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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 FreedomI'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 DetailsStrummed 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 NotesAs 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 Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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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
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Wow! Great song. Loved the intro very original. Also like how you added the sax.
Great tune and most enjoyable. Rob
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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
Cheers,
Deryk
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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
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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.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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I really like this - it sounds to me like it could be a lost track from The Band's Big Pink era albums... Thanks, Bob!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Wow! Great song. Loved the intro very original. Also like how you added the sax. 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!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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What a tune! I really enjoyed this one, dcuny. It's wonderfully catchy, and the addition of those horns was a great touch. Thanks, Deryk. It's sort of hard to go wrong with horns, right? I appreciate the positive feedback!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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This song is A LOT of fun!
I like the way you mixed up your different tools from your tool kit on this one.
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!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Sensational. Not a lot wrong with this at all. I did really like the lyrics. 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. The punctuation of the horns throughout added further dimension. 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. 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). 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!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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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 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
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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
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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!
Cheers,
Ember
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I agree!! I like the vocal sound...kind of puts me in mind of ZZ Top's "I'm Bad I'm Nationwide"! 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.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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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!). Hi, floydjane. (I'm not sure how that gets ProperCased...) Cool horns. Cool bass. Cool acoustic rhythm... 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.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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This was such a catchy song, and I really enjoyed reading on how this song came to be. 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 Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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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
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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! Hi, Tom. I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for listening.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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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
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