PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase Moonlight On The Bay

A channel-swap and remix of my post from August last year. I'm baffled as to why, but for some reason the video is getting double the views I usually get - I never get many and I'm pleased if I get 50 - and in the first 48 hours of being up it had almost as many as the original post received in 6 months.

Cast in order of appearance:
Drums: Country Rock Guitar Solo, Pop Ba ~ Brian Fullen
Bass Guitar: Bricks Indie Rock w Guitar Solo ~ Tobin Frank
1st Piano: Slow Jazz Rock w Soloist ~ Jeff Lorber
2nd Piano: East Dock Latin Fusion Gtr Solo ~ Jeff Lorber
Rhythm Guitar: Slow Jazz Rock w Soloist ~ Andy Reiss
Organ: Country Rock Guitar Solo, Pop Ba ~ Gene Rabbai
Backing Vocals: Speakeasy Old Time Vocal Jazz ~ Britt Savage
1st, 3rd & 4th Guitar Solos: Bricks Indie Rock w Guitar Solo ~ Mike Durham
Fiddle: Fidget Bluesy Pop with Fiddle ~ Andy Leftwich
2nd Guitar Solo: East Dock Latin Fusion Gtr Solo ~ Brent Mason

4/4 ~ C ~ 105 bpm ~ 128 bars ~ 5:03

Very pleasant listening, masterful handling of the RTs..everything in balance and working together..terrific!

WaoBand,

It's certainly beyond my ability to explain how the YouTube algorithm works! I gave up on concerning myself with that long ago! If I get 100 views on something, it's pretty good for me!
Your song sounds great! I love how that fiddle sits in the mix! Nice little touches all around! Especially the guitar parts! Another really good song from you!

Thanks, TB

The attention thing is weird. So much great music remains virtually unheard while some very odd stuff finds its way to lots of ears. This one was certainly deserving of the attention. It's a very interesting and uplifting instrumental. I listened on Soundcloud.

Man, you are consistently... amazing, Chay. You must really enjoy creating these; it shows in the sounds and the vidz. Love the changes in this one, that guitar followed by fiddle is so good. Do you spend a lot of time re-generating those solos? This so good take-me-away music, and I like where it takes me.

Chay,

Very pleasant listening!
The selection and combination of RealTracks are fantastic.
The basic bass sound firmly supports everything.
The fusion sound transcends genres and features a variety of entertaining guitar solos.
Enjoyed my listen a lot.

Best regards.

Shigeki Adachi

Chay,

Another great production. You have a real talent for orchestrating these large scale instrumentals and making them sound so cohesive & smooth. Superb mix as well. I also love the way you have used the Britt Savage tracks here - very nice!

Excellent!

Bob

A nice and relaxing song that I would probably listen to with a nice glass of wine.
The violin was a good choice, I like this part the most.

As far as YouTube is concerned, I had about 600 views a day (mainly for 2 cover songs) for about 3 months, and suddenly it went down to 30 views/day and never came back.
I gave up trying to understand how it works.

Chay, another nice one! Like how the bass anchors the arrangement through all the surrounding musical development. Very nicely mixed, I especially like the consistent soloist levels as they switch off. Super job!

Thanks for listening and the great response, Tano. I don't think you would have heard the original, but this channel-swap and remix is just just better.

Thanks for the response, Torrey. On YT I've only had 3 of 100% my own music videos gain over 100 views - I'd guess 64 is about the average, but many don't even get 50. I began creating music videos for others music before I began seriously using BiaB, but even brilliant pieces don't get that many views. The only really successful one is a video I made for Francis Lai's "Promenade" (a favourite of my ex) which I think a music distributor shared and that's had over 4,000 views. The next 4 (of 5 total) only got 120, 74, 59 & 47. A friend said that the high view count for "Promenade" would direct traffic to my channel, but it never has!

Thanks, Beth! I'm always disappointed when my favourite video posts don't get many views, but I actually get peeved when those I don't think are particularly good get lots more!

Thanks, Marty ~ and a big yes to really enjoying composing in BiaB, though it's more often than not hard work. My process is usually this: I have an idea which I want to explore, then I experiment with chord structures before finding something that I think will work, though occasionally I'll end up with something completely different to the original idea. To test the chord structures I usually use only 2 Styles for playback, then once I think I've got what I want I start collecting samples, first starting with close to 200 Styles I have saved as 'favourites', plus I'll also use the "Choose Styles similar to current". I'll next take individual instrument samples from the chosen Styles and I rarely end up with less than 50, often 30+ of them being solos, then it’s a very long process of trying them out in Audacity and rejecting those that fit the least well. Regarding the solos, I'm surprised that the original generation is often a lot better than following regenerations, though I'll sometimes have to cut and paste passages or phrases from different regenerations to get a solo I really like. When next orchestrating the samples - which instrument comes in when - I'll try to find those which follow each other really nicely, which is the case in this post, but sometimes I'll collect 3-6 other regenerations of the same solo so that I can cut and paste better solo endings to fit what follows. I keep a Timeline of each track/composition and the samples used: when they start and where relevant where they end, the + or - db and the channel biases, then I also note what changes have been made. For example my "Dreaming Of" which has 11 stem tracks I have the following notes:

* The Slow Jazz R Piano is +0 gain due to editing, cutting and pasting.
* The East Dock LF Guitar2 Solo is a hybrid from which I cut and pasted together 7 snippets from 5 different samples.
* The Guitar3 Hybb4 Solo is a hybrid of 6 different samples, plus the long opening note was increased in volume by 2db to even it out with the next loud high note which I normalised to bring the gain equal to what follows.
* The Electro Flute is a 2-part hybrid from the same sample. I used a part of the final sample to add to a part of the 1st to keep the rhythm.

Though that instrumental was more complex than most as hardly any solos worked with it. Also, re the 'The Guitar3 Hybb4 Solo' notes, in retrospect I shouldn't have increased the volume of the long opening note to even out with what follows, I should have left it as it was and decreased the volume of what follows as it would have saved later faffing! But c'est la vie!

Many thanks for that very positive response/review, Shigeki! Your words "The fusion sound transcends genres …" explains why I can never figure out what genre my music posts are! There are so many today, plus sub-genres and sub-sub-genres that I'm often left baffled. In the metadata if my wav files I always list the genre as Wao Tao (Wao Way) as it saves getting second opinions!

Thanks for that very positive response, Bob. Yes, the Britt Savage backing vocals work really well here, though they only appear three times. I've tried to use them in other instrumentals - plus I did use them in the vocal song "Flowing Lady Deya [smooth version}" to add to the Lucy Rod harmony vocals - but mostly they don't work as well as I hoped they would.

Thanks for listening and responding B.D. - what the heck does the B stand for? I keep forgetting! Re YT views, I've only twice had posts take off from the get-go, so my guesses are either that a YT staffer watches/listens and it gets posted on the main page, or it could be as simple as a keyword used in tags. I used a tag I've never used before for this post, so next time I'm logged-in I'll edit some of my blurbs to add it where relevant and if those posts start getting more views I'll report back.

PS: I'm becoming a fan of Goldmania Bella, but I can't say I'm a "big fan" as I'm only 5'7"! I just loathe it when 6-footers come along, bloat their worked-out super-hero physiques and tell me, "Yeah, but I'm a BIGGER fan!" When that happens I think to myself in 'woke' fashion, "Pfft. You're a 'head that's a diminutive of Richard' - your view doesn't count." But I'd never dare say it as I lost my super powers in my 30s. But that's another story!

Thanks, Ron! Greatly appreciated. The transitions from one solo to the next work best when the 1st ends on the same note that the 2nd starts on. The opening guitar solo changing to the 1st fiddle solo does that it makes it sound so smooth.

Regarding the algs...a recent track I did had 10x as many plays as usual. it was YuTub recommending it for play through various means. Ads were attached and YT pumped it until it got close to the point where they'd have to pay me a share of the revenue and then they dropped the song. It happens all the time - cynical and misleading but it's how a "free" service stays free I suppose.
Sweet little tune.

It was 2 years ago I had another instrumental just take off on YT views from the start - it was my most viewed video ever until I did a remix earlier this year and lost all of those views - but I never had any advertising on it. It's the same for the video I made for Francis Lai's "Promenade": over 4,000 views and never once seen an add before it starts.

Hi Chay!
To get plays on You Tube you have to know what You Tubers are looking for.
I gave up questioning that a long time ago.
Your track is a pleasant listen and thanks for sharing it.

Vic