Originally Posted by rayc
The concept of funk confounded 70s hard rock groups like Zeppelin & Deep Purple...they tried and failed...often spectacularly.
The groove on this one is pretty good.
the bass parts are good - perhaps a little EQ peak at 3K, (just a couple of dB and a narrow Q), will bring out the best in it.
maybe a little volume automation to emphasize "the one" on the bass n drums. The backing track is pretty cool though.
The intro sounded messy and unfunky - not the place to start a funky piece - it also ends quite abruptly. I think, generally, the lead guitar is trying to hard and missing the point. Listen to some of Prince's jams. Playing four to the floor over a funk backing can work but not for extended times. I'm undecided about the sax.
I listened to the inspiration and it, too, has an intro messed up by delay & reverb. Much of the guitar part on the inspiration does the spaces as well as the notes well. That may what's missing on your track.
Jeff Beck & Jan Hammer were doing this sort of thing when I saw them in the late 70s.

I really appreciate the persepctive. Let me try to address a few of your observations:
The mix was very difficult for me. At first try my ear said "turn every track up!" In fact, the template I selected from Ozone for Mastering was entitled "In your Face"!. I heard this as a Jam performance so it only sound good to me if it was blasting.

I really wanted to include the guitar intro which I felt was so characteristic of the tune. I used Melodyne to convert the first 9 bars, to midi and then sent that to Session Guitarist in Kontakt. All 8th and 16th notes squeezed into the bars - nothing quantized. First attempt was a bit of a mess, but with midi editing I was able to train my ears to thinking it sounded "ok". So Ya, I agree - my attempt to reproduce this was a bit off mark.
Regarding the ending - that is my trademark style of crappy truncated endings. You can always identify my early efforts by this characteristic.
The length of the song. Well it was what it was since I was trying to fully emulate the original. In addition, members of the production team have a predispostion to longer arrangements. Perhaps you know who I mean? grin

Thanks again for your inputs - Dan

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