Songs from a Broken Corral

  • Thread starter Thread starter kurth
  • Start date Start date
K

kurth

New member
Hello. I've been writing songs for more than 50 years. But I'm the guy they wouldn't let near the mic, so it wasn't a high priority. I've done alot of different creative things. & I couldn't care less about 'making it', but I'd like for people to listen to my stories. Artist, poet, photographer, engineer, inventor. I left the ratrace 40 years ago so I have a thousand dollar studio....$100 mic, $100 audio interface, cheap compu , some jbl's....up in the mountains of central Mexico. Here's the first installment of 10songs. Working on about 60 but thought I'd just let 10 go out into the wild to get some reactions. It's narrative acoustic. I wasn't too pleased with how soundcloud chewed them in.... compared to listening to 96khz/24bit, but hey that's life. Beats my old tascam 4 track cassette. I hope you find them interesting. thanks for using your precious time to listen.
soundcloud.com

Kurth Bousman

Listen to Kurth Bousman | SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.
soundcloud.com soundcloud.com
 
Hey guys/gals...somebody que me in, porfavor. Views on this post tripled overnight, yet plays on my soundcloud page haven't moved. So how's that possible? Other than no one is listening. Maybe one or two songs listened to, in the whole week. Maybe I should go back to cassettes?
 
Not sure what you mean about the 96KHz/24 My hearing at similar age means 48K for me is giving me HF I can't here.

The presentation is a bit unusual. it's odd to have your voice panned left and the guitar right, and it sounds totally raw. I left soundcloud playing while typing - and it started before there were walls. I've now got guitar 1 right, another but duller guitar left and the very reverby harmonica. It seems to be a bit random? What I noticed was the lack of a solid rhythm - the strumming of the two guitars and your voice all seemed to be lacking 'cohesion' so the downbeats often didn't happen at the same time, and the strumming was not in time. The third track before the dawn has a very odd harmonica on the intro. A guitar and a violin-ish sound also lurch in and out and something quite out of tune appears.

If you want honest feedback - your vocal style is quite unique, and I accept the words are important. Technically, you can hear every word, but there are lots of clicks on that violinish instrument? It's lots of instruments and your voice, but they are all sort of playing on their own, not sitting with each other very well. Frankly, the harmonica sounds quite awkward. It doesn't help, it hinders. Walking to comonfort followed the same system - lots of instruments all fighting with each other. That's as far as I got.

You seem to capture the instruments fairly well, but EQ, effects, processing and tweaking seem quite lacking. That damn harmonica just popped up again, but sounded like it was in a bathroom and the playing style is NOT sympathetic to the genre. The timing does it's own thing again - that harmonica just played don't cry for me argentina? It doesn't fit the song at all - very random. A piano sort of burbled in and out just before the end - very strange?

Old friends started but that damn harmonica is back - that's where I stopped.

Does this help?
 
at least rob, you listened to half. I mean the difference listening to a flac or wav file at 96khz/24bit is easily distinguishable from the rechewed up soundcloud output.

the only song where voice and guitar are panned in 60/40 to each side is the first ,because it's only voice and guitar , it gave great separation....and well, my theory was that's what happens when you hear a singer and a guitar player live. Maybe it doesn't work?

Old friends is definitely geoshred swam cello. No harmonicas....but I like reed instruments.

That very odd harmonica on before the dawn...is a just a harmonica. Like in the kind you blow into jaja. It's supposed to add color, like sitting around a campfire. I don't play harmonica obviously, I just grabbed a couple in the right key.

Before there were walls...well we all live in our own universes. I think the rhythm is easily established by the clapping at the start. And there are just two separate individual rhythm guitar parts , one going right, one going left. They'resupposedto be playing offofeachother, or at least that was the goal when I played it. Maybe because I don't use drums? I'm always around 40-50bpm, so it's slow. I use a metronome on ipad called Pulse. My take on timing is...songs aren't supposed to be exact electonically timed . If you can't tell from my music, I hate modern electronic music. Timing should vary during the process, to add to the story. That's esp true for slow acoustic, but also for jazz...imho. Timing is essentially an emotional response.

The harmonicas are either mixcraft or some other vsts, or it could be geoshred swam cello...or thumbjam. Not sure what you mean by clicks? Are you talking about noise clicks? Or perhaps acoustic guitar sounds. Acoustic guitars are difficult to record, and when played, make some clicks. Pick noise, strum noise etc.

Processing was simple. No bus tracks. Each instrument and vocal track was usually compressed and eq'd. Then I used ozone to master, since I don't know diddley, nor have much interest in being a recording engineer. I spent alot of time comparing the options and differences and w/o much processing sounded better. I thought also that too many processing vst's make it worse. Like using both saturation and reverb on vocals tracks for instance.

Ok thanks rob I appreciate you listening. Really...I'm a duck and sometimes I learn from criticism , believe it or not. Not sure I agree with everything but I'll keep it in mind when I'm listening again. And the words are everything, but there's too much silence , if they're unaccompanied. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a great musician. Just wait for my piano compositions, and that'll be obvious. thanks again/k
 
The clicks are sort of mechanical sounding clicks?
The harmonicas are real and vsti's then?

I'm struggling a bit to describe the overall feel. Sterile? Maybe? It just sounds a bit raw. Rhythm wise, maybe I misdescribed. It's loose. you hear one guitar and how it's picked and strummed and your brain gives you a pulse, then the other guitar appears with a different pulse - just a bit but a bit like polyrhythms in jazz, but more random. One sort of might plan locked to the beat but the other has a different beat that doesn't blend. Then the harmonica has a pulse of it's own.

The panning you selected just fights a bit because there is no sense of space - two very dry tracks in the main that might be in separate spaces. No close your eyes and imagine where it is being played. I'm not explaining this very well.

On the Flac front - I can detect no difference whatsoever in 48K 24 or 32 bit uncompressed files compared to 96K - I never record at 96, ever. In fact while people often give me flacs, I cannot hear in any quantifiable way, flac vs wav. I'm sure it's there, but EQ and treatment are far, far more audible in music situations. Compressed formats yes - there is a difference of course, but I am totally unimpressed with 96K - it adds little to musicality unless you are below 40 and have hearing like a bat, and even then, what is up top is often what we EQ out!
 
I gave the first two tracks a quick listen. My impression was they are basically demo level recordings. The vocals need polish, there are lots of off key spots. The same applies to the guitar. The arrangements are pretty sparse.

If I was a record producer or an artist looking for songs, these would be starting points to get the chord progressions and melody. Probably not much else. Any arrangement decisions, instrumentation would probably be worlds different. Think of the differences between Bruce Springsteens's version of Blinded By The Light and Manfred Mann's version. Heck, even someone like Motown would try difference approaches to songs that their staff writers came up with. Heard It Through The Grapevine was recorded by Smokey Robinson & Miracles, Gladys Knight & Pips, and Marvin Gaye. Each was the same song, but vastly different in feel. And both Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye hit #1 with the same song!

As for the difference between Soundcloud and your raw wave file should be obvious. Most all streaming services will compress and adjust the levels, and if they convert to something like 128k MP3, it will lose some of the high frequencies. MP3, WMA, and others are lossy formats. They remove information to save bandwidth. FLAC and WAV are lossless. There is no information removed. FLAC is like ZIP for music. A ZIP file will be much smaller than the original file, but when recovered, everything is there.

A properly done 48K shouldn't show any improvement in terms of frequency response or dynamic range compared to 96K. They both can record sound above normal human hearing. Higher sample rates move the possiblity of aliasing higher. Some people say that you can get ultrasonics that cause issues with the analog sections. The main advantage I have found with using 88 or 96K is that I get less latency given a specific buffer size. I can no longer hear much if anything at 10K or above so it's not an issue for me. Remember that none of the typical mics we use can record much above 20K. Things like the SM57 die off at 15K, Even the much touted U87ai is down 10dB by 20kHz. But if you are recording a synth direct, you could easily be creating frequencies well above 20K.

The real advantage of 24 or 32 data bits is purely dynamic range. With the vast majority of interfaces today, you can easily get well over 100dB of S/N. I doubt that there are many places where you actually have a -100dB noise floor. Most rooms will be 35 to 40dB

32 bit floating point is different, in that there is no way you can have a signal that can't be recorded. Normal digital recording goes from -98, -146 or -194dB to 0. There is no "+1dB", as it's undefined. With 32bit floating point, you have both + and - sides of the wave, so there is something like +750 to -750dB of range. That 1500dB sound would probably trigger the earthquake sensors in California! That means that you can do away with any volume controls for the digital portion. Of course you can still overdrive and distort the analog sections.
 
Rob, the harmonica in Before the Dawn....is real. All others are vst's. The one you dislike so much is possibly chris hein...considered the best vst harmonica by many. And you might have thought Geoshred swam cello was a harmonica. The geoshred instruments were recorded from my ipads headphone jack. I've since acquired a second interface to run the ipad's output thru the interfaces balanced output. But I was happy with how it sounded on Old Friends anyway.

Maybe I don't understand how the forum works...but I posted in Song Writing and Composition for a reason. Not Recording techniques or another tech specific forum. As I said, I'm working on about 60 songs. And importantly there's no order of what I consider best at the top. These just fell out of the bag first by chance. Actually they were just registered first. No other reason. And in fact the first 6 or 7 were the first I ever recorded...and the last two, some of the latest....so you're doing it backwards if you want to hear my own development in the process.

As for the orchestration....usually it's always done spontaneously in one sitting. I try to hear a back melody in my head, and go for it. What I did notice in soundclouds chewing process is some instrument tracks increased in volume, and some decreased. Only slightly, but it was definitely audible. & in one song, I believe it was You can Believe, it turned the dueling back melodies into mush, for a few seconds. So is life.

Rich....I'm pretty sure it's not my imagination, and regardless I'm listening thru humble 305mkii's , 96khz has, what I would describe as clarity over 48.
thanks guys for your comments. I appreciate the thoughts and your precious time spent listening.
kurth
ps
"The vocals need polish, there are lots of off key spots."
Rich....I warned you I wasn't a vocalist. Second sentence. But it's the gist. & I'm gettin' better...I think. Generally for nearly all the songs, all the recording of instruments was done in one day, two max, and a vocal track was laid out, to get the idea. Then most of the vocals are comp'd. The second day, I usually try to sing 6 or 7 versions, and then choose based on the phrasing.
 
Last edited:
With regards to the song composition, again listening to only a couple of the songs, I felt like they also need some "polish". Some of the phrasing seemed forced. This is coming from someone who is TERRIBLE at writing lyrics. I don't have a poet's sense for word play.

I'm a big fan of story songs. Guys like Harry Chapin, Jim Croce and Billy Joel can paint pictures with their words. I tried listening to Walls again and didn't really get the gist of the song. Sorry if this sounds harsh. I went through it twice, trying to get into the flow of the song. I never really locked onto anything that would have me trying to sing along, or that would stick in my head later in terms of melody.

As I said, I struggle to try to write lyrics, and in the end, they always seem trite. But I know when I hear something that catches me.
 
Having a good harmonica sample pack helps if you mimic how a real one is played, and that’s hard.

Remember we are a recording forum so our song writing always includes production techniques. Clearly most people want to show off what they do as well as they can. I think the comments do make sense. Especially when the material is available publicly on SoundCloud or similar. If there are mistakes they need fixing, especially when people listening might not understand. The songs do sound unfinished, probably because they are. You focus on the song not the production. That’s not bad. But we concentrate on the whole thing I guess?
 
I listened to Monet‘s generation. The very first thing that hit my head was the singing sounds like Johnny Cash toward the end of his career.
As for the story, well it’s relatable. In a general sense, I mean, who hasn’t wished they lived in a different time or place?
If all you’re really interested in is the story then why don’t you just post these as poetry?
 
Rob...I shouldn't have to remind people that songwriters have existed as a profession in contemporary popular music for over 100 years. Usually they weren't concerned about a finished product. And rarely ever would they stick they noses above the water into public awareness. As well I should add, imho...contemporary music sucks. It's a joke. I think you could not listen to any lyrical music after 1980 and still hear 99% of the best. Of course I'd wait in an imaginary line to hear another Tom Waits album. But overall music today is mediocre. But a clear representation of society in general.

Concerning vsti....I'm more interested that I can make a instrument have feeling on it's own, rather than sounding exactly like something it'd never be ....but tell me what is a Harmonica Sample Pack. Heins instruments are some of the best. And it gave me 'feeling' with just the mod wheel and velocity.

Manslick...because they're not poems. I've written over 500poems. I've studied literature, among 6 other things from art to physics, in and since university more than 50yrs ago, and have a pretty good handle on contemporary poetry post Walt Whitman. And Johnny Cash was great, always. Everyone's truth should be like his. The world would be a lot better off.

Rich...I'll take your self revelatory thoughts and just completely ignore them. thanks for saying you don't know and making that so easy. But maybe you're a good guitar shredder.

I think maybe I overloaded your system with just10 songs. I don't think anyone from here has got to #10 yet. I notice most people everywhere post just one. No big deal, cause one day the whole thing's gonna disappear. Everything digital is transitory. LP's & tape will come in handy.
thanks again for listening/k
 
kurth said:
Rob...I shouldn't have to remind people that songwriters have existed as a profession in contemporary popular music for over 100 years. Usually they weren't concerned about a finished product. And rarely ever would they stick they noses above the water into public awareness. As well I should add, imho...contemporary music sucks. It's a joke. I think you could not listen to any lyrical music after 1980 and still hear 99% of the best. Of course I'd wait in an imaginary line to hear another Tom Waits album. But overall music today is mediocre. But a clear representation of society in general.

Concerning vsti....I'm more interested that I can make a instrument have feeling on it's own, rather than sounding exactly like something it'd never be ....but tell me what is a Harmonica Sample Pack. Heins instruments are some of the best. And it gave me 'feeling' with just the mod wheel and velocity.

Manslick...because they're not poems. I've written over 500poems. I've studied literature, among 6 other things from art to physics, in and since university more than 50yrs ago, and have a pretty good handle on contemporary poetry post Walt Whitman. And Johnny Cash was great, always. Everyone's truth should be like his. The world would be a lot better off.

Rich...I'll take your self revelatory thoughts and just completely ignore them. thanks for saying you don't know and making that so easy. But maybe you're a good guitar shredder.

I think maybe I overloaded your system with just10 songs. I don't think anyone from here has got to #10 yet. I notice most people everywhere post just one. No big deal, cause one day the whole thing's gonna disappear. Everything digital is transitory. LP's & tape will come in handy.
thanks again for listening/k
Click to expand...
So basically you are just a ‘songwriter’ and that doesn’t care about anyone listening - essentially playing for yourself - that’s fine - but to post songs and not expect any response except positive seems a fools errand.
 
Papnate...did I say that? However when someone says they don't understand what they opining about, I take them at their word.

And it shouldn't need to be said...but if someone has valid criticism about my songwriting skills, they should post one of their original songs as proof they have expertise. Otherwise it's just internet noise.
 
whoa! You posted your songs for critique, and people have actually been pretty nice - critique and criticism are not the same beast.
I can't speak for the others, but I listened blind - no preconceptions, as I always do and here, we can be presented with all kinds of material. I hate rap, thrashy metal and a few other genres, but I can appreciate what goes into them. I never comment on lyrics, because I never listen to them - just the music. In my entire musical life I probably only noticed the words on maybe half a dozen songs. I wa planning my funeral music the other day, and discovered one song I 100% wanted I cannot use because of the lyrics. I loved the song, but never realised the words would be very inappropriate.

However - what I must disagree with you about is the suggestion that for somebody to comment, they have to prove they have expertise. This is totally NOT how it works. If you get a number one hit song, very few people who listened to it have musical bones. Even fewer are songwriters themselves. I cannot dance a step - I have no coordination, but this week I've said no to three prospective dancers, and commented critically (in writing to the producers) why they are not suitable. I am extremely experienced at watching and understanding and being able to evaluate, but I could not demonstrate these skills at any level at all.

Your songs are OK. Your playing is OK. Your arranging is perhaps lacking a bit because you've not noticed little conflicts, rules of harmony clashes and tiny things like that - that jump out and say "Warning Will Robinson". It doesn't matter because you said your interest is not in recording but the writing - so the technical stuff we can set aside.

I have not detected criticism, just honest critique - which is what you asked for. Not liking the result isn't really our fault - and may be representative of what the public might think? Who knows?

Harmonica sample pack as in VSTi - you mentioned one real harmonica was a Heins. Never heard of them, but I have a Hohner - a chromatic one, and in my part of the world, most decent players use them. I'm sure yours is a wonderful instrument. I can't make mine sound nice, because I'm not that proficient. Having a nice instrument won't make my playing put me in Larry Adler's league by a very long way. I'd probably NOT play mine for a recording, I'd use one of the sample packages I have, or maybe even the synthesised one in the Halion Player bundled with Cubase - that works pretty nicely with mod and pitchbend.

Kurth - you are very welcome on this forum, but I have to say nobody has criticised, only attempted to assist with comments we thought you actually wanted. Pretty well all of us are not afraid to post up links to our own stuff, and sometimes the results that roll in are unexpected, but personally, I would rather somebody here tell me my XXXXXX (insert instrument of choice) sucked, than be told it on Youtube by strangers!!
 
Last edited:
rob
No one complained about criticism of instruments nor recording quality. In fact today I was trying to find the clicks. Only very esoteric things like lyrics. and yeah I've been an artist my whole life, and in that professional world, people listen to professional critics...cause we all know about opinions.

Here's lets play this game. Or not?

This was arranged and recorded today in about 3 hours. All vsti are mixcraft. I had never played Monets gen on piano before today. Excuse my piano, I've only been playing about 9 or 10 months. There was very little done with processing. Nothing on the master track. Just raw recordings.



tell me what you think it lacks?
 
and frankly...someone spending two paragraphs telling everyone they know nothing about lyrics, but then tells me that regardless, mine are bad...is comical. I laughed. I like to laugh. It's healthy. But it doesn't mean it should go unnoticed.
And I'm still unsure what you mean by an instrument packs....like someone elses playing phrases, and you choose? Maybe I need to learn how to use ChrisHeins better ? but it's widely regarded as the best harmonica vst, from everything I read. There's an ios app called fernando morales ? It invents piano runs. Nope , I would stick with my lack of abilities rather than augment them with ai. thanks for your help. you had valid critique.
 
A Beatles song. In my life. Love the music, and the bit of lyrics i knew made it a good choice. Then it became not a good choice.

There is a clock ticking, and the hands have a bit of ticking to do, but the tick is getting louder. That sounds like lyrics? Seriously though, I caught my son, on my wife’s instructions going through my guitar collection. She wants some kind of inventory so things will be more ‘organised’.
 
The Monet’s piano. No sustain pedal? The arpeggiated piano has the root notes of the chord in it, which usually falls on the beat. Doesn’t have to of course, but it is a convention. The string sound, and strings always need reverb, doesn’t fall on the arpeggio’s beat, and neither does the melody. In a simply sense, it means you cannot decide where the pulse of the music is. Stylistically, many famous people do not sing on the beat. Dylan, and Sinatra come to mind, but every other sound source does.

The other thing is that VSTi sounds have to be ‘played’ to mimic how real instruments work. A solo cello or violin has to have bowing. The player cannot hold notes without a ‘join’. I used to write music, print it out, and have the player say”I cannot play this!”. Fingering that is is impossible. Trombones cannot play certain melodies because it takes time to move the slide, harmonicas bend on the draw, but not the blow, but a tune has them do both. Instruments have strict limits on range and you have to keep that in mind. Others transposed, so its very easy to write in a very unfriendly key and expect a player to play fast stuff with crazy fingering. When you write for VSTi instruments, you can do what you like, buts sometimes it means your writing sounds wrong to real players. A drummer told me five limbed drummers give the game away. Individual parts often get described as lyrical, and some of yours kind of leap in and out at quite random points. Kind of the right notes in the right place.

I wish i had skills in your strong area, words. Sadly, I don’t, but I am a decent enough arranger and composer. Here in the UK, if you need validation of skills, I was Principal Examiner for A Level Music Technology for a long time, and listened and arbitrated to thousands of pieces of music where people wrote stuff and got grades. Lots of them had outstanding components, but also had embryonic parts that they had not sorted on instruments outside their musical experience.

The trouble is, the public base opinion on the whole, but many creators base effort on the specific.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top