"Yearbook" (or - how to sell your soul in 5 minutes 27 seconds)

[Pinky]

Normally I'd rather have my toe nails pulled than produce radio frendly material... but...

Yearbook marks a very important stage in my personal musical evolution. The singer is my oldest friend Scott, who now lives in California. While visiting for the holidays we decided to try our hand at writing a few new songs, like the old days. This time we skipped the copious amounts of weed and booze.

There's plenty wrong in the production, but also a lot of right. Managed to get a really good bass guitar sound from my 6 string electric (using Soundforge to drop the pitch in post production). As always feedback is welcome and often leads to modifcations as I usually wait a week before doing the "final" mix.

 

[faderbug]

hey pinky, i don't like the fact that you're advertising in a post.

 

[Pinky]

hey pinky, i don't like the fact that you're advertising in a post.

I don't understand...

If you're referring to all that link crap, that's done by the forum not me. It's a commonly used form of advertising (not one I care for either). I wish to hell it could be turned off (nudges admin).

 

[faderbug]

I don't understand...

If you're referring to all that link crap, that's done by the forum not me. It's a commonly used form of advertising (not one I care for either). I wish to hell it could be turned off (nudges admin).

so what you are saying is that the ad that pops up when my cursor goes over 'holidays' is not some smart code embedded by you but goes out from this forum, the BBS itself???

if that is a fact i deeply appologise

what can i say

i'm belgian

shit i feel stupid.

sorry man!!! really.



THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!

 

[Pinky]

sorry man!!! really.

No apology necessary, it's a new feature on this forum. It's supposed to help pay the bills, but I found (in my experience as a forum admin) these types of revenue generating tools drive people away and end up getting pulled in a day/week/month because of the increased annoyance they create.

I noticed there's even a few instances of the advertisements on the forum sub-titles. That's pretty useless lol.

 

[ido1957]

Wow - great song and a pretty good mix right now.... Your collaboration has produced a fine result.

Wouldn't mind some info on the recording chain:
- What kind of guitar are you using? It sounds a lot like a Ricky or Strat...
- The vocals are sitting nicely in the mix; clear and smooth. Mic?
- Are those real drums? They sound nice....the snare/side sounds good and crisp.
- the short lead at 3:14 might come up a touch (maybe)
- fade out works well

Not much to change by me..... good job....

 

[turtlishous]

here is a link to the post on how to get rid of the intellitext!

now the song---

nice tune--real raw sound-kinda like a crazyhorse thing.....really nice!

vox sound very well mixed and tracked!

but i was not a fan of the drum track but i use a casio for mine so who am i to talk!

nice job!

 

[Pinky]

Wow - great song and a pretty good mix right now.... Your collaboration has produced a fine result.

Wouldn't mind some info on the recording chain:
- What kind of guitar are you using? It sounds a lot like a Ricky or Strat...
- The vocals are sitting nicely in the mix; clear and smooth. Mic?
- Are those real drums? They sound nice....the snare/side sounds good and crisp.
- the short lead at 3:14 might come up a touch (maybe)
- fade out works well

Not much to change by me..... good job....

turtlishous, doesn't Beck use a Casio for most of his drums?

I'm not a fan of the drum track either, and boy am I really kicking myself for selling the good roland vdrum kit I had last year . There's a ton of awesome drum parts for this song I'd spend the next month programming in Acid. I HAD to go minimalist because of life/time constraints. They're not as bad as some of the canned loops I first tried on this recording. THOSE were really bad. Ended up going with some single hit samples and manually programming the drums by hand in Acid, which is why I said it would take a good month of just drum programming to get all the parts in my head written using Acid. If I still had the kit it would take an evening. Argh! (no money to run out and buy a kit either)

Most of the questions about gear can be answered here:

http://www.the-boogiemen.com/credits.htm


I play the Ibanez, Lew now plays my Ibanez (used to play a strat) until he gets his own. Lew is absent from this recording, but has expressed interest in maybe playing some harmonica over it .

Thanks for the replies... and advice about modifying the hosts file. I'm a computer tech, so I feel stoopid for not thinking of that myself. Enjoyed the line about changing the windows folder to winnnt/vice-versa. lol

 

[Pinky]

One more bump before the book on this recording is closed...

 

[DAS19]

There's plenty wrong in the production, but also a lot of right. Managed to get a really good bass guitar sound from my 6 string electric (using Soundforge to drop the pitch in post production). As always feedback is welcome and often leads to modifcations as I usually wait a week before doing the "final" mix.

My friend does that I think thats just really crazy that you would do that. I dont know how you can get a good bottom end with it.

IT doens tshow but then again im not listneing on great speakers.

When the guitar comes in at 1 min it sounds good but sometimes the vocals souinds like he wants to sing country. Hes not my kind of vocalist.

Persoianlly not my kind of music tha tI would listen to.

 

[rayc]

The "bass" guitar is boomy and illdefined.
The vocals seem a little to stident for the guitars.
The voice reminds me of early Cars.
Good song. Get a bass.

 

[Pinky]

Cash is a little tight right now, and I figure I'm going to get a used Ibanez bass (good low/mid end instrument) when I can finally get the extra cash (~$200) available. In the meantime I'm kinda stuck with no drums and no bass. It's good to know the 2 most glaring issues are the only problems I have, and they're both related to lack of gear.

I might be able to bring a little more definition to the bass by increasing the volume of the original guitar-turned-bass track, to bring in more mids/highs.

Thanks to all for the feedback.

 

[Pinky]

I managed to remix this, making some minor adjustments to the tone on the kick and snare drums. Also removed some of the brightness from the acoustic I didn't like (and clashed slightly with the cymbals), and brought up the mid-level track on the 'bass' guitar to add some definition. Clicking the link in the first post will load the revised version.