skankdelvar

Thank God! I've got loads of stuff backed up to be getting on with and the missus has been getting in my ear about it. Trip to the dump, tidy the shed. Maybe have a light lunch - fishpaste sandwiches and a nice cup of tea. Watch Jasmine Harman strutt her booty, slice of Dundee cake and a nap. Come the evening, back to BC to read the complaints and 'Not again!' and 'Why don't they use a beta site?' Wednesday's shaping up to be a good 'un, touch wood.

Okey doke. Found the headphones and listened four times. General impression - really good song, needs remixing, murky low end, structure needs some tweaks. Singer has right voice for genre and uses it right, IMO. Lyrics fine but need a teeny bit of editing / simplifying. Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a [i]perfect [/i]song for Radio 2 at those times of day when they're trying to kick the audience profile a bit younger without scaring the 35+'s. Wogan would have been all over this. Plus, it's a grower. Third time round, I thought - [i]yes[/i] - sh*t hot little song that needs a bit of TLC Detail. [b]Mix / EQ[/b] Opening acoustic guitar - nice quality tone but far too much low end. Cut some bottom out of it - it'll leave room for the bass later on. Needs widening to the edges and some frequencies cut from the middle when the vox comes in to give her some room. Again, occupies a bit too much space when the rhythm section comes in and masks the electric guitar fills. This is all about cutting some frequencies for the other instruments. The song is generally murky in the low end, plus there's some conflict going on generally - each instrument is getting in the other's way to a certain extent. Everything needs some low end taking out then put back in selectively when needed. Then get to work pulling low mids out of the acoustic during verses, choruses. (Rearranging the 'pedal steel' lines a bit might help. Many of the fills recur in the same range- also sounds quite 'round' and dark rather than 'singing' - maybe the same notes on different strings in a different position - IMO) Vocals sit on top of the backing rather than in it, thus 'seeming' too loud. Cutting some of the murk and eq'ing her some space in the instrumentation would help. Ducking the backing with a multiband compressor might help (?), but more experienced people than me would know best about this. Drums far too murky, boxy sound. For a song like this, snare needs to 'chop 'in the verse and 'whip' in the chorus. Toms need to sparingly used, but sound 'full' when they are. Reverb issues? [b]Performances[/b] Vox - I think her voice is bang on for the material and the genre. Just lovely, and there's some thought going into selling the song and the lyrics. Maybe needs to go emotionally darker in the verses, emotionally higher in the chorus. Bass - too obscured by the murk and the other instruments. Difficult to tell, but possibly a bit over-busy when following the acoustic guitar rhythm. Nothing wrong with laying back when everyone else is charging forwards. Drums - need work. As others have said - simplify the fills and get that snare in exactly the right place. Guitars - As with bass, mixed too quiet. Fills getting squashed by mix and competition with everyone else. Pedal steels can go higher, can swoop and dive. The fills here are OK but recur in the same range too often. Very, very difficult to get right and might not be improved unless you hired a steel player to do a remote session in the US (gasp). [b]Song structure[/b] YES! YES! YES! You get to the hook in 28 seconds, which is the approved duration for any good hit song in this genre. Spot on, Sir. Hook needs more lift. Two things: First - Vocal strategy. Single voice vocal [i]much [/i]too exposed on first line of chorus. Seemed to me that she comes off the back of a doubled verse into the single voice chorus. That's then supplemented by a doubled vocal on the second line of the chorus (sorry if I'm mistaken). This impedes the dynamic. Maybe try doing the last line of the verse solo (pull some of the doubling) then back into doubled vocals and support with big, big harmony backing vox. Which brings us to... Second - Chorus content - needs much more oomph. More harmony vocals. More stuff. More swoop. Snare whipping, audience rising up, etc. At this point, she should be cutting our hearts out with a tear-stained razorblade while the entire f**king world goes up in flames. Which means creating some EQ space for all this additional sh*t that's going in. And pull the acoustic guitar back a bit. Chorus needs to glide. Basic structure - like I said, it gets to the hook fast. Great. Second verse - OK. Then it all flattens off and we wait much,much too long for the outro chorus. Get to that last hook quicker - halve the verse. Then we only get it once, ya cheapskate. Double the number of choruses at the end. Give us [i]a[i]t least two choruses [/i]a[/i]t full beans then drop the song off the cliff as you (sort of) do. But lose those string squeaks, external noise, whatever at the end. Last thing we should hear should be her voice - so that it follows us around all day. [b]Lyrics[/b] Very close to right for this sort of song but verses need some standout images among the quite wordy cerebral sentiments / aspirations (not that that's a bad thing in itself). The meaning of the song is a bit oblique for me and there's nothing wrong with banging in a very 'soft' or very punchy line here and there. I'm thinking of commonplace words sort of like 'dreaming', 'yearning', 'skin', 'bitch', 'cut', 'bleeding'. Which for all I know may have been in there, but didn't get through. Very much like the way the lyrics stay off the conventional rhythmic pattern. They suit her voice too. I can imagine meeting someone like her and imagine her saying those things. She's got inside the character of the song's protagonist, but I think she might need something a little bit lyrically grittier or more 'desperate' to support some of her vocal punches. Keep writing, keep recording, keep doing stuff, then come back to this with fresh ears. It's good. Well done.

May I in turn apologise for my own unforgiveably impertinent post in the OP's original thread. I do not even have the explanation (as mentioned in passing above by others) of being either blind drunk or in a bad mood. Just being self-righteous again. Sorry.

Quality review from which [i]certain publications[/i] might draw inspiration. Despite my well-documented, profoundly unreasonable hatred of Gibson's management and it's tatterdemalion business model, I am not inconsiderably more than pleasantly surprised by this outing. Your new bass is really quite [i]lovely[/i], Gus, and I hope you derive much satisfaction therefrom. Perhaps this is the light at the end of Mr Juskiewicz's tunnel. Roll on the ES125TDC RI at 'studio' prices.

These explain the basic differences better than I ever could + vids phaser: [url="http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-a-phaser-155966"]http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-a-phaser-155966[/url] flanger: [url="http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-a-flanger-155959"]http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-a-flanger-155959[/url] chorus: [url="http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-chorus-154502"]http://www.musicradar.com/tuition/guitars/guitar-fx-basics-what-is-chorus-154502[/url]

[quote name='bobbass4k' timestamp='1366562682' post='2054085'] There is an odd phenomenon in Off Topic though, where any thread started about a vaguely controversial topic will very quickly by inundated with "well this isn't going to end well" type comments, essentially writing off the thread as a car crash before it's even got going. I would suggest that this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if everyone chimes in with how inevitable a threads descent into petty bickering is then it's a lot more likely to actually descend into petty bickering. [/quote] This isn't going to end well.

[quote name='Stacker' timestamp='1366547714' post='2053780'] I have an aversion to cruises[/quote] Not a good sailor? These work for me.

Coupla approaches among many: * Buy an eq pedal*. Push up the mids. Stomp it on for your solos. * Boost pedal - [i]loads [/i]around. Some offer lots of adjustable parameters, some are just one knob, turn it up or down. Some boosters are 'transparent' - ie they don't change your 'tone' just make it louder. Or there are other boost pedals which are 'coloured' - e.g. they might add a bit of 'grunt' or distortion. Among various pedals, EHX also make (made) a thing called the Mole (one-knob solution) designed for bass. Never tried it, but someone here might have. [size=3]* Beaten to it by SlapbassSteve[/size]

Thanks for all your kind efforts, Kiwi, Ped and horde. Two things here. [i]Is there some blowback from the sale-fee thing?[/i] A bit, though not as much as I would have expected. That said, some may simply have folded their tents and disappeared into the night rather than kick up publically, but it's not as if massive gaps have appeared in our ranks. [i]Is OT more grumpy than usual?[/i] Perhaps a little, but it's been a long, long winter capped off with the demise of a politically divisive figure, so one might expect a bit of underlying grump. Thing is, we still get silly bouts of nastiness on other sub-forums so it's not as if OT is the sole repository for grumpiness. I do wish we could [i]absolutely[/i] avoid politics, but there you go. BC seems to me to just the same as usual and probably better than it might have been four years ago. The increase in the number of mods has helped while serious troublemakers, spammers and scammers swiftly fall to Hamster's flaming flyswat of doom. So all in all, I think it's time we each kicked back and enjoyed the springtime.

[quote] Drummer Carl Palmer, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, says the idea of playing on a cruise had obvious attractions for the fans and the musicians. "They're on holiday, cruising with their favourite band. That's what they get out of it. There we are in the morning and you can see us having breakfast." [/quote] Rather sweet, really. "Did you see Carl? He had [i]two [/i]eggs this morning."

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1366423434' post='2052551'] I've heard it said many times by musicians "It's important to sound like yourself"... And that is (presumably) what all musicians realise, sooner or later [/quote] Evidently not [i]all [/i]musicians subscribe to this view, though I cannot understand why it should be a sore point for some of us. For myself, I try to do both. Sometimes I might try to knock out a line that incorporates the nuances of another player, just to try to get inside what they're doing. Another time, I might try to switch off the 'influences' and let the mind-expanding cosmic love vibes do their thing. Trouble is, I'm still at the stage where [i]either [/i]approach requires a conscious decision before deployment. When I can either pastiche or originate without making a deliberate effort, I might feel I've moved up another rung on the endless ladder.

Now we all feel bad, me included. Man-hug, no tongues. Still trying to find my headphones - damn this house-move.

[quote name='xilddx' timestamp='1366410448' post='2052411'] I really really awful now [/quote] Don't. The OP asked for comments on [i]anything[/i]. You're an experienced musician who writes his own stuff, plays sessions and regularly works with talented professional songwriters and you gave him an informed opinion based on that. He or anyone else may disagree with your opinion. They may believe that more sugar was required when making your observations. But lying to him about what you think isn't going to help him. Neither will the OP benefit from others turning this into a slag-off session. When I've got a minute I'll listen to it myself.

Rather than music, how about a collage of sounds. That way, you don't have to work to any musical cues. Y'know, bassy-synth rumbles, chainsaw, snippets from Presidential broadcasts, breaking glass, ice cream van arriving at 70mph (* [size=3]BBC Sound Effects LP #4[/size]).

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1366376247' post='2051749'] ... turning up the volume can lose top in some circuits because sometimes there is a bright cap that shunts some top around the volume control, which is how most 'bright' switches work, more you wind up the volume, the less significant that bypass becomes. [/quote] Case closed.

[quote name='Dave Vader' timestamp='1366360329' post='2051364'] Pop a single coil pickup in a solid bodied electric and record the output from the pickup alone, everything on full, then do it again with the pickup in a hollow bodied guitar and do the same. They are different, very different, thus the wood is affecting the amplified sound. reasonable? [/quote] [quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1366361618' post='2051385'] A good example, but that's a totally different construction, not just a marginal change in the qualities of the wood. [/quote] FWIW, last year I whipped the bridge pup out of an alder-bodied rw board Tele and stuck it in an alder-bodied maple board Tele of about the same age. A weeny bit toppier, I thought, and most noticeably so through a clean Princeton at 3. Wind the vol up, the top softened off (?) and Bob's your doo-dah. All very confusing.

Stopping is the mark of the hobbyist. Every professional knows to cut right back to the drums and let the singer improvise some free-form Jazz poetry. Once the 'issue' is sorted out, everyone else roars back in like a band of mercenaries overrunning an undefended village during the Thirty Years War. [i](Tip - boggle those eyes, people!)[/i] The audience will be suitably impressed. Just don't do it more than two or three times per gig.

Fact is, differences make a difference. Some differences make more of a difference than others. Loads of people whipped the mudbucker out of their EB's and noticed a difference even though the rest of the instrument remained the same. Score one for the pup. Other people switched from a maple board P to a RW board P and noticed a difference even though everything else was (theoretically) the same. Score one for the board. It certainly may be the case that longer and wider exposure to different materials and instruments enhance one's ability to hear differences. But it does not in itself confer enhanced musicality. Nor does a lesser ability to hear differences invalidate an individual's [i]perception [/i]of any particular sound. We all hear with different ears and hear different things differently, which is in itself a rather marvellous thing. It reflects the individual and personalised nature of the human mind. As with so many topics on BC, the heat and fury is inversely proportional to the diversity of perception. I would venture there is no right or wrong or or magic bullet or definitive position except that of holding a particular opinion, the validity of which is rather difficult to measure at a distance through a PC screen. I'm with the Kiwi on this one.

I rather like the look of that Gryphon.

Ronnie Van Zant: "Whut song izzit yew wanna hear?" Crowd: "Mustang Sally!"

Thing about variables is they're just that. Variable. Some variables make an apparently big difference, others make a smaller difference. The relative importance of these variables are what fuels debate, drives site traffic and keeps Ped in Gregg's pasties. But let us draw a veil over our co-leader's dietary shortcomings. . Most importantly (IMO) there's the variable of our 'acoustic' expectations, which are based on what we've read, what we've heard, where we heard it, how the amp (if any) was set up, whether what we heard was live or recorded and - if recorded - mics, DI's, room bleed, desk, EQ, engineer's ears, monitors, mix, mastering and output format. If we then add in matters of taste, the relative humidity of the listening environment and whether the chap next door is having sausages for his tea, you can see how things can get wildly out of hand. And that's even before we commence to try to describe sound through the medium of the written word, which is a bit like trying to explain sculpture through the medium of dance. My tango interpretation of the Venus Di Milo is widely appreciated in these parts, I can tell you. About the only useful observation I can make is that whenever I'm contemplating the purchase of an acoustic instrument (oh, curse you Mr Martin for your lovely little Mex cheapies) I have a bit of a strum on it. Then I face into a wall or a corner and have another strum to get a very crude sense of what's coming back. Then I ask the bloke in the shop to have a bit of a[i]nother s[/i]trum and I go stand a distance away and listen. Then I decide if I like what I'm hearing? Am I getting a little tingle in the scrotal sac? It was on this basis that I recently decided that (were funds ever to come free) I should rather purchase a (sapele / stratobond / richlite) DRS1 than a (proper) D18. Because the wood may be inferior on the Mex, but then so is my bank account.

[quote name='Kraken' timestamp='1366222324' post='2049869'] so who are a Local Bands customers? and what is it that they want? [/quote] An excellent, excellent question and one which many bands rarely seem to ask themselves. Most cover bands I've been in seem to construct their setlists based on what the bandmembers like to play. Then they chuck in extra guitar solos and spend most of the evening staring at each other or their feet. But maybe I've been unlucky.

If I can't get my leg over Catherine Southon off Bargain Hunt in the next four years I might give up trying. I could go on about the restraining order but certain people might think I was whining.

[quote name='Dave Vader' timestamp='1366191570' post='2049333'] I like the bangy noises. [/quote] Plus the indeed. Bangy noises are the gentleman's way of alerting one's audience to imminent on-stage activity.