubase.

My take on this:

I HATE HATE HATE the bass sound. Icky poo. It's a loop, but I may retrack it myself with VB-4 or something - hard to imagine it being much worse. The problem is partly Acid tempo-shift weirdness.

Caroline seemed to pick up some analog distortion somewhere - can you guys hear it? I'm not sure how, unless the mic's damaged (my granddaughter got ahold of it - totally my fault). Wasn't too noticeable 'til I pulled all the effects off.

There's some hiss from one of the synth loops. I'm thinking of cleaning that up with Sound Forge (at the exported track level, not at the loop level).

The vocal doubling was a happy accident - had to retrack last verse, decided to keep both takes. I like it anyhow.

I started off hating the guitar track - too pedestrian. But a little playing with the loops added some punches I liked, and the EP part took some of the load off the guitar. I'm reasonably happy with it, now.

Drums are still pedestrian, but they ffit the genre pretty well, I think.

Lemme know what you think.

Daf
 
Hey Daf...I didn't catch any distortion on the vocal at all...ooohhh..nice stereo trick on the end there.

yup, vocal seemed clear - something weird @ 1:24...sounds like a bad edit, but there's no vocal there, lol.

Biggest nit on this would be the splitting /spreading of the doubled vocal starting @ 2:00 minutes. That's such a powerful sentiment and image, it really got lost on me the first time through b/c of the distraction of the stereo split on the vocal...Well, maybe you didn't split it, but it's too obviously doubled for my taste. She's got a great voice, it doesn't need to be beefed up (like I did on my last one, lol...BECAUSE I NEEDED IT).

Take care,
Chris
 
Thx for the listen, Chris.

The vocal is split. I will bring them closer together, and pull one of them back - again, this was RAW, so no tweaking.

Thx for the listen. There was no edit except for bringing in the second vocal, so I'm not sure what you're hearing. I'll give it another listen tonight if I can (long list of honey-do's tonight, though), and see if I can find the glitch.

Anyone else? I should mention that with some REALLY extreme EQing on the bass, I was able to make the bass itself sound better, but it really messed up the rest of the tracks - heavy speaker-type distortion. So I'll need to do a better job of isolating the bass frequencies to make that approach work.

Daf
 
I would like to hear the choral version! Your singer has a good, powerful voice that works well in this tune. I liked the doubling effect, but almost heard it as more of a background vocal. Maybe bringing one of the voices out a bit more may make it flow better since it goes from this huge vocal to kind of a buried, double vocal.

Not bad, though, for a completely dry recording!

:)
 
Thx, Boyd.

Funny, on my monitors, the doubling was way louder, so I pulled it back to where the levels seemed equal. I'll check it again.

I don't know if I'll get a choral version recorded - I left my choir director slot a year ago. I could probably pull 4 or 6 voices together and do the 10cc thing, I guess...:D

Daf
 
This is very well recorded. I would like to hear the choral version too! I didn't even know it was a looped bass till I read the threads..

Great Jeaorb!
 
Whoa!I didn't know this was CCM...sorry,can't stomache it dude.The title and the hook made me chuckle.Crying rocks,...lol...that's rich!That chicks got a classic church voice.Vox panned too hard in spots.Hey!Wadda ya know I got thru the whole thing.Great for a dry recording.You could almost leave it alone...almost.
 
Thx Scott. Most of these loops were from a $5 Magix basic construction kit - Rock and Pop II or something. Had to play with them a lott to make them sound human.

WISC, don't know what to say. It's a Jesus quote - Luke 19:40. The idea is that God formed us from the dust, and he could do it again, if we turn our back on him. Anyhow, I'll be fixing the pan, and generally crapping it up with DSP. Gotta fatten that bass, or something.

Anyone else? Sluice? WATYF? You talked me into this...:D

Daf
 
Oh!I will most definatley study that portion tomorrow.I'de like to read the whole verse.Jesus is the greatest rock star who ever was.
 
nice recording, really flowing. The bass does sound kind a like that clean tubby Yamaha synth sound, I`d go for a little more raspy analog kinda like the Oberheim. If you let it sustain more it would smooth the whole tune out a little more since the rest of the musical parts are a bit more stuccato. The girl can hit her marks well.. the guitar sounded nice. The drums have a real clean canned sound. Some analog symbals would sound good in the turns.
Ken
 
Thanks, Ken. I'll take a look at the bass phrasing. I'm scairt a little about adding cymbals to a self-contained drum loop, but I'll see if I can find a sound that fits, play with it some.

Daf
 
Nice clean aquisition and a pretty song! I too would like to hear a choral version.

The cymbals do need some variety. if you split those hits among 3 or 4 different samples, it will sound more natural. The bass doesn't bother me, I think it needs to stay outta the way like you have it. I agree that the doubling is wasted, the voice is pure and needs no help. A harmony part, perhaps, but I'd lose the doubling. Overall, it's sweet! Well done!

Cheers!
Phil "Llarion: The Jazzinator" Traynor
www.llarion.com
 
Thanks, Phil. I'll look at the cymbals. Harmony instead of doubling is a good idea, but the singer and I both liked the effect. We were thinking about tossing in harmonies anyhow (her daughters both have gorgeous voices), so we'll figure it out and move from there.

So I'm the only one who hates the bass, huh?

Daf
 
i'm gonna bump this once (just once, promise) - partly for the HRC bunch, partly 'cos it's Memorial Day - there's not really an obvious Memorial Day tie-in, but on a deeper level, it speaks to the sacrifice of those who've gone before us, and their motivation, and to our obligation to carry it forward.

Of ccourse, your patriotic and religious thoughts this Memorial Day should be tempered with large amounts of BBQ and beer...:D

Daf

Here are the lyriccs, if you didn't see them in the Songwriting forum:

Even the Rocks Would Cry Out

Verse 1:
Lord, while I live, I will not be silent,
I will always sing your praise;
And when you call me to come home to you,
There will be more who’ll take my place.
But even if our hearts and minds were turned,
Still the truth will stay unchanged:
That you are King of all creation,
And forever you will reign.

Refrain:
Even the rocks would cry out,
Even these stones would name you Lord!
If every voice were stilled,
If every tongue were silent,
Even the rocks would cry out
That Jesus Christ is Lord!

Verse 2:
There are powers and principalities
Who would have no part of you;
They rule the marketplaces, the governments,
They touch the smallest things we do.
And we’ve look toward them, and away from love,
toward the lure of easy gain,
But if all our heads are so easily turned,
Who'll be left to raise the joyous strain?

Refrain

Verse 3:
We've seen our towers turned to rubble,
Seen our dreams of peace deferred;
But when the hills are dust, and mountains crumble,
A song will rise up out of the earth:

Refrain
 
You guys are wearing out my dial-up connection today. This is about my fifth download today (I started at 6:00 this morning). However, I thank you heartily for the <3 mb size on this one, daf. :)

Nice recording. Nice laid back feel. If this was the dry submission then you dun need no steenkin' effects. The singer reminds me of a friend of mine's wife who is also a church singer. She has a great voice for this type of music. Personally I liked the doubling, too. I'm not a christian rock fan, but this is good stuff.

Mike
 
Really smooth vocal sound, blue bottle things sound pretty nice.

I could live without the reverb on the kick.

Nice recording overall.
 
Thanks, guys.

Mike: Yah, I know what you mean. All these guys with 5mb files. Yeah, Caroline's got a great warm vvoice, excellent technique, and the baby bottle really suits her. Thanks for listening.

Emeric: Thank you too. The reverb came in the loop. I always mix my kicks dry (even on my RX-15 20 years ago, panned the kick opposite the rest of the kit so the kick could be dry while I reverbed up the rest) unless I'm doing a Simon and Garfunkel kind of thing. But this was the best loop for this song, so I had to compromise.

Daf
 
Hi Dafduc,
Hey man,

It must be me but on my monitors the gal vox is wayyyyy to far out front....the guitar (synth?) needs to come up and the bass is pretty far back and deep in the mix....I would say "muddy" but, it seems everyone says that but never tells ya how to fix it....ya know?....so...I'll say the bass is...er...umm....
















wet and dirty :D

you're gal pal has a sweet voice.....,
you play really well too...
Take it easy man,
Joe
 
I liked this. Very refreshing. Yeah the bass was distorting but the vox is really nice. This song is a great reminder that all musicians are not some lost breed of humans praising evil,lust and greed. I'm surprised at the number of good people we have here, helpful,pleasant and obviously caring folks who write about there innermost feelings and thoughts and receive very little mocking for that sharing. That is compared to most of the rest of net. And a posting like this reminds me that this really is a nice place with lots of great guys.

Well done, I'd like to hear it cleaned up.

I like this verse

But even if our hearts and minds were turned,
Still the truth will stay unchanged


Ill probably sleep on that one



As always
Peace
Bill
 
Joe: Thank you. Glad you liked the piano (since that's the only thing I "played", I'm assuming that's what you meant.). Way out front on the vocal was on purpose, but I didn't mean to mix the guitar low. Might be my M-1's giving me fits again.

There was a woofer-rattlling wet version of this -- I kept tweaking the bass trying to find something that didn't suck - wound up making the whole mix distort. So the HRC thing was a good way to get back to square one with this. We'll see what a gentle tweak does this time.

Bill: You're making me blush...:o See?

Yeah, it's nice to not get the h8ers jumping on these. But I've written my share of lusty songs, too. Watch these pages for one called Cat-n-Canary. It won't be making it onto the Christian CD we're working on...:rolleyes:

Seriously, though, thanks for reaffirming my work. It means a lot.

Peace, yourself.:)

Daf
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top