It's been a long time

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlChuck
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Hey AlChuck,

Lots of different parts in this, cool changes between them all.

Nice playing, smooth Benson'ish, but more on the fusion side of things. Nice guitar tone for the style, fits well. Odd little edit glitch (3:22) but that's easily fixed. Bass is cool up until nearer the end where the timing goes a little out.

Overall mellow, and melodic!
 
Almost sounds like a slow guitar solo over a pretty consistant rhythm with very defined parts. The guitar's role in the song actually reminds me of a classical violin type part.

The far away sounding guitar works well, i think it lets the ryhthm parts drive the song.

Eric
 
Thanks for the comments...

Emeric, about the last person I was expecting to show up in comments is George Benson... it always amazes me how different people hear things. In retrospect I guess I can tell what you mean...

Re the glitches, there's quite a few, and the bass part I am not happy with overall. I also think it's probably too long, and the melody part should be a little more firmly established -- the parts after the first chord change are just improvised and quite different each time, I need to find a combination of notes I'm happy with.

Kingstonrock, interesting comments too... the guitar solo gets busy at times but on top of the choppy rhythym track and with the long sustain it does give the impression of slow sailing over the top...
 
great eric johnson sound!

pretty cool stuff.... I enjoyed it!

the bass might have a distorted sound... maybe lower it
 
Thanks, JMarcomb... yeah, the bass track is woofy as hell, i need to redo it.
 
cool tune..

I liked it for the most part. It reminded me of newer Satriani a bit. :cool: Something about the fidelity maybe could have been better. I'm sure part of it is the mp3 conversion, but not all of it. I like guitar music like this so I am a bit bias. I must admit that I was waiting for the blazing run or lightning fast part or something like that, but it didnt come. Let me state for the record that you are a more capable guitarist than myself. The bass was sounding kinda direct, which I'm sure it was, but I dont think you want it to sound that way.

I liked it enough to check out all of your other tunes and they were pretty cool as well... but they were all very similar..I'm not talking about the style either. they kinda all sounded like the same song... Always an electronica feel which is cool too I guess. It just all sounded like one long song..... a cool one though.

cool tunes overall.... I pretty much liked all of them..

later
sam
 
nice, but the gtr got a a little boring after awhile...just kinda meandering around...which I certainly know how to do myself:p

I agree with sabbath....when will it take off into improv nirvana??
 
I'd probably agree with sabbath, too, if he posted something here... ;)

samicide (who did post), thanks for the comments.

I would suspect the fidelity beyond the conversion, I make no claims to be a superior nor even an average recording engineer.

I am really not satisfied with the bass sound; it's a combination of a so-so bass guitar, playing too sloppily, and not having really worked out a suitable way to record it (it is direct, either through the POD "Tube Preamp" model or through my ART Studio MP mic preamp used as a direct box. I might have to double it with synth bass to round it out, or get a real bass player with a decent instrument.

Sorry I disappointed on the blazing fast runs, I don't really think like that... occasionally it will just sort of happen by accident, but I have not really got the speed demon chops to pull it off on a regular basis. I am woodshedding pretty hard these days, so maybe in a few months I'll be able to uncork a few real jaw-droppers. Then again, maybe by careful editing I can construct a few... ;) Funny, I actually think I often tend to be too busy by nature, and have to be careful not to play too many notes and make those I play count for more.

Thanks for taking the time to check out the other tunes, I take that as a real compliment. Yeah, they are kind of similar -- all of those four started with ACID loops (several were done entirely within ACID, in fact). Is that good or bad? Some might say it shows coherence and a stylistic consistency. Or perhaps it really is too much like the same song. Hell, I'm not too worried either way, it's all me fiddling around having fun and making myself happy more than anything. I'm not trying to get a recording contract or anything. Hopefully future ones will exhibit a little more variety.

mixxxxmkr,

Yeah, I agree, I don't think my improv alone, which this mostly is, is good enough to sustain a five-minute track by itself. I need to balance it better with composed parts and some variety. Maybe some other musicians would bring some air into it -- it suffers from the one-man-band syndrome.
 
Nice, smooth playing. A real good sound on the guitars. A terrific overall job of mixing, except for maybe the bass. The bass came through loud and clear on my cheap headphones, so I can imagine it booms a bit much on good speakers.

And at 5:12, it's probably a bit long for an instrumental.

But other than a couple of small things, a real good job.
 
I listened to them all. This one was my favorite. With a little polish you wouldn't think it was a "wankfest"
 
TripleM, twist, thanks for the comments... I appreciate it.

mixmkr, I finally figured out that samicide is sabbath... my apologies for correcting you when no correction was called for.
 
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AlChuck,

It truely is the notes you DON'T play that counts. You've maturity in your chops. Albert Collins could make one note shame everyone else on stage.

Had to say it.

Theron.
 
AlChuck, so I finally hear your music at long last. You've been helping me out for over a year now on the cakewalk forum and now I can hear what you have been upto.

First of all, the background percussion and weird jungle sounds are absolutely fantastic, and the tone of the guitar is spot on. As regards the bass, I have a pair of Beyerdynamic phones which woofed all the time but I was able to cope with that by messing with the EQ. But there was some other distortion too, a crackle that was constant.

Maybe a bit long, sub-4 mins would be the optimum.

Some nice minor diatonic guitar riffs in there, maybe a change of pace would have worked?

But hey, overall a great sounding track, well played, well mixed and well done:D
 
Thanks, Paul881 and theron...

Paul, the chord progression does hang on a couple of major sevenths near the end (before a sus chord that leasd us back to dorian-land) -- maybe you mean a bridge that contrasts, rather than the little odd four-bar thing I stuck in?
 
Great Stuff, AlChuck. Perhaps a tad long, but would make an awesome soundtrack. Now just get a better name (OK, I dont have kids, I guess you are just doing the right thing).
 
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