PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase Folk/Acoustic Mix Apparently - The Newlings

https://soundcloud.com/rayc/apparently-the-newlings-folk-version
I recently posted an unfinished song called Apparently. It was close but not complete and I was interested to hear opinions on the mix. The two differ greatly and the 1st mix I put up was basically to test out BIAB realtrack organ. It seemed to work well.
This is the original mix of the song using
REAPER
BIAB mid tempo drums (can't remember which)
A couple of tracks of 12 string guitar by Eric
Bass by me
Main & B'vocals by Eric with help from an ADT VST
Mellotron by cut'n'paste
There's a lovely ringing/resonating string on the main 12 string track that I'd love to replicated with the mellotron but I haven't been able to fix it in time & space well enough to duplicate.
Nevertheless: here's the song for your commentary.
PLEASE pull the mix, arrangement etc apart.

That bad eh? Ok, I'll work on a remix.

LOL. Not bad at all, Ray. It might be that it "got lost" as the list bumped around. I missed it, others might have also. And, keep in mind, the number of people who comment on songs seems to keep getting smaller and smaller as more and more people just dump things in the showcase and then don't participate... nature of the beast, I guess...

This works as a folk song. The mix is good. The arrangement works - though it might help to add some type of "sweetening" along the way to differentiate one verse to the next - a nylon guitar or acoustic lead - something simple... the 4 1/2 minutes of the song stays pretty constant throughout - so some "breakup" might be a good thing... What you have, as it is, works well...a good folk sound...

floyd

Ray
Bass sounds nice - guitars are quite bright - vocals a touch muddy at the start but settle in later.
Agree with Floyd some sort of break or change would be nice to break it up a bit.
Like Floyd - missed this as well.

floyd jane & PeterF,
Yep, there's not a lot of variation happening. I used the 12 string against electric to differentiate in the other version. Maybe I can lift the Mellotron to do similar.I found it quite difficult to play bass to this song as the changes between verse and chorus, when they do happen, just shift the two chord back to front. There's also an odd, and very 60s folk music like, uncertainty/inconsistency in the change back from chorus to verse. It's the occasionally miraculous nature of the code that makes up BIAB, that the prog. managed to generate a drum track to fit the thing.
The muddy vocals at the beginning are where the ADT didn't seem to track the vocal terribly well - added more phase/chorus/delay than was necessary but it does seem to catch up later on.
Thanks for you ears and thoughts.
I'll have a crack a some tweaks on the weekend.

I agree with the comments above Ray. The main issue for me was the repetition of the two bar melody; a song needs to go on a little journey to keep the listener hooked, hence choruses and middle eights. I'd rework the basic structure first.

John

the forum has been so active lately, unless you watch diligently it's almost guaranteed that a LOT of songs will slip by unnoticed. I'm retired, able to check multiple times each day, but today is the first time I've seen this in the list of new songs...

I think this works pretty well as a live performance... it has a very lively and spontaneous feel to it that I usually only hear live, and which quality tends to be absent in studio projects. I'm a live performance kind of guy, so I like songs with a live feel. I see them as honest and artistic. All art inherits the flaws of its creator, and I think that's a good thing that adds to the uniqueness and value of art.

Having said that, here's what sets studio recordings apart from live performances: Timing tuning, polish

1) Timing:
Especially when using real tracks, even the most basic once-generated style tends to put every instrument right in the pocket, with the near-perfect timing you'd expect from the studio musicians who recorded the real tracks.

Live music is full of the individual nuance and rhythmic irregularity introduced by each musician. The irregularity of timing can go in both directions, with one musician going a little too fast while a bandmate goes a little too slow. Since you played everything except the drums, this song has a lot of that kind of irregularity. It works well in gigs, but it doesn't compare favorably to the highly precise backing tracks that BIAB creates.

The disparity increases even more when the song writer spends hours tweaking BIAB's output to put everything exactly where it needs to be for maximum impact.

2) Tuning:
all of the real tracks are in tune. When a song writer goes the route of playing the instruments, they introduce the possibility of instruments or voices being somewhat out of tune. Again, this is expected in live music. It's part of the organic wonderfulness that makes human performance interesting.

But in a forum where nearly everybody is using all of the tools at their disposal to polish their projects... real tracks, pitch correction, studio effects etc etc... submitting a semi-live performance is like showing up at a gunfight with a knife. So it is impossible to make apples to apples comparisons

3) Polish:
In live performances you get one shot at getting the song as good as you can in real time. In the studio you can revisit the song as many times as necessary to slide timing forward or backward, or slide pitch up or down until there's nothing left that anybody could possibly hear to criticize.

I'm guessing that you don't like the highly processed sound (not everybody does) and that you much prefer the spontaneous sound you get from real humans playing real instruments. If that's a true statement, then congratulations! You have hit the nail right on the head with a wonderful organic live song with a human feel to it!

But be aware that most of the people on this forum do prefer a highly polished song (at least, the songs they submit tend to suggest that they do)... and if you don't get a lot of comments its probably because they're thinking like studio engineers and not like live performers, so they don't quite know how to evaluate what you're trying to accomplish.

I could be completely out in left field here, totally misunderstanding your intent. But based on the music you submit and the comments you make, I'm guessing you perform live, and that's the focus of your BIAB experience. (Mine too)

I don't have much to add to the above other than general agreement.

I feel the bass could come up a couple of db's but as a bass player
I'm biased. The vocal is pretty far out front but it is definitely good enough
to reside there...

I like it.

Bud

Hi Rayc !
Reminded me a little about some of the Pink Floyd songs on Atom Heart Mother... But, I felt the bass was a little "out" a few places... But that could be just in my ears... Nice work..

Gents,
Interesting and detailed comments. The last couple of songs I've posted have had, as a constant, BIAB drums. They have been simpler songs as I've tried to achieve a less is more balance with arrangements. I am, normally, inclined to build very busy, quite dense arrangements as witnessed by these tracks:
https://soundcloud.com/rayc/the-master
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNUNF0opCdc
Though There's no BIAB content in this - only musicians playing & recording their parts in Germany, Texas, Canada and Australia.
Guest players: guitar solo - Gerry Steele, Drums - Greg Loyacano and Vocals/melody - Joe Mizzi. The rest, as they say, is my fault.

There is some really good stuff happening here!! The vocal sounds like it is recorded in a live room from a distance instead of close-miced with digital fx. There is too much repetition. You broke away from this several times and it worked. I would go to the 5 chord (the dominant) somewhere in there. A lot to like here-just needs some changes. Take care. Greg