Hi, Noel.
Originally Posted by Noel96
This is very impressive. I also enjoyed reading through your notes. You've really put your heart and soul into this one.
I appreciate the comment, but on this I tried not to feel like I personally owned it. I didn't go into it with a plan to tell a particular story, and if someone said that something needed changes, I tried to make the change.

In some places - like the harmonies - I could hear what they were talking about.

In others, like some of the guitar bits - I couldn't hear the issues. You can't fix something that you can't hear, and so I had to accept that and move on.

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I don't know too much about the Bluegrass genre but what you have done kept me thoroughly entertained.
I'm not deep into the genre, but there are others here that are. I'm sure they'll have something useful to say! wink

One of the notes I got back on an initial mix was how there was way too much overlap between the instruments, instead of proper trading off of parts. I conceptually knew that, but some of instrumentalists in BiaB aren't good in trading off because they don't put in pauses unless you write them in.

So I sort of cheated. For example, the fiddle gets the entire solo, because he didn't pause for any other instruments. I could have gone back and written some holds so that happened, but he did such a nice job, I figured I'd just give give it to him anyway.

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As I was listening, I could hear that the song was in one of the minor modes and I was going for D Dorian. So I was pleased to discover that it was actually in D minor. Being half-right made me smile smile Did you use the natural minor (i.e. Aeolian mode)?
Yes, that's plain old natural minor. That probably should have been the harmonic minor, which was probably what someone was complaining about the guitarist not doing. (Yes, I should have chosen the "only chordal notes" option for him).

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That's quite a story that you've told through these lyrics. Stories of the impact of capitalism and industrial greed on ordinary people are always worth telling. Hopefully, one day enough people will listen.
I love your optimism, but it seems that the pendulum is currently swinging in the other direction, with those voiced being silenced through threats and defunding. A lot of the regulations that were put in place were simply ignored. One of the coal companies had thousands of violations, and they got swept under the rug.

There were all sorts of hyper-destructive mining techniques used in coal mining, and they're still a lingering issue. But coal had played a huge part in the region, and the rhetoric of "green" energy against coal has set a lot of those in Appalachia as seeing green energy as the enemy, not coal. There's also regional pride in having supplied energy to the nation, and a feel of betrayal of coal then being demonized and abandoned. Obviously, locals have different opinions, but this seems to be the general feeling.

But I'm obviously not an expert on any of this.

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I found your work thought-provoking.
I didn't come into this with any agenda, and while songs are good at preaching to the converted, they're often not good at changing people's minds. It just felt like without the background, the story didn't make much sense.

I'll confess, though - I was sad when I finally dropped the word fracking from the lyrics. It needed to go because there was already too much information, and since it's an unusual word there was a problem with confusing it with something else. But still... wink

Thanks again for listening and your thoughtful comments! smile

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?