Hope I am not going to bore everyone with this long post but I've spent the past few months working on a new 12-song country style album called 'Waiting in the Wings' and I finally released it digitally in Sept so it is now on all the major download and streaming sites. I also made a new Soundcloud site for the album so here is the link to the title track https://soundcloud.com/tonycliffsongs/waiting-in-the-wings

I made use of BIAB quite a bit throughout the making of the album as it is so strong in the country music field. I utilised some of the RealTracks and RealDrums and sometimes using BIAB as a kind of launchpad for prompting and testing my ideas. On the title track I used the BIAB RealDrum track plus some RealTrack acoustic guitars. However another way I am indebted to PG Music is that I ended up collaborating with forum member Donna Evans who wrote the lyrics for 9 of the songs. Since I am in the UK and she is in the USA it was really great to work with Donna who gave me a fresh and different US perspective on the songs. Sometimes she sent me lyrics and I worked on the music and other times I'd send her rough musical ideas for her to come up with a lyric. She was very flexible about changing things where necessary and it was a total pleasure to work with her overall. On the album I did all the music arranging, playing and recording as well as the vocals. I am a specialist piano and keyboard player but I also play guitar (mainly acoustic). I'm not sure I consider myself a lead singer but since I was the one always available I got the job!.

In making the 'Waiting in the Wings' track I rendered the wave files from BIAB and then placed them into REAPER which is my DAW of choice. I EQ'd the RealDrums quite a bit to remove the boominess of the bass drum. I also added occasional cymbals using Addictive Drums. I wanted some resonator guitar so I made a few RealTracks from resonator Solo RT2041 Country Bob. I think I may have actually made these using RealBand rather than BIAB. I then put these wave files into REAPER and went through each, choosing the best bits and then using REAPER automation to fade them in and out at the correct places. I was pleased with the solo part which I used in the intro and also the links and a short solo in the middle. For the bass I played in using the bass part using Spectrasonics Trilian. I always like to make my own bass parts and Trilian is great as once you have created your bass part you can add extra MIDI notes to create a slide effect up or other bass playing features. I also used some guitar BIAB accompaniment tracks as listed below. For piano I played this using a modern upright instrument from Ivory 2 pianos and then I added my own acoustic guitar playing to the mix too. Vocals was my voice plus I added a couple of vocal harmony parts. Then I played in some background strings using ProjectSAM ‘Orchestral Essentials’. In the Bridge section I added some percussion using the excellent 'Shimmer Shake Strike'. Vocals effects was mainly iZotope Nectar for everything except EQ where I used the brilliant EQ DMG EQuality to make a preset to suit my voice.

For the track the BIAB style was _FOLKRKG.STY (Folk-Pop 12 String w/ Electric G)
RealTracks in style: ~896:Guitar, 12-String Acoustic, Rhythm FolkRock Ev 100
RealTracks in style: 798:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm SouthernSnappyClean Ev 090 (A:quarters)
RealDrums in style: NashvilleEven8^1-a:Sidestick, HiHat , b:Snare, Ride
Plus of course the extra resonator guitar tracks.

The album is on Spotify and all the other streaming sites as well as Bandcamp and all the major music download sites. Like many musicians I am pretty bad at the marketing side of things which seems to be the most important aspect nowadays. I am hoping that my songs might get picked up by better singers than me in the future. At least you can get music out there now but the really tricky thing is getting people to actually find your music amongst the millions of tracks available.

Anyway sorry I may have been writing too much but I hope this may be of help or interest to fellow musicians and songwriters. Please have a listen to the other tracks on the album too. In fact if people want me to write more about my whole process of my album production I'd be happy to write a longer article at some point in the future.

Wishing you all happy songwriting

Tony

Last edited by funkycornwall; 10/13/18 03:58 AM.
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