PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase If you have 5 minutes to spare

Link to the song (it is not hosted on our site, it is hosted on your site).

Title Paper, scissors and stone

Background information about the song.
Inspired by the rather random and nonsensical elements in life – oh and of course by the ultimate one-to-one combat that is paper, scissors and stone.

All tracks played/sung/recorded by me, none generated by Band-in-a-Box or RealBand, although I used Band-in-a-Box to produce an early guide track.

No other programs used in the production, other than Audacity to make the MP3 file.
The lead guitar at the end is a Vantage strat copy coming through my ancient Korg multi-effect.

Describe what effects were used in the production (reverb, auto-tune etc).
The PTPA pre-sets in the main.

As ever I'd be most interested in other forum users' impressions. What do you like, what do you not like. What works, what doesn't? Any constructive suggestions gratefully received.

Many thanks for taking the time to listen.

Hi Marc!

Nice to see you or I should say "hear" you again.

I really liked this - all 5 minutes - which is usually a bit long for my attention span. Really pretty keyboard based rock ballad. The feel reminds me of AOR progressive rock - Yes, EL&P, etc. Moving the vocal from left to right caught me off guard and I thought something went wrong with my headphones - then I got the effect you were going for as the song went on.

Very creative use of Paper Rock and Scissors.


Josie

This reminds me of the style of a band from the 80's.... but I can't remember their name. One of those bands that never had a #1 but got some radio action on a few tunes.

Overall, the song is fairly decent. I'd really like to hear it with better production. I don't hear any bass in this at all. The drums are really weak and provide no drive. I hear your keys and a drum machine track.... and very little else.....maybe some disto guitar and toward the end .... a lead part on guitar ????

The vocals are good. Nice harmony. On my speakers (cheap computer) I can't really hear the side to side Josey mentioned. I'd be careful trying to use "artsy" techniques like panning back and forth as there are very few artists today who do that. Also, I heard some plosives in there where the mic got blasted by a breath pop..... those plosives are easily fixed with proper singing techniques and a pop filter.

So, back to the production. Why didn't you let BB & RB handle the tracks for you? You said in the OP that you used BB to make an "early guide track".... Really? .....Why didn't you continue to build from THAT base? Because, all this needs to make it 1000% better is a solid bass and drum track. A fat, full bass and some huge drums would be a huge plus for this. Then, clean up the vox track and add some EQ to accent the highs in the vox. Put the lead vox down the center and pan the BGHV 30% or so R&L. One on one side, one on the other. That makes it full sounding without the artsy-fartsy aspect of a distracting, bouncing lead vox.

Pick one of the real tracks guitar-lead-solo tracks to play the guitar solo towards the end if your guitar chops can't handle it at this point. No shame there..... I can't play drums, or piano very well, and not at all on fiddle, or steel, so I use the Real Band tracks to play what I can't. The goal is to make a song project as good as you can possibly make it and with BB/RB.... there's almost no excuse since you have an amazing tool in your hands to accomplish that very task.

My advice.... take the song back to the square one, and this time build it totally in BB and use RB to add the guitars and mix it. Take all the time you need to do this and ask questions if you get hung up on something.

OK.... that's my 2 cents

THanks Josie - really kind of you. Its good to be back composing and making music again after what has been a difficult time for me.

Yes at 5 minutes the piece is clearly too long. 2 different takes in the l/r lead vox question (as you've probably guessed) Will correct in the remake.

Thanks for the influence name checks too! I guess that's the game. If it sounds a little like plenty of bands but not just like one in particular than that's good.

Herb - thanks so much for taking the time to listen and comment in such depth. Will certainly bear your recommendations in mind for the remake, but I would just comment on one or two points.

I have antiquated versions of the PG music software (B-i-a-B 7.0 and PTPA 11) and am very happy that way. I find when I generate a demo of a composition in B-i-a-B it sounds nothing like what I'm hearing in my head. As I said, I really only use it for structural purposes and replay everything the way I want it to sound.

ITs not a question of particularly wanting to do everything myself, more that what the MIDI patterns (or real loops for that matter) generate simply does not correspond to my composition.

Like many on this forum I consider myself first and foremost a songwriter/lyricist. The musicianship, singing, production and mastering are all of a standard which I know is a long long way below pro. But they do allow me to produce a recognizable demo of my tunes.

All the best to you in your music making.

have now addressed some of the points raised above in this remixed version .
Thanks again for the comments

Hi, Marc !:))


I liked your tune really much !
There were some really juicy
progressions in there ! (Maybe the
song is a bit long due to the repetitive
parts but nonetheless a very
good tune !:))

Cheers
Dani