This song was a production and engineering experiment for me. I had never done anything in this genre. First, the story. There's ALWAYS a story with me!

In a Google Hangouts chat with 5 other people, I made the comment that "If you give them a good beat, you can sing ANY kind of lyric you want and these kids today are so stupid they will buy it." That led to a Mary Had A Little Lamb rap freestyle complete with proper vulgarities.

So I decided to put that theory to the test. What I found was that this is harder than a "normal" song because it really requires a lot of texture and precision with samples being inserted. I got it to a point and Rog finished it.

Some of the experimentation included some industrial sounds I snagged from the internet, a metal door slam sample I did myself, a lot of automation for panning and reversing some of the sound bytes. It was actually kind of fun!

The lyrics... The song is called "Titles", because the lyrics are 90% titles of other songs woven into a narrative. It's all done in sprechstimme (speak singing) to mock the rappers. The vocals were recorded into 2 mics at once. One was a Shure 58 that was placed ball down into a 2 quart pitcher, and the other an XML condenser. The echo inside the pitcher was exactly what I wanted.

The whole idea came to me because of a guy who came through Cleveland along his career path. I can't say his name because if it got to him he would sue me, as he is very litigious. Some of the stuff he put out was really just noise to me, with banging spoons on pots and such. So I did some of the same thing!!! I will only say that if this was a band it would be called Six Inch Spikes. Draw your own inferences.

Song info:

_HVYBEAT.STY. Heavy Rap Beat w/ Synth

RD: UrbanPopEv8GoodGirl^1-a:Kck1, b:Clap :Ed (Great Oz) Clare - kept drums and shaker - augmented with drum machine
RT1936: Synth, Rhythm, EuroDance Chorus7Hit Ev16 120 cut out a section and looped
RT1825: Bass, Electric, PopModernGrooveHeld Ev16 075 - removed and replaced with live bass
M36: Fretless Elec. Bass - removed and replaced with live bass

Manual tracks:

hi hat from a drum machine
African drums from an RB loop
high shaker with small shaker eggs
kick from a drum machine
snare from a drum machine
low shaker from a larger home made shaker
chord aahs from my ESQ-1 synth
counter rhythm aahs from my ESQ-1 synth
Rog's guitar tracks, part of which were snipped, reversed, and put back in
chant aah to mimic Gregorian chant - left side
chant aah 2 to mimic Gregorians chant - right side
aah1 autopan.WAV these 2 autopan channels panned the 2 Gregorian chant tracks randomly
aah 2 autopan.WAV
drone guitar - this was a loop I did with my ebow
RT 1936 synth loop from RB
bass from Rog
booming anvil on the downbeats is a sound I sampled from the web
Screech is a metal screeching sound I sampled from the web
high anvil plays on the 2s and 4s (comes and goes) against the booming anvil

It was a fun piece and good learning experience. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but try to remember that this is a spoof and was done with my tongue as far into my cheek as it can get.

Titles

Crank it up and get your groove on!!! Phones might be a good idea because there is a LOT of panning on this one.

Yo Bro..... that's cool.

There were some country songs years ago...decades more likely, that used a similar concept..... titles from the other hits to tell a story. Novelty songs.

This is not easily identified in that "novelty" category.

That's brilliant work.

This was actually really interesting to listen to, Eddie! Even though it is allegedly a bit of a mockery, it is pretty unique sounding especially for the showcase. I do enjoy music that is rather "noisy" at times and I'm also a big fan or rap/hip hop, so this actually catered to my tastes somewhat!

Good work on this, and thanks for sharing

That was a fun listen!

And I agree with your theory - if the song sounds good, people won't care that much about lyrics.

But that doesn't mean that lyrics aren't important at all. In fact, I think part of the charm of your song is the cleverness of the lyrics.

I've not played a Ensoniq ESQ1 in some time. It's good to see yours is still getting used.

And it's the original one from 1988!!

hi eddie love this great job very engaging thanks eric

sounds great I cant do anything with keyboards or synths, my son has an ensoniq MR 76, and I had a sq1 back in 91 I think, I could not play it, sold it quickly.

Definitely tres cool. Nicely done!

My involvement in this started out as simply supplying a bass riff and some random guitar,
but as a bonus I got to finish the mix as well.

Eddie had got it about 90% done, but felt that there was still something missing, so I got
sent the SEQ file - 22 tracks with an amazing amount of stuff going on. A lot of the tracks
were very percussive and it was hard to maintain a decent level, so I moved the project over
to Harrison Mixbus 32C where I had sweep EQ, high and low pass filters and a buss compressor
on every channel. By compressing at track level the whole thing tidied up nicely and I used
an Eventide Ultra Harmoniser plugin for effects and a Harrison G-Plus reverb. The only mastering
needed was a Teletronix LA-2A compressor plugin on the main stereo buss.

I thoroughly enjoyed helping out on this project and my hat goes off to Eddie for an amazing,
original and inventive track.

ROG.

This is a lot OF FUN!

I think you reached that state of perfection everyone is talking about!

If nothing else, I know now how many roads a man must walk down before people call him a man..... Or in this case, how many tracks I have to add before I can call it a song.

Eddie,

Very cool and creative - I really enjoyed this!

Bob

This is very clever. I love the mood this a develops as the song continues.
Reminds me a little of Pink Floyd. Great production well done with the mix.
Excellent all over. Rob

This was really good. Have to agree on the lyrics. Proof is in the pudding. Super backtrack. Some excellent guitar and a well delivered vocal. Well done

I should have said this in the original post but I will do it as a PS here. You will not get the true experience of this song if you listen to it on a cell phone with the speakers 2 inches apart. There is a lot going on with panning and movement and cell phone speakers will flatten that.

Very clever idea nicely implemented, the backing track kicks hard, very lush arrangement, the groove is catchy, and the spoken vocals really fit in. Well done, must have taken some time to put all this together.

Janne

Probably 12 days from head to toe. And mostly on my end. Rog turned it around in a day from the engineering side. We had been going back and forth about guitar tracks for a month before though. Trying to explain to someone what you hear in your head is like is like trying to explain what "red" is to a person who can't see. I was like "I want it ANGRY". "I want it dirty." "I want it to scream." "I want short, stabbing parts that do all of the above." I mean, given that, it's pretty hard to interpret what my mind's ear hears. He sent me a good long sample of phrases put together and I cobbled a solo out of it by cutting and pasting. And on his first phrase, I actually took the sound waves and flipped them so you are hearing guitar played backwards. Doing that added "passion" to it because the attack was different when reversed. He did a great job on a very difficult piece that I did not think was going to be that involved. That was 22 tracks, my record.

Eddie, you did a fabulous job on everything here. It sounds spectacular in the headphones. The time spent really paid off in a big way. ROG played some great guitar lines and put some of his magic in the final mix. I really enjoyed it! Tom

Thanks to all for the kind words and feedback. It was almost funny that what I thought would fall together quickly and easily took MANY days of tweaking and adjusting. Then I had to do all the automation to get the panning to move just right. When it went to Rog it was okay as far as balancing instruments. He did a lot of hi and lo pass filtering, as well as applying some compression at the mastering level. It came back sounding HUGE and very much more alive then when it went over.

Making those song titles fit together as a lyric took some work too. It was one of those things that looking at the bands I referenced, they had SO MANY song titles to pick from, yet as I sat and wrote that I drew a blank because there are too many.

Man, I can't imagine how long it took to think that through and put it all together.

Yeah, it makes a great statement but as others have mentioned it has legs of it's own.

Fascinating.

The answer to that one is over 7 weeks, Bud. I had to come up with enough of my favorite bands (remember our age!) and find song titles that were not obscure so listeners could spot the song title, THEN somehow work them into a dialog that made any kind of sense, AND get it to rhyme. With the bands I used, each had thousands of titles, but not all made it to the radio and became known, and that was the biggest challenge. Once I had that written I went on to the fun part, adding the anvil sounds and such for the industrial feel.

I love the story behind it and can definitely appreciate what you did with the song and all the time and energy spent on it. It's interesting that it started out as a joke and that it was taken that far. It definitely is very different then what we usually hear in the showcase.

Well done, and thanks for sharing.

Amazingly clever.
Really good!

Peter

Just bumping my song back to the top of the page, since that's what we do here.....

See how annoying this can be? About as annoying as I can be!!

I'm glad that you are annoying as I would have missed this masterpiece!

Your vocal reminded me a little of Frank Zappa's The Central Scrutinizer!

Very clever lyrics.

Really cool song, Eddy. Lots of work and time evident here. And ROG really know how to twist those mixing knobs! Loved the ending - door slamming shut?

As someone mentioned, there have been several country songs published that used singers' names for the lyric. I remember this one in particular:

If I had Johnny's Cash and Charlie's Pride
I buy me a Bonnie Guitar
I'd drive a Tennessee Ernie Ford
And wouldn't have a Buck Owen

Or Something Like That

I think it was a Mac Wiseman song.

Anyway, this is great!

Alan

Thanks for the positive comments all.

And.... BUMP!