Well this is my latest recording. Not touched my gear all year. So here's my first take of the song. As usual had fun making it, actually I'm still tweaking to make perfect, as perfect as I can make it. Enjoy.

One thing not happy with - bass is light! Would like to replace with a more fuller/deeper bass track but not figured how to do that yet.

https://soundcloud.com/devonbiker/dont-build-your-house-take-1

Cool track!! I like the metaphor. Real tracks (I assume) really work great for the vibe. Vocal works great. Great work all around!! Take care. Greg

+1 Here! Sounding super to us. loved that piano.

As far as the bass ... in my (Alan) opinion, the bass line is good with the 2/4 beat. If you want to give it a little more bottom and fill, this is what I would do:

I use Audacity for a lot of my mixing. I would highlight the bass track, go to effects - equalization - then bump up the frequency range of around 40 until you get the sound you want. Just a suggestion, FWIW. That's what I usually do. In a couple of hours I'll be posting the first song Di (my wife) has sung since her stroke last month. It's a 90's era Pop Rock and needed more bass. I do what I just suggested to you and it filled it out real nice. It gave it a lot of full bottom without getting too mushy.

Anyway, nice song and mix. Loved the megaphone effect in places ... very cool!!!

Alan & Di

This is a well written, nice song. Enjoyed listening.


Charlie

Sounds great to me, I hear the bass rocking just fine on my headphones.

Enjoyed it.

Josie

Paul, This is a good one. I enjoyed it and you used just the right real tracks. Keep writing and posting. Nice job! Tom

Thanks all, I appreciate positive feedback from my musical friends.

I don't want to fool anyone. This song is not mine. It's an old Sunday school song and I used BIAB for the music edited in Studio One.

I woke up one morning recently and my wife told my I got up in bed and spoke in my sleep. Apparently I said to my wife something about "straw houses" and laughed then turned over and went back to sleep! I know nothing of course about this? That lead me to this song and it stuck ever since in my head.

PaulH

An enjoyable little ditty :>)

What RTs did you use as they were perfect?

good stuff

Alyn

Hi Alyn. thanks.

Here's the title of the RT

_TRAINBT.STY. Basic Workin Man Style (130 RS)
All RealTracks. Quartet.
RD: NASHTRAINEV16^2-a:Blastix , b:Blasttix 16th :Brian Fullen
RT379: Bass, Electric, Country DoubleTime Ev 088 , Dow Tomlin
RT1727: Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm TrainBeatJohn Ev 130 , John Jarvis
RT411: Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Train Pickin' Ev 130 , Jason Roller

I really like it!

Glad for the full disclosure....I might lift that one and use it myself in church someday ;-)

I was really, really hoping Albert Lee would come in around 2:20...future wish list item?

Hi, Paul !:))


I like your tune !:))
I like everything about it,
the rhytm, the piano, your vocal
etc. etc !:))

This is just a great music !!

Cheers
Dani

We enjoyed the spin.
The bass sounds fine
on my monitors. FWIW, you
can make a huge difference
in how the bass sits in
the mix by experimenting
around with some EQ shelves.

J&B

Cool song.

On the bass.... there's a few options...

One is to use EQ and compression to bring out the low end in the bass.... I like to drop an EQ plug into the bass track in my DAW for this. That lets me effect just the bass and nothing else.

Another option is to use a different real track. There are a bunch of bass real tracks in the country and rock genre real tracks that would be worth experimenting with. I like to write down the name/track number of the ones I especially like the tone or style of playing on..... that way, I can grab it later without having to research all over again. Certain tracks have nice rich bass, some have a lighter tone, some are full and fat,,,, it all depends on what you want, so try a few and see what works best.

That's so easy to do in Real Band.

Evening everyone!

I've been "mastering" the song on and off for days with the demo of Izotope. Below is the link to my playlist with both versions - the original vs the Izotope version.

The latest version using Izotope products is better but the sound still seems "a bit dark" to me? Not clean as found from on professional CD's. Maybe too much bass?

I'd appreciate your comments on my Mastering efforts please.

https://soundcloud.com/devonbiker/sets/testing

Both version sound good to me Paul, if I had to choose I would probably take the first version.

mastering is a whole art in itself, I just started using ozone myself last year, mainly presets.

Don't know if you are interested but there is a free music production course on a website called coursera that comes up now and again and a lot on this forum including myself have done it.

Its run by the famous Berklee school of music om Boston and a brilliant course, if You haven't done it already I'd highly recommend it. Explains a lot about compressers and other stuff in music.

You have a very good pleasant singing voice, I really enjoyed the listen.

Musiclover

Hi Musiclover, thanks for the course you mentioned. Is this it? https://www.coursera.org/course/musicproduction

When you say you prefer the 1st version I was surprised. I'm replying to you on my Mac this time and had a quick listen to them both from here and because the speakers in the Mac are just midrange only the first version cut through nicer. But when I compare through my stereo and sub from my PC the 2nd version is clearly the winner. Although I'm still not happy with it as I think there's too much low end and it sounds a bit muddy.

1st version was done using Studio One Pro and Ezmiz presets. The 2nd version was completely Ozone, Nectar and Alloys presets. But my point is depending on the speakers depends how the song is received which makes mixing really challenging.

Nice song Paul, I got that on the Izotope version too. It brought about more bass but I liked it. "It's all about that bass." Meghan Trainor

Listened to this on my JBL LSR 4328 powered monitors pretty loud and didn't sound too muddy on that Izo version.

Probably my speakers have a bearing on the song Paul.

yes that's the course, with a bit of luck it will be up soon again, You can download the video lectures as well.

Best course I ever did.

Musiclover

Paul/Musiclover -

This one has been mentioned in the forums a lot too. I bought the book and really enjoyed it.


Free exercises that go with the book are here.

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio

Love that good time gospel sound. Suits your voice. Pumping realtracks. Got my foot tapping.
I enjoyed that Music production course and just finished the songwriting one -- again.
Cheers.

Signed up for email alerts on the course yesterday and they just put it up for February 2nd today....

Good work, must sign up too, as I always do, just doing the multiple choice quizzes for the six weeks is a good refresher in itself.

Honestly before this course I had absolutely no idea how things like compressors or delays worked or stuff about synths and wave forms. The instructor from Berklee Louden Sterns is very good.

Probably basic stuff for some on here, but to be me it was a very good course.

There is a songwriting course as well by a guy called Pat Pattison, and though a lot on here loved that course as well, overall I didn't take very well to it.

Musiclover