PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase Beside Still Waters

Life has been very busy, and it's been over a year since I've had time for any music. I'm still being called away, but have been making an attempt to get more involved again. I've recently listened to some of the stuff here, as as always the music and folks are great. I haven't had much time to write, and a little writers block as well, so I just picked out an old chord progression I had where the words never came and put some lead lines on it. I'm not the kind of guitar player that wows anybody, but I've enjoyed a lot of the instrumentals I've heard on PG Music Forum and thought I'd give it a try. This is my first ever attempt at an instrumental, and at trying to mix anything for over a year, so I'm certainly open to comments if you give it a listen. I do have some mastering tools, but have not learned to use them yet, which will probably be obvious.
https://soundcloud.com/user-722422510/[b]beside-still-waters[/b]

And the Band is:

Drums: Craig Scott, =BRT_PBG.STY
Bass: Neil Swainson, =BRT_PBG.STY
Piano: Miles Black, =BRT_PBG.STY
Acoustic Rhythm: Jason Roller, =BRT_PBG.STY

I'm playing the power chords, muted rhythm and lead guitars on my Gretch G5120 through an 11 rack processor.

Hi Brad ...

Great to hear you on the forum again.

This is a really terrific song! I would call it Ambient Western - great soundtrack material! I really like the right and left guitar tracks playing off of each other. That's a real nice touch.

For a first attempt - or any attempt, for that matter - this is so dang good! The guitar tone is splendid sand perfect for the piece. And it is very nicely and cleanly played. In other words, ya did good - real good!

My first significant guitar (1963 when I was 17 years old) was a Chet Atkins model Gretsch Tennessean. I started out a couple of years earlier on my father's old Gibson ES-125. You sure did make your Gretsch talk! Very pleasant listen!

Take care ...

Alan

Brad, very fun listen! Agree with Alan's assessment so I won't repeat it. Like the delay in the FX chain on your lead guitar. Had to Google "Eleven Rack" processor. That looks like a fun unit, though I was visualizing a tall rack with 11 occupied rack spaces. Ha!

Welcome back, hope you continue to contribute!

Brad,

That is a great piece of music. Your Gretsch sounds excellent - good mix. I love the feel of this.

Bob

Sure have missed you, Brad. A fine piece you've written and performed here. Good mix, too. Hey, you're wowing ME withyour playing. I really like how you mix them in, and the tasteful notes your provide to complement each. A tasty treat. I like "ambient Western," but in any cse it's good. Well done.

Brad, The Gretsch sure fits the tone bill here. Nice clean ear pleasing sound. The western feel backing track was well done. I liked the stops. The overall sound would benefit from some mastering polish. The investment in Ozone is highly recommended by many of us here. Keep em coming. You can definitely play! Tom

Alan, thank you very much. You are one of my instrumental heroes on this forum, so the compliment coming from you sure means a lot. It takes me a few weeks of trying to not do as good of a job as you can in a couple of hours! And it's hard to go wrong with a Gretsch and a Gibson as your first guitars. I just heard a song yesterday played and sang by Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed called "Gibson Girl". It's a neat little ditty if you have time to look it up.

DC, thanks for stopping by and commenting. Ha, I'm afraid I don't have the space or money for one of those great big racks. This one just sits on my desk next to my recording computer. It's getting pretty old now, but it's a lot of fun to mess with and has a lot of different sounds - if only I could learn how to use them!

Thanks for commenting Bob. It's good to hear from one of the experts.

I've missed hearing from you too Marty, sure is good to hear from you now. Your one of the most fun folks on the forum IMHO. I kind of like that term Alan came up with, "Ambient Western", though I'm not sure what it means - or how to spell it! Ah, par for the course.

Thanks a bunch Tom. I'm still struggling a lot with playing lead. I've got a ways to go to learn how to play like you do I'm afraid. Yes, I've seen Ozone mentioned a lot and bought a copy last year. But that's when things all went to heck and I've not even pulled it up on my computer yet. I hope to get some tutoring from Dave Cuny sometime soon and start using it.

Brad

Brad...I'm sure glad you're back! This reminds me a bit like some of the soundtracks to those good old spaghetti westerns...I can see Clint or Lee Van Cleef riding in across the desert as the first scene opens...love the tone of the lead and a cool melody as well...sometimes a good instrumental can get the juices flowing again...you'll be telling great song stories again very soon... when you do...post them!!

Hi, Brad.

I like this!

The echo effect sounds cool, but more importantly the result is very musical the way you use it.

I promise, we'll get together! My family and I have been fighting a lingering cold for weeks, and now we've all got COVID. So I won't be seeing anyone in the immediate future. But after that... Well, you know how to find me!

There is a cool call and response thing happening with the guitar parts.......really works well!!! Could be score music for the right scene!! Nice!! Take care. Greg

Hi Dan, I've been catching up with some of your stuff, and as usual - it's great. Yeah, I hope this kick starts me into writing again. A lot of time issues lately.

I'll be looking forward to it Dave. My wife came down with COVID too, so we've been staying on separate sides of the house for days now - that stinks. I'm going to cook her a steak for Valentines Day, but once again, she'll have to eat hers in a totally different room!

Hi Greg. It's good to hear from you. Thanks for stopping a by and giving it a listen.

Brad

Hi Brad,
those echoes create a nice call-and-response effect, and that's a nice mellow and relaxed sound you got out of the guitar.
I like that!

Lovely instrumental which really evokes sitting by a river on a warm and breezy day.

Hi Brad,

Good to see you back!

Nice instrumental, I like your use use of the delays, and your playing sounds fine to me.

Enjoyed!

A pleasant listen, Brad.

Nice to see ya back around...

fj

Brad

A pleasant listen nicely played.

Peter

Brad, I'm glad that you are back and man did you come back with a winner!
Super tone
Loved that delay that you so perfectly incorporated in this song
Great mix
We can't have to many instrumentals on this site!
Loved it.

Welcome back.
Love Al's "ambient western" description ... fits to a T.

Nice playing and track choice also.

Enjoyed the listen,

J&B

Regarding Ozone, until you get used to tweaking the modules just select the "focused thought" or "gentle dynamics" preset and it will likely brighten and open the mix a bit. Just make sure you aren’t redlined on the maximizer.

Hey Brad,

Good to see you again.

I really like the chord progression and the structure of this and the actual notes that you're playing. All very good! Excellent my friend!

I hope you don't mind a couple of comments on the sound of the effects though, because it's just a very, very minor perception. It can totally go exactly the way that you have it because I know you're going for the cowboy sound, but I do have a few ideas.

First, the 'mastering tools" I think you are speaking of have very little to do with the end product for the type of music that you are attempting to produce here.

99.9% of it occurs in the mix and any type of mastering tools simply puts an extra layer of polish on top of that.

In terms of the mix, anything that you use in an effect which colors the tone and the sound of the guitar cannot be changed later with any mastering tool known to man because the cake is already baked.

I have struggled for decades trying to get the right type of sound that I'm looking for with guitar instrumentals and it all occurs at the mix level and I'll tell you a little bit about what I've learned, not as a criticism of what you've done but just a couple of things that I've learned.

When you're using effects like this, especially in an effects rack, there can be a fine line where some of the knobs are turned just ever so slightly too far in one direction, with stuff like reverb and echo.

At that point the listener becomes too focused on the effects themselves and not the notes that are being played.

If you're going to be doing a lot more instrumentals, and I encourage you to do so, I would dial back the effects just a little bit so that the listener's concentration is drawn more to the beauty of the notes themselves and the tone of the guitar as opposed to the sound of the effects, but I'm not talking about a big change just a smidgen.

Also, I can't tell if you're using an amplifier in the effects chain before you're going to the effects box. The sound of a quality guitar through even a small Fender tube amp is a one of a kind classic sound that cannot be duplicated by any effects rack known to man even if you do add in effects pedals or something like Amplitube as best part of the chain after it passes through the audio interface. (The affordable Fender Super Champ is a hybrid that combines both tubes and onboard effects and can do just about anything.) In my opinion, the Telecaster or Stratocaster through an amp sounds are some of the most gorgeous sounds that have ever been invented and should be deployed whenever humanly possible.🙂 And a Gretsch is great too!!

Mixing solo electric guitar sounds is really really really really really really really hard.

In order to make it sound like it's all recorded in the same room so to speak there cannot be a drastic difference between the sound and effects of the guitar itself and the sound of the instrumental bed. It's an extremely tricky balance, but I hope this makes sense.

I love the song though.

I hope this wasn't too much information or an info dump but if you're going to be doing a whole lot of instrumentals in the future they may be just a couple of things to consider because I love the sound of your guitar and I love what you're doing.

I promise I will never give another piece of feedback that's this long ever again as long as I live.

Brad,
You've created a lovely gently flowing instrumental track here! I like the clean sound of the lead guitar notes and also the panning of the echo notes! an enjoyable listen!
Take care, TB