LOL - uke shredding from young Frank
Finally got to listen to it - sounds pretty good all round to me. No sonic nits to pick here. You've done a good job on making the bass sound relatively acoustic too via the playing style, works well with everything else.
Nice.
Thanks, Armistice. I was really quite surprised at how Frank picked up the Uke. I shouldn't be - he just seems to grab an instrument, the next thing y'know he's playing it. Kids, eh?
Finally getting to hear this...
The mix sounds great. I'm listening through my tracking phones (HD280's), and the bass Is quite fat and strong, but I like it that way, and these phones tend to be sort of dark anyway...
I like the panning of the hand percussion...it's pretty pronounced through phones, but I bet would sound less so through speakers.
I thought the stringed instruments sounded great...nothing I would change there.
It felt like the vocals were a bit buried to me during the verses, especially when compared to any time Llano, Llano is sung. I mean, I could hear them ok, I just subjectively would've liked them louder during all of the other parts.
It struck me more as latin flavored folk vs. country, but then country can take many forms, and my definition is perhaps quite narrow. I enjoyed it, and I think it sounds great overall!
Thanks, Heatmiser. The original has loads of pedal steel on it, which skewed my idea of what genre this really belongs to. In actual fact, I think it's more of a Tex-Mex Mariachi sound when the pedal steel is taken away. You're right about the imbalance between the Llano Llano parts and the verse vocals, but I think the fault lies with the former rather than the latter.
I turned down the chorus vocal and sharpened up the eq to cut better in the verse parts.
Any song that name checks Aldos Huxley is cool by me - then adding Esperanto - well :Thta granda de mi,"
Nice recording - the uke is cool almost mandoline stuff happening too. There're some spots where the ;lyrics are less clearly heard by deaf me than in otehrs.
Apart from that ĝi estas tute bona.
Thanks, Ray. I think this experiment has been a success, over all. The original song has real substance lyrically and that's the reason why Frank and I wanted to do this style. Normally I wouldn't have gone within a country mile of it.
I really like the strumming rhythm and style. My foot was moving to the beat.
The tempo is a hair slow, imo. The mix sounds spot on.
Thanks for the listen, Nola.
This isn't my usual thing as you know, but getting outside your comfort zone is a good thing now and again and I'm happy with the result.
The mix is really good. Personally, I'd like to hear a little bit of grit of some kind. I hate to be so vague, but I don't know exactly what it is my ear wants to hear. It just all sounds so smooth and pristine, and I'm wanting to hear it a little rougher. But I'm not sure how. Keep in mind that the only country I like is the really old stuff, and there is a lot of great country-ish stuff (I'm talking talented bluegrass groups, not pop country) that is slickly produced in a good way. So it's a matter of what you're going for. As an inveterate punk I'd think you would go for a more rough-around-the-edges country style. Something like Hank III maybe. The vocal seems a little loud. The groove is great. Gives me the urge to watch Smokey and the Bandit. So you nailed that aspect. Well-performed, nice full sound. It just needs some sonic funkiness of some kind.
Ha ha, thanks, Paulman. If I'd had any plan at all when we started this, I would've agreed with you wholeheartedly.
As it was, this cover was a party piece that myself and the scion came up with to play at summer barbecues when friends ask us to get the guitars out! I was only going to record the Uke, guitar and vocals live, originally. Once we set up, I decided to do the instruments first then the vocal after.
Then I had the brainwave of adding the cabasa which I bought solely to do Paranoid Android with and never used since.
Then I wanted a different cabasa rhythm in the other ear.
Then I thought the track needed a "pulse" and I got Frank to do the floor tom beat.
Then I remembered I'd spent £400 on a ride cymbal three weeks ago and I wanted my money's worth, so that got put on.
Then I realised it was a fully-blown track and it needed bass guitar.
It was never meant to be like this, I just couldn't leave it alone!
