My Revenge on Jamal

[Guernica]

WOW man..... this is great!! A very just cover of the original....... VERY Nice work Chris.

BTW: Re: mix- As you know, Im here at work on the comp speakers. This mix sounds exceptionally smooth on these speakers (this struck me as strange). I dont mean that as just a compliment.... Usually even the best stuff sounds a touch harsh on these.... ...this sounds like a beautifully produced piece being listened to on a radio. ....really makes the speakers sound good. I really wanna hear this at home..... The guits dont "stick out" at all. .......Very inside the mix, but not too low in levels or over compressed............... ......smooth!

Really Great man!
gw/5

 

[erichenryus]

Dude, that almost bothers me. The "I shouldn't have said anything" part. See, here's what's gonna' happen: I'll pop this in the car tomorrow, and it'll sound muddy, and I'll say to myself: "Why the fuck didn't erichenryus say anything about this...is he deaf, or just stupid?"

well it was kind of hard to concentrate on the mix when you sounded like you were singing and gargling mouthwash at the same time! i'm not an autotune nazi or anything and it can actually add a cool effect when it forces a jump between notes or when turn it into it's own instrument like cat-eggs but when you sing between two notes and it is struggling to gargle you to the nearest tone that just sounds a lot like a tape machine eating a vocal track!

seriously, i didn't hear any overbearing frequencies but i was listening on 'street style' headphones plugged into my mobo soundcard so it wasn't a real check worth noting. my monitors are currently unplugged with the rest of my recording gear and it's not like i would actually know which frequencies to offer up anyway. i just recently learned how to do a passable job with a de-esser!

 

[erichenryus]

and now i'm starting to wonder why no one else is bothered by that! i can't point out exactly in the song where it's happening cause i'm at work but i shouldn't have to either. no one else except darth,beezboy, and me heard that??????? i'm not talking about the cher-like instant slides between notes, cause that honestly doesn't bother me, i'm talking about the mouthwash effect. everyone else likes that? i'm gonna differ with all y'all and say I THINK IT SOUNDS LIKE SHIT! That, by the way, is what Darth and Beezboy meant to say also. apologies if I used the word y'all incorrectly. those of us who have lived our whole life north of ............Missouri don't receive proper training on the use of that word in grammar school.

 

[chrisharris]

I THINK IT SOUNDS LIKE SHIT!

LOL...Dude, I know. Hehehehe... You think you're tough, you oughtta' hear my wife. I actually had to work pretty hard to get that shitty gargle sound; it's not the autotune, by the way, it's a sawtooth vibrato on top of the autotune. The problem is, it's not a plugin, so it's printed. I'm probably gonna' do like I do on 90% of my mixes and re-sing it after it goes through the slamming in the clinic.

Thanks for posting again, ... motherfuc...nevermind

 

[JR#97]

ah... the soothing sounds of chris harris. nice job. great production overall. didn't care for the auto-tune cher effect, but that's just me (and millions others! lol j/k) Having said that, it wa awesome on the backing vocal parts. One of these days I really need to sit you down and find out how you work out a production. For a solo act, you sure do crank the poop out in a hurry and with great results. oh yeah... and you still managed to get in the chris harris signature lick. good job.

 

[bpoco]

I haven't heard the original yet, but will check it out later today.

Very cool effect on the fade in !!!

Per usual, you've put together a great mix. Like Sluice, you've got this "mix thing" down. Now you're free to explore ... cool.

I thought the vox autotune was WAY overdone ..... for what it's worth. However, the "clean" vocal sounds as good as it ever has.

[edit] - Haven't read the entire thread yet, but did you happen to mention whose drum loops you use? I thought they sound great.

BPOCO

 

[JR#97]

forgot to mention that this is kick ass song writing, jamal.

 

[Pedullist]

Nothing to comment, mixwise.

The over-the-top autotuner is funny as hell...the only good way to use it (excuse me, but I loathe autotuners...)

 

[chrisharris]

Okay, okay...I toned down the autotune a bit for the clinic...LOL.

erichenryus - It's still pretty massively autotuned, but I resang parts of it without the comical sawtooth vibrato.

Plus, I listened to the mp3 on the monitors, and the cymbals were all phasey from the conversion...fuck, I hate that. I encoded at a little higher bitrate and reposted it. It probably won't stream very well.

Guernica - It's weird, I listened in the car, and I was expecting it to be really muddy (which is the only way to get a mix to sound decent on computer speakers, lol - but honestly, to my ears, it wasn't too muddy. Let me know how this version hits your ears at home, and thanks again for taking the time).

BPoco - The drums are from "loopology.com," and they're specially embedded with tempo information for CoolEdit Pro. I added another kick track of a sample I stole from Participant...but the basic loops are loopology. If you're using CEP, it's easy...but be careful if you have a pirated version of CoolEdit...the loopology site will delete it. How do I know this? Well, I actually have a licensed copy of CEP, and a pirated one that I got to try it out before I bought it...When I went to loopology.com, the fucking site deleted ALL of my CEP software, including all my presets that I've been building for months...that's all I'll say, lol.

JR#97 - damned good to hear from you. I work backwards from most people...I do guitars and vocals first to a metronome...then drums, then bass. Then, I just see what it needs...not all of them need backups or guitar fills, lol. I think this is just easier for me because it's better for me to EQ a bass AROUND a decent guitar sound than vice versa. Whenever I do the bass and drums first, I find myself sucking the life out of all the acoustic instruments to squeeze them in. (btw, I did most of this before I cut most of my finger off, so any guitar clams are without excuse, lol).

Pedullist - Re: Your disdain for autotune: YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED - Naw, it's good to see you get it...I did have to tone it down some, though. The line between "an effect" and "comedy" is a fine one indeed.

ANYWAY, NEW VERSION'S UP...AND I ALWAYS CHANGE STUFF BASED ON COMMENTS...SO CHANGE THIS, LOL.

 

[alexspetty]

i really like chris harris music... another great one chris.. you have a real smooth nature to your style that i really appreciate. whats your story? how long you been at it? you still playing out? etc? what part of the country are you in?

and jamals' cover is pretty nice too.. a very different interpretation from the original... nice.

-alex

 

[chrisharris]

whats your story?

I was born a poor black child in Austin, TX. I am currently a white middle class attorney who loves music, LOL.

how long you been at it?

I recorded my first tune around August of 2001, so... 19 months, I guess. Been playing since I was about 15.

you still playing out?

Yeah...my old college band still gigs, and I've recently started doing some solo shows... Mostly, I just wanna' be my daughter's backup singer. (she's 12 and the pride of my life... check out "She Looks To Heaven" on my singles page if you get a chance).

what part of the country are you in?

Waco, TX...Yes, THAT Waco, LOL

etc?

I like eating cheese in front of the TV in my underwear.




As far as the style, I need to branch out more...I'm truly a Rock fan at heart, but more straight ahead stuff like the Foo Fighters / 3 Doors Down. I just don't have any desire to tune the strings on my guitar down until they fall off, which makes me about as relevant as Perry Como.

Your mixes kick ass, btw. I try to pick one thing in each mix to really focus on and fix...and on this one, it was the sibilance; I got the inspiration from your 2nd post. Nice stuff.

 

[gartulan]

This sucks---it must be much easier writing songs if you can sing---

CHarris's version is pretty soothing---even in lo-fi

kudos!

 

[chrisharris]

This sucks--

I agree it sucks, but I'm limited, lol.

Jamal's version rules...I can't wait for him to re-record it.

 

[Pedullist]

Yeah...my old college band still gigs, and I've recently started doing some solo shows... Mostly, I just wanna' be my daughter's backup singer. (she's 12 and the pride of my life... check out "She Looks To Heaven" on my singles page if you get a chance).

True, your daughter is amazing!! What is it in american folkmusic (yep, I consider your music folkmusic, Chris) that makes such great singers? It seems like it's such good soil! (hope this is the right word, I checked it in my dictionary and it says uppermost part of the earth's crust which consists of humus mixed with rocks and minerals - that's what I mean - but also poo or manure - not sure if I mean that

 

[twist]

Chris, The song is excellent. The mix sounds excellent. Auto tune?....well that's your choice. Actually it sounds kinda cool on some parts in this song. But damn, will my mixes ever sound like that?


Twist

 

[gartulan]

what is auto tune if I might ask?

 

[chrisharris]

what is auto tune if I might ask?

Autotune is the secret of life.

Autotune is a gift from God.

Autotune is probably the only effect you can use that will actually PISS people off, lol.

That "effect" on my vocal, where the voice sounds kinda' robot-like...where it sounds more like a synthesizer than a human voice, THAT'S autotune. You're not really supposed to use it like this (i.e., SUPER obvious), but I thought it was okay since this is a hobby and since Jamal liked it, lol.

The version I'm using is a "plugin," which just means it's a piece of software that I can use with my tracking software.

You tell the autotuner what Key the song's in, and it simply looks at whatever signal you give it (vocal in this case) and adjusts the pitch to the note in that key that it's closest to. You can adjust the parameters to tell it how quickly to make the adjustment, so what I do is set it as fast as it'll possibly shift, so when I'm sliding between 2 notes, it takes the bottom half of the slide and adjusts it downward, then when the slide gets over 50% of the way to the next note, it adjusts that half of the slide upwards...so the effect is there's no slide at all, just immediate note changes.

 

[erichenryus]

what is auto tune if I might ask?

http://www.antarestech.com/products/auto-tune3.html

autotune will soon be replaced as 'most likely effect to piss off people in the clinic' when this gets in heavy rotation:
http://messe.harmony-central.com/Musikmesse03/Content/TC_Electronic/PR/VoiceModeler.html

oddly enough, i'm sure a lot of the same people who become indignant when a fellow musician stoops so low as to correct their pitch inaccuracies with a plugin will have no problem tapping out a drum track on a keyboard with sloppy rythm and then hitting the 'quantize' and 'groove' button so that everything is real tidy with the fake rythm section.

man, i'm in a sour mood today.

 

[chrisharris]

oddly enough, i'm sure a lot of the same people who become indignant when a fellow musician stoops so low as to correct their pitch inaccuracies with a plugin will have no problem tapping out a drum track on a keyboard with sloppy rythm and then hitting the 'quantize' and 'groove' button so that everything is real tidy with the fake rythm section.

LOL...good point. I hate those assholes that quantize. (ummm, but "loops" are fine).

Here's where I am on the debate. "Reverb" is fake if it comes out of a box...and so is perfect pitch...but both SOUND good to me, lol. I would probably have a problem with using it live, but that's just because I think recording and performing are TOTALLY different animals. A live performance shouldn't come out of a box...I mean, you'd might as well just hit the "PLAY" button on a CD, right?

But for recording, no limits baby. FREE YOUR MIND. .. . lol. I mean, for the love of GOD, I put a HUGE flange on an acoustic that nobody has even mentioned...now THAT'S worth bitching about, lol. BTW, erichenryus, I did cut down on the underwater vocal some. Let me know what you think.

 

[Kramer]

I just listened to this tune 6 more times back to back Chris and I DONT hear what I was hearing last night.I told you man,dont listen to me.LMAO!I love what those electric guitars are doing..the volume swells and stuff.(sounds like swells..is it?).....sounds like a phaser on the guits at times too.....cool guitar work.