terocious and daf collab, sorta

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dafduc

dafduc

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This started over in the songwriting forum last week. Terocious (real name withheld 'cos he never told me ;) ) posted some lyrics that really tripped my trigger. He had his own tune, but I hadn't heard it yet when a melody for his words started running through my head ---it's the voices again! Make them stop! Make them STOP!!!---.

Terocious gave me the go-ahead to use his lyrics, so I spent the long weekend working on this - still very rough, as a lot of the time was spent lining up syllables and notes, and figuring out a structure.

But here it is:
Add One

Bass, drums, piano, and synth were done in Reason, then extracted to Acid, where I added vocs, guitar, and more drums. A bit of Sound Forge processing too, as Acid doesn't support mono recording, and was having trouble compressing real time.

There is a TON of room to arrange this further - horns and background vocs in particular. And I GOTTA redo the drums, and maybe rework the piano part - it was a scratch part that defined the structure, I got lazy and kept it.

As for the long long long synth solo - I know it's self-indulgent crap, but I'm still trying to get used to my crazy Kurz controller (ribbons instead of wheels), so I was doing all my Jan Hammer 101 exercises.

I kinda went lofi on this - 96k - because it's still scratch, mostly. Terocious warned me that the lofi stream obscures the vocs (maybe a good thing, given the "turd that is my voice"TM). So you probably wanna listen to the hifi or the mp3. Anyhow he said he liked it, that's good enough for me.

Influences (see if you can hear 'em):
Hall & Oates/Rundgren - Is It a Star;
Alanna Myles - Black Velvet;
Clarence Gatemouth Brown - Ventilator;
Jan Hammer - every synth solo he ever played; and, of course
Steely Dan - Home at Last, and The Last Mall.

In other words, the only original thought anywhere in this was Terocious' brilliant text. Though I am fond of some of the chord changes.

Have at it, boys!
 
Heh!! first one.


Im sorry guys I'm not a big fan of the vox on this one. There are some pretty noticable pitch issues in there as well. I do like you as people though, so please don't forget that.

No probs with the backing material.
 
interesting changes. I like the analog synth a lot, like a wah wah. Im a hammer fan too. The bass had an odd sound though, at times it seemed the velocity maxed on a note here and there. The singing is tracked ok, just sounds like a scratch track though.
Cool.
 
I'm with Khompewtur about the vox; good guitar performance there, though the distortions are sometimes too strange.

cheers
 
Hey Daf! I heard some good jammin going on there but no Vox at all. Wazzup?

CR ><>
 
Okay, thanks everyone, here goes:

Khompy: I tried to sweeten the vocs a little, but obviously held back too much. I have noticed, in general, that my (new, improved, but still turdlike TM) voice sounds okay on my monitors, but sounds like crap through computer speakers. Not sure what's up with that. The pitch thing was mostly the high E's, which seemed to want to go a little flat, even though the higher notes were okay. I noticed the same thing on another tune I was tracking, but haven't posted - again, it was mostly the high E. I'll see if I can do a better reading of it.

Toki: Well, you got an ear for bass, so I'll take your word. It's one of the factory Subtractor (Reason) patches. I'll check midi values, or mebbe compress it a little. Thx for the good vibes.

groove: Actually very little guitar in this, just the little slide fills after first refrain and at the end. Which means... you thought my synth was a guitar!!! YAY! Always been my goal to play solos that someone would mistake for lead guitar. Point taken about the vocs. They're why I never quit my day job.

Axe: If you tried to listen lofi, you might not have gotten vocs - when I soundforged my vocal tracks, I did the pseudostereo thing, which involves some phase inversion - sides may have canceled out in the lofi version (note to self - don't do that again!!!).
 
Hey Daf, the beauty of bein at home is that you can take as many takes as you like and also just punch in on some trouble areas.

Are you using analog tape? That might make things a bit more difficult. I don't think i've ever used an unmodified vocal take end to end for any song, digital or analog.
 
hey daf,
I like the loose jazzy feel of this. The pitchy vocs could use a good retracking, but the tune is worthy of the work. ...cool man.

g
 
I like the rhythm... the drum sounds on the other hand... :D

As a rough sketch, it's intriguing. As a recording... it's quite rough. The vocal track is a bit dirty, and doesn't mesh into the tiny soundstage your synth is laying down.

If you're looking to do something with this, get some real piano in there and a good bass player with some decent reverb box somewhere.... then recut a cleaner vocal and see how everything sits. As is, there's very little depth in the mix... making it an almost "artificial" listen.... the soundstage seems non existent.

If you're just looking for a buff-up -- try a few reverb presets ( on the instruments that would sit furthest back on a typical stage, first) Personal preference is definitely a more serious retracking.

Good ideas, however. Keep workin.


Chad
 
hey

I came and had a listen.........
nothing to add that hasn't already been said.
Keep workin the idea and see where it leads.......
 
Khompy - nah, it's all DAW. this was my let's-see-what-happens-if-I-don't-use-Cubase-at-all experiment. I'm with you on the "as many takes as it takes" concept, I'm just not sure the vocs are ever gonna get better, at least not 'til voice lessons start again.

Guernica - glad you could dig through the lack of polish and see the potential. Thanks.

Chad - thanks for the detail. I had a verb problem in Acid - vocs still sound dry to me - just gave up and posted. And I gave no thought to the soundstage - you are talking about instrument placement, right? Couldn't adjust it in Acid, 'cos the Reason trax were exported as a single stereo track. The redo will get separate trax exported, or maybe I'll finally break down and get ReWire. I like the bass synth track, may just clean up the timing and compress a bit, mebbe play with the filter. Piano on the redo will probably be the mda VSTi - really like that one. Dunno if I'll retrack, or just pull the midi over to Acid or Cubase. Timing issues on that one too.

Hevy - Yeh, the idea was the thing.

Regarding the universally hated vocals (sob...), here's something I noticed on a relisten last night - it sounds way the f%^& out of tune at low volume, but when I crank it, it doesn't. Not that you can't hear the misses, they just sound real close. Is that a psychacoustics thing? Anyhow, I'll definitely listen at low AND high volume next time (plus maybe on cans) before I post. Tone quality issues (i.e., the lack thereof) were stronger at low volume too.

Daf
 
Daf,
As you can imagine I have listened to song a few times and one thing I will say about the vocals is that they do sound a little strained. One possible explanation for this is going from conception to performance with lyrics that were not your own in a very short timespan. I think getting comfortable with the song would do wonders.

-b
 
I sort of liked the bass sound. Nice level of punch, but without being distracting. Some timing problems in a few spots. Some cool guitar sounds and some decent playing. Although that real weird distortion later in the song didn't seem to fit with the rest of the song.

What's that background noise? Is it the highhat? Actually there are two different sources. I think one is a rather dominant highhat, the other I can't say. Almost sounds like crickets chirping.

Unfortunately there are quite a few pitch issues with the vocals. Somehow you're going to need to work on that to get 'em nailed.

Trip...
 
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