Originally Posted By: dcuny
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. blush

Bound for Freedom

I'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 Details
Strummed 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

Notes
As 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! wink

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. smile

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.

I really enjoyed this David. Loved the arrangement, especially the horns.
Your strummed guitars sound great. I've just started using, and enjoying, Session Guitarist Strummed Acoustic 2: (https://soundcloud.com/user-952388172/the-forest-and-the-trees-better-mix).
Cheers, Mike

Mike Garry
BIAB 2025/RealBand (5), UltraPak, Kontakt, EZmix, Ozone 9 Elements, Audacity, MSi PC, Windows 11, 64bit, 16GB ram, CPU: Intel i7.

https://soundcloud.com/user-952388172