Another song! (Duh) See notes below for exciting details!

Edit: This is a new mix, with some additional harmonies that I'd left off the first time. Hopefully it's an improvement over the prior mix. I also did some editing to add missing consonants to some of the words, turning feels into fields, and so on.

Bound for Freedom

I've spent a lifetime working for the man
Won't let me go until I die
But heaven lies far beyond these fields
I'm getting ready to fly

Tell the conductor of that Gospel Train
I've got my ticket in my hand
My bags are packed for the Promised Land
I'll join that heavenly band

Chorus:
This is a railroad that's got no track
It's bound for freedom and it's never turning back
Praise the Lord and get on board
We're bound for freedom

I hear an angel knocking on my door
I see her standing in the light
It's time to cross to that other shore
She says it's time to take flight


Technical Details
Strummed Guitars - Native Instruments, Strummed Acoustic 1 & 2
Bass - Drums on Demand, Essential Bass (loops)
Drums - EZ Drummer, Nashville Basic Brushes
Horns - Zero-G, Brass Elements (loops)
Sax Solo - Band in a Box, Sax, Tenor, Soloist PopCountryMark Ev 085 #2019

Vocal Processing - Waves Tune
Mastering - Ozone 7 Elements
Effects - EZMix
DAW - Reaper

Notes
As part of my personal songwriting challenge, I'm working on incorporating various cool things that I've bought, but never gotten around to using, into my songs.

This time, I started with the EZDrummer Nashville Brush kit - lovely sounds! I added the Session Guitars to that, which are my current go-to toy. As usual, I built the bass line using Essential Bass loops. It's probably not the best way to get things done, but I like the level of control.

Then I went searching through my hard drive and found Zero-G Brass Elements loops, and went to town with those. Probably way too much horn, but whatever. Horns are cool.

I tried adding some other horn elements using Session Horns, but it was sort of blah. Maybe next time.

Backing tracks completed, I worked out a melody, which I thought was fairly nice, but verse and chorus are a probably a bit too similar too each other. My daughter concurs, saying the song "sounds the same" all the way through. I thinned out the vocal on the verses, and went with a big harmony sounds, but it's still an issue. Lesson learned.

I left a big hole in the middle to drop in a guitar solo from BiaB, and got to work on the lyrics.

Speaking of lessons learned, did I bother to check the range of the song this time around? Of course not!

I'm not David Snyder, so writing lyrics ended up taking about a week. Since the song has a sort of bluesy Gospel sort of feel, I went in that direction and ended up with a song about the Underground Railroad.

When it came time to fill in the bridge with an instrumental, I couldn't find any guitar solo that worked. I finally hit on the second to the last Sax soloist. The first solo one out of gate fit perfectly.

The vocals are obviously a bit lower than usual - it's a comfortable range, but it tends to be a bit "tubby" and harder to carve out space in the mix for.

My son's friend wondered how I got that cool distorted sound on the vocal. Turns out gain staging isn't something I excel at. Sorry about that. The ReLife plugin helped recover it a bit.


As always, feedback of any sort if appreciated.

David,

I really like this - it sounds to me like it could be a lost track from The Band's Big Pink era albums...

Very nice indeed.

Bob

Wow! Great song. Loved the intro very original. Also like how you added the sax.
Great tune and most enjoyable. Rob

What a tune! I really enjoyed this one, dcuny. It's wonderfully catchy, and the addition of those horns was a great touch. I'm just imagining this sounding unreal in a live setting. This is exactly the kind of tune you can you can easily belt the chorus to at the top of your lungs while it's playing on a road trip.

Great work, and thanks so much for sharing

Dave,

This song is A LOT of fun!

I like the way you mixed up your different tools from your tool kit on this one.



Great job

Sensational. Not a lot wrong with this at all. I did really like the lyrics.

The punctuation of the horns throughout added further dimension.

Vocally, it might be easy to break-away from the very straight delivery and try introducing 3rd's as a variation (instead of "and get on board" try "and get on bo-ard" lifting the last syllable by a 3rd).

Just a thought.

Thanks, Bob!

Hi, Rob.

Yeah, I was sweating when I couldn't find a guitar track that I could drop in. I didn't think the sax would fit the loops, but I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked - it fits, but is different enough to give a nice change in the middle of the song.

Pundits have declared the sax as "dead" in pop music, but it sounds great to me.

Thanks!

Thanks, Deryk.

It's sort of hard to go wrong with horns, right?

I appreciate the positive feedback!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

As I was working on the lyrics, I kept thinking If I was David Snyder, I'd have done a half dozen songs by now!

I've still got a bunch of instruments that I need to make use of, so I'll try to keep them coming.

Thanks!

Whenever I get lyrics that work out well, I worry that I'm accidentally re-writing something I've heard before. But in this case, they're intentionally derivative, because I wanted to try keeping to the traditional language of the spiritual.


I actually put in the horns before I figured out the vocal. There are some places I thought I really should drop the horns (or at least duck them below the vocal), but they're so darned cool I just left them there.


Yeah, rhythmic variety is a good idea.

One of the challenges I've set for myself is writing the songs backwards from my normal process. That means building the backing first, then creating a melody, and then fitting lyrics to the melody, with the rule of no changing the melody.

That leads to a lot of frustration in the lyric writing step, but it's a good exercise.

So I'll leave that line in place "as is", if only because I'm too lazy to re-record it.

Thanks!

I agree!! I like the vocal sound...kind of puts me in mind of ZZ Top's "I'm Bad I'm Nationwide"! Thanks, Torrey

David,

It was as much fun reading the details of how the song came to be as it was listening (which was a LOT of fun!).

The vocal "sound" threw me at first, but it took very little time to become accustom to it - and to see it as an integral part of the song.

Cool horns. Cool bass. Cool acoustic rhythm...

I got a David Byrne/Talking Heads vibe...

Enjoyed.

fj

This was such a catchy song, and I really enjoyed reading on how this song came to be. I love story time! Really awesome job here, and I really enjoyed the vocals.

Thanks for sharing!

Hi, Torrey.

Thanks! I really should have paid attention to when I saw it clipping, but I figured "It's really not bad", but it turns out it was exactly that bad. Lesson learned... maybe.

Hi, floydjane. (I'm not sure how that gets ProperCased...)


Thanks! As I mentioned, these are all toys that I got because of the "cool" factor, and songwriting is sort of an excuse to use them. Sort of the wrong motivation, but...


That's all I ask.

Hi, Ember.

Thanks for the kind words! I'll remember to include song details in the future.

I was feeling a bit guilty that I didn't use as many BiaB tracks as I intended, so I also wanted to explain why the song turned out the way it did.

I should note - a few people have heard the song, and asked where I found the sax player...

David, I like this one a lot. Great mix. Way to go finding all these different sources and getting them to work together so well. Very much enjoyed! Tom

Hi, Tom.

I'm glad you liked it!

Thanks for listening.

Great funky gospel song, catchy like George Michael's Faith. Nicely built band from so many different sources, but still sounding very compact, especially horns and the strumming guitar are nice, a big hit on my top 40 radio station

Your effected voice is excellent, makes you sound like a grunge artist (Vedder/Grohl style).

Janne

Thanks, Janne. I had a lot of fun building the interplay between the bass and the guitar.

I was really happy with how the horns ended up fitting in as well.


I'm glad you liked it!

David,

Wow!!!!



This is an incredible arrangement. I can't even begin to imagine how much time you've spent harmonising, compiling and layering these instruments and vocals. The end result is the ultimate definition of 'first class music'. Quite honestly, I'm in awe with what you've managed to accomplish.

A terrific song, a fantastic arrangement and a really, REALLY brilliant listen!

All the best,
Noel

Great backstory!

Everything we hear is good...very good but what really stands out to us is the arrangement. It is amazingly effective. When we first read the lyric we were expecting a gospel tinged blues number...but this is something different. Unique sounding to our ears. Rootsy and also modern...that couldn't be easy.

It's easy to imagine this playing over the credits of many films we've seen.

Most impressive. A lot of hard work (we would imagine) that paid off big time.

J&B

Hi, Noel.

Thanks!

There are basically 3 additional melody parts, three harmony parts, and three more high harmonies. Normally I like to leave harmony parts alone as much as possible, but there were plenty of flubbed parts. The high harmonies had initially been octave doubles of the melody, but I re-pitched them into harmony parts.

I'd initially left the high harmonies out of the mix because I wanted to add some contract between the verses and choruses, which are already too similar. But I couldn't resist putting them back in.

Since Joanne Cooper posted a blog on creating harmonies in Melodyne, I'll give a shout-out to Waves Tune, which is what I'm using. The GUI is more cramped, but if you're on a budget, you'll get more bang for the buck.

While it's not really the mastering plugin's job to brighten a mix, I found a preset in Ozone 7 Elements that did a good job of bringing out the high end of the mix. It was a tough call between a preset that "glued" the vocals a bit more, or this one, which is perhaps a bit to "fizzy" on the top end.

I also used the free Ozone Imager, which did a nice job widening the stereo field.

Thanks again!

Thanks!

I was thinking of you two when I was working on this, because historical stuff and harmonies are really your wheelhouse.

But Janice comes by her harmonies the honest way, but I resort to every trick I can find.

I appreciate the encouraging words!

Hi, David !

I must say that I like this
tune very much, I may not
be able to say why, but it just
is so ! Maybe it is your use
of many interesting instros
and vocals !

Cheers
Dani

Hi, Dani.

Well, I certainly won't argue with you!

Thanks for listening, as well as your feedback!

+1 to what FJ said. You're on a creative roll playing with all those toys. Keep it up.

Thanks, Josie.

I'll see what I can do.

David, this was great. The intro definitely roped me in, and then you added new texture continuously as the song evolved...keeps the listener interested all the way through. The vocals were really distinctive here. Really fine job all through. And by the way, I really liked and appreciated your notes up top about your process...very interesting and informative.

Thanks, Rob.

I figure confession is good for the soul, and sometimes the most distinctive or interesting parts of my songs come about purely by accident, or as a creative solution to something that went wrong.

For me, the final mix is the most frustrating part of the process. That's the point where reality that the vision of the song just doesn't match the sonic reality, and I've got serious doubts that I'll be able salvage it.

It's also the point where my poor computer is overloaded, stuttering and flailing under the weight of way too many tracks. For some reason, effects on the master bus of Reaper seem to be more CPU hungry than other effects.

My son reminded me that mastering is supposed to be a separate step, and when I went back and re-mixed and re-mastered the song, I found it useful to separate the two of them out, because you're trying to solve different problems in the different steps.

Anyway, thanks for the positive feedback! I appreciate it.

Cool song David!! I don't think I caught the first version, but this sounds very good. Some nice lyrics here. Good tune!! Take care. Greg

Thanks, Greg!

David,
I missed the progress of versions here, but enjoyed this latest mix.
Even without the backstory I can hear how much work you put into the production.
The guitars are distinctvely different from RealTracks, I love the horns and ,as usual, the layered harmonies... definitely has a Band feeling.

Robert

Thanks, Robert!

Hello, David

Horns - Zero-G, Brass Elements (loops) are very nice.
Your way to use them is wonderful and very effective.
The combination of Strummed Guitars, Essential Bass (loops) and EZ Drummer are really nice.
I am very impressed.
I think it took quite a while to produce it.
Your vocals are also very good.
Enjoyed my listen a lot.

Best regards.

Shigeki Adachi

Hi, Shigeki.

Thanks! Sadly, the part that really took a lot of time was cleaning up the mix - aligning vocals, fixing wrong notes, balancing the voices, and so on.

There are still a couple minor things I need to fix - the missing /s/ in "fields", for example, makes me cringe when I don't hear it - but I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm glad you enjoyed the listen.

Great, great song! Very enjoyable.

I think it was a matter of good luck that you couldn't get the guitar to fit in, because the sax works perfectly.

Cool stuff!
Will

Its nice to see hear these resurrections...
I wouldn't mind seeing & hearing more of them brought back.

I thought this was great the first time I heard it.

I am confused about the reissue though, from the time stamp.

Is it really a reissue from March, or did it resurface from March? I have seen this happen to some songs that are even 3 or 4 years old and I can't quite figure out what is going on.

Is sure is a good song though.

I some times like to go back in time & listen to older songs of posters...
sometimes just to compare it with their new work...
If you like one well enough to make a comment, it will be resurrected in the Showcase, like this one was...
However, I received a PM from a user who was offended by having old songs revived, so I stopped...
Now I'll just have to PM the writer with a thumbs up

David, very cool piece!
In some strange way, not sure if it is a compliment or discourage to you, but your sound reminded me of Pet Shop Boys Overall dynamics are great and interesting. But since you are open to comments, I will share my opinion, for what it worth...
Session Horns.... When I read your comments, and listened to the tune, I have identified them right away. Line is great, but sound texture is "pulling" things in a way. Sort of distracting from otherwise a very well composed and mixed tune. I have Session Horns and whenever I use them I have very mixed feelings. Seems they are doing what they supposed to do, but I found that even a good sound font (SF2) at times yields better results, even when over-dampened with reverb. I know, horns/saxes (and other reeds) are hard to replicate. Maybe thicker, more FX heavy or even doubled Alto+Tenor to give dimension? I am not authority on those things, just speaking as a listener



Best regards,
Misha.

David, this is really great! I really liked the stops and syncopation. It sounds like you have The Tower of Power backing you here.

Thanx for explaining how you pieced this together. There are many ways to make music and it sound like you have mastered a number of them.

Great song!

Very cool tune. Loved the vocal delivery. Made the song so special. Well done

I'm sorry if I did something wrong, I just liked the song and thought it deserved a comment.

A few months ago I asked in another forum if it was OK to comment on old songs and it seemed like people in general wouldn't have a problem with it.

The thing is that new users of the forum (like me) might like to go a little bit back in time to listen to what was going on here maybe a year ago, etc. And if we hear something nice it is hard to resist commenting on the piece - simply because the creator/artist deserves it.

Will

I really enjoyed this David. Loved the arrangement, especially the horns.
Your strummed guitars sound great. I've just started using, and enjoying, Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic 2: (https://soundcloud.com/user-952388172/the-forest-and-the-trees-better-mix).
Cheers, Mike

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've been busy and haven't had much time to check in on the forum.

When I first saw the thread had come back, and figured it would be bad form to respond and put it back to the top again.

But since there have been several kind comments, it would be rude not to respond, n'est-ce pas?

So, thanks!

And Mike, I enjoyed listening to "The Forest AND The Trees".

Mr. Cuny...

A big smile spread over my face as I listened to your song, "Bound for Freedom"! Right from the drums/percussion intro that sounded like handclaps, to the surprisingly funky horn and sax section arrangements, all the way down to the bluesy vocal harmonies. To my ears, your sassy, soulful composition sounds like something that David Clayton Thomas and Blood, Sweat, & Tears would have had a lot of fun with.

But the crowning touch was to read that the subject matter was based on the Underground Railroad. That you found inspiration in that dark but ultimately heroic experience is laudable. I'm always impressed when songwriters look to historical happenings for songwriting ideas because it keeps people aware of important events in the life our nation.

I'm gonna be coming back to listen to it, and who knows how many more times?

Thumbs-up!

LOREN

David, I liked this, the longer I listened the better I liked it.

Tony

David, I must have missed this first time round, but this mix sounds darn good to me. So many catchy things going on in the mix, especially the vocal harmonies and brass parts. Good stuff!


John

Very cool David!! Has an infectious groove and some cool lyrics! I think all of the elements came together really well. VERY, VERY nice job!! Take care. Greg