Surf Jones (original)

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propman

propman

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Hi guys. I'm really not feeling too hot right now. Small little things throughout my day have just been going crappy. You know, one of THOSE days?
Anyway, here is a song I wrote about a week ago. I made two of the biggest mistakes I have made in a long time. One being that I produced the music before I had ever written any lyrics, or knew what they were even going to be about. I had done this once before, and that song took me about 2 years to put lyrics to. The second mistake I made was mixing the organ (the first thing I recorded) panned to the right, without saving the dry stem, or the midi file. That lead to a third mistake, which was filling in the space with a bunch of other suff, which, while it sounded pretty good, and helped quite a bit to balance it out, was a strain on my CPU, and had to be mixed/premixed in sections across about 3 or 4 session files. That made it a pain to edit. I was really not going to post it hear, beacuse the vocals are a bit low, and I was going to try to change it, but that would be too much of a drawn out project, so instead, I am posting the lyrics along with it.
Surf Jones
If there is anybody who has the computing power to mix about 30 or more tracks at once, and is good at it, plus wouldn't mind helping me out, I could really use it. I'm really stressed. Thanks, and tell me what you think.

Lyrics.
A surfer by the name of Jones was the biggest of all surfer jocks,
and he went out to catch a wave like he had done many times before.
His head was swollen, and his bones they were all broken 'cause he crashed into some jagged rocks,
and as he lies in his bed he's speaking in third person form, singing...

(Chorus)
Surf Jones is the kind of the waves-X3
so step aside and watch him go.

Six weeks gone by and he just can't surf the way he used to anymore, you know?
All the praise he used to receive turned to laughter from the shore.
But as they laughed a fifty foot wave stared Surf Jones right in the face,
and he tore it up, and then this song started to ring from all over the place.

(Chorus)

(Bridge)
Suddenly he figured it out.
What he did was not for the praise that he won,
but just to have fun.

Surf Jones is the king of the waves. X9
(Surf Jones is the kind of...) X7
(Surf Jones is the...) X5

-Adam.
 
My only real nit is the sound of the snare. And there is a lack of higher freqs in your cymbals. Nice tune, but yeah, that organ in my right ear got a bit tiring after a bit.

I could probably do this for you, if you wanna put it on yousendit or something. I don't have an FTP client anymore...
 
My only real nit is the sound of the snare. And there is a lack of higher freqs in your cymbals. Nice tune, but yeah, that organ in my right ear got a bit tiring after a bit.

I could probably do this for you, if you wanna put it on yousendit or something. I don't have an FTP client anymore...
Thanks man. I'll try and get it done sometime tomarrow or monay. The snare is a bit odd, I know. That's what I get when I try to get all fancy and eq things. To be fair though, 128 KB, and then whatever processing is done when it is loaded onto soundclick hurts the high freqs quite a bit.

-Adam.
 
Thanks man. I'll try and get it done sometime tomarrow or monay. The snare is a bit odd, I know. That's what I get when I try to get all fancy and eq things. To be fair though, 128 KB, and then whatever processing is done when it is loaded onto soundclick hurts the high freqs quite a bit.

-Adam.
The converters they use are getting better, but you are right. MP3 is no way for audiofiles to listen to music.

PM on the way...
 
It seems a bit bizzare: a surf song from midi!
Does need just a little trem twang guitar.
Good song.
Needs either a remix for the balance issues or rerecording - deserves the later I reckon.
I like the dark cymbals almost as much as the dark symbols.
 
It seems a bit bizzare: a surf song from midi!
Does need just a little trem twang guitar.
Good song.
Needs either a remix for the balance issues or rerecording - deserves the later I reckon.
I like the dark cymbals almost as much as the dark symbols.
Thanks. The thing I was trying to do in that respect was to make a surf song without sounding like a surf song. This took me way too long to produce to think about re-recording it. Maybe that would work for certain parts of the song. Nice pun at the end there too!

-Adam.
 
Hmmm, I don't know what a surf song is that doesn't sound like a surf song. What this needs is some vibrato twang from a strat. I don't know where though. Maybe less organ and some twang fiddle.

The snare doesn't bother me. It's okay. The rest sounds okay. Not your best effort, but good and i liked it.

What's funny is that I NEVER have lyrics before I write a song. Lyrics are the worst part for me, hence my lyrics always sucking. Music, arrangement, tracking - all no problem for me. Lyrics - major headache.
 
Hmmm, I don't know what a surf song is that doesn't sound like a surf song. What this needs is some vibrato twang from a strat. I don't know where though. Maybe less organ and some twang fiddle.

The snare doesn't bother me. It's okay. The rest sounds okay. Not your best effort, but good and i liked it.

What's funny is that I NEVER have lyrics before I write a song. Lyrics are the worst part for me, hence my lyrics always sucking. Music, arrangement, tracking - all no problem for me. Lyrics - major headache.
It isn't really a "surf" song. It is about a jackass who thinks he is the greatest. That's why I didn't really add anything beach boy-ish. And your lyrics don't suck at all. I like em'. How I got the idea was, I saw a sign on the side of the road (that said 15 miles to the...ah forget it) That said Hurf Jones. I didn't know what it was, but it made me think of Surf Jones. And I had to throw in the B-52s pun. :D Sorry!

-Adam.
 
I could hear this with some fat BB harmonies though. If you redo anything, keep that in mind. I love old surf music - particularly surf guitar instrumentals - so naturally I'd to hear a little more beach flavor. :D
 
The organ is fatiguing, I think, because 'fast Leslie' chorus is never off. A 'slow rotation' flattening during the verses would be nice. As is, it's always screaming for attention over the vox...which could be more up front....recorded closer to the mic so we could hear the lip pops, swallows, chord fricatives and breaths....the sounds of urgent desperation.

The spread is a little extreme for me...the instruments sound remote from one another...and fail to pump the groove as a unified organism. My take FWIIW..NotMuch.

Have you ever listened to Jason Mraz' "I'm Yours" on a headset? A mega hit record; the mix is nearly mono ...like, maybe 20%/side...except for the background vox. and a hand-drum IIRC. That one sent me to school on the subject. I realized that, like a lot of wicked neat abilities, just because I can spread sources across the whole field, doesn't mean I should...

So, if I had to alter things, I'd tame the whirlie...flattening it during the verses; narrow the spread; and bump the vox level...adding some harmonic distortion to get some angst in it...maybe try a little digital spread voodoo on it to make it in-the-face present, and/or expand the floor of the vox track a bit to bring up the low-level mouth sounds. A slapback platey-sounding overall verb might be nice...the ambience is hall-ish...out of intended genre?
 
The song's really good, Adam.
Great hookline, nice lyrics. It's that organ that's practically dominating everything, partricularly drowning out your beautiful voice. It sounds pretty high-pitched and kind of robs the song of the warmth it deserves. I'm sure you can do this better. ;)

Joey :):):):)
 
Cool song. Sounds crystal; but that organ is weird. Maybe just to loud or up front.

The musicianship is nice.
Peace, Love & Thanks!
Matty
 
My only nit was the organ, its a bit loud (overpowering)to me.
Dident get the biggest surf feel from this, when ever I hear surf music I think of Beach boys or that guy from the pulp ficiton tunes
Nice vox and cool arrangment.:)
 
I liked it a lot. Never occurred to me that it was midi until someone said it.
 
The organ is just plain too loud.

Put some electric piano on the left.

What a fuckin' awesome tune. I love the synth work.
 
My only nit was the organ, its a bit loud (overpowering)to me.
Dident get the biggest surf feel from this, when ever I hear surf music I think of Beach boys or that guy from the pulp ficiton tunes
Nice vox and cool arrangment.:)
That's what it is. The organ is too loud. I can hear that now. And again, I really didn't want a surf "feel", because it isn't a surf song. Just a song about a surfer. Thanks for the input. :D

I liked it a lot. Never occurred to me that it was midi until someone said it.
Thanks!

The organ is just plain too loud.

Put some electric piano on the left.

What a fuckin' awesome tune. I love the synth work.
Thanks! And now that I think about it, electric piano actually sounds like a pretty good idea. Actually, I think I used one on the left at the very end, with the built up vocals. Thanks again! :D

-Adam.
 
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