These Days

This one started as a piano demo Chris sent me a couple of weeks ago and progressed from there. Initially I built a bed with BIAB but ended up replacing everything except the bass track.

Drums: EZDrummer2
Bass: 776:Bass, Acoustic, PopWaltz Ev 085

I'm playing the guitar tracks and Chris did the piano and Pad tracks.

Mixed with reaper using plugins from Waves and iZotope, mastered with Ozone 8 and LMC.

These Days (2018, Christiane Spruit)

V1:
You know my love
life is on the run
rainy days
they may come
life is like a breeze
and we both know
these days to come

V2:
All that we've been through
me and you
when the wind blew hard
did we fall apart?
we can make a stand
but we both know
these days to come

V3:
All these years my love
we won and lost
but most of all
we paid the cost
we've cried some tears
no need to fear
these days to come

Solo
Bridge:
I know nothing that I wouldn't do for you
there is no doubt in my mind
no doubt to be finding you
Love is in me,
love is in you

V4 (repeat V1):
You know my love
life is on the run
rainy days
they may come
love is like a breeze
and we both know
these days to come

All comments welcome!

08/16: made a couple of minor tweaks to the mix and uploaded to soundcloud. Not perfect, but as close as I can get for now

Dave & Chris,

EXTRAORDINARY!

Excellent Rock write. Chris' best vocal yet (and they have all been excellent lately). I really like the processing on it.

Nice piano. Opened the song well.

The drums ROCK. Great sound.

Dave - your solos on this are goose-bumpily! LOVED 'em!

I thought the guitar hits in the last part were a little "too crisp" - could be a bit "warmer" (Everything else about them is good - they work).

This is excellent!

fj

Love the guitar solo tone. Very reminiscent of Gary Moore. Very strong. I can't pick out anything to complain about. Well done.

Dave

Dave and Chris this is a very cool song. Very different from the last couple of song you have done. Chris vocal was so good. Excellent piano work as well. I listened the song a couple of times. I think Dave (GocartMoz) hit the nail on the head with the Gary Moore vibe on your guitar solo. Slow and lingering notes with such a cool vibrato. Each song you do seems to top the last. Tough to do as they have been all so good. I am a fan

DAY-UM! That was really awesome. I'm not kidding either. The drums, the vocals....and THAT guitar. I will be listening to this over and over. I love the tones you are creating and the feel is out of this world!

SMH

Dave & Chris

Superb! Love the song - everything is pro. Great kick off to the solo and wonderful tone.
The vocals were lovely.
Top class blues.

Peter

Absolutely loved this ! Perfection start to finish. Bravo !!

Trax

Took the words right out of my mouth. A female Gary Moore on vox and Gary himself on lead guitar. We lost a good pone when he died in Spain. This is so well done in every possible way.

Simply fabulous! This is one great song and production. WOW, over and over. Wish I could come up with all the accolades it deserves. However many of them there are, this deserves every one of them.

I could blabber on forever how good this is, but I think you have figured out I like it so danged much!

Best to both of you.

ALan

This probably your best to date. Great vocal! Super piano and mix. Couple that with that great guitar part and you have a winner.

Both of you should be very proud of this one.

Agree with all of that!! As much as I love your straight blues, this one which is a bit more crossover is my FAVORITE!! And, I can honestly say I've never heard a tastier guitar part in my life.....absolutely PERFECT!!! Take care. Greg

Dave & Chris,
A big WOW! Much as I like Chris` more abstract lyrics, the more accessible ones here are such a good vehicle for her voice... the whole thing just smokes,,, even before the guitar solo!
Right up there with the best you`ve produced.

Robert

Really well done! A great song through and through. Really catchy, a great groove, and a amazing vocal performance. Just a great tune - it hits all the boxes for me in terms of what makes a good rock song.

Not a thing I'd change on this one - be proud! Thanks for sharing

The lyrics seem really poetic, and I like the choices you made for accompanying instruments. Awesome job. Has a really nice groove to it as the song picks up. Thanks for sharing!

THis is some gooooood stuff !!!, Excellent vocal on this, actually brilliant vocal on this. The music is top notch. CLiff

Dave and Chris,

After listening, I was speechless. This is so incredibly good on every possible level. To get my brain back into order, I started reading through the comments. When I got to floyd, he said EVERYTHING that I thought. I had to quote him.

You've done yourselves really, really proud with this one. You handled that laid-back 12/8 feel with pizzazz!

All the best,
Noel

Thanks for the excellent comments, floyd! They made my day and Chris' too when she read them.

I brought the volume on the guitar hits at the last part of the song down 2db and also rolled off some of the highs. I think they fit a bit better now, thanks for pointing that out

Strong song!

loved it, guitar solo just sounds awesome

Kenny

Thanks for the listen and comment, I appreciate it!

Slow burning, with a great build. Excellent mix.

All the good adjectives have been taken, so: what they said.

Simple arrangement carry the beautiful vocals nicely. Haunting melancholy lyrics, Eagles-like chording and Gary Moore guitar solo make this a great ballad. Interestingly no chorus, but that makes only the bridge more effective.

Janne

Dave and Christiane,

We completely agree with Floyd's first remark: Extraordinary!
Such great music and such beautiful vocals.
Top Notch.

Rob and Anne-Marie

Brilliant singing, playing awesome guitar work just pro stuff .

And great lyrics to boot.

Thanks very much, Scott! I'm a fan of your work also.

I'm happy you liked the drum track, especially seeing as you are a real drummer, I had lots of fun building it.

And of course thanks for the positive comments on the guitar and vocal

Hi, Dave and Christine !:))

What a lovely blues by you
and what a sweet bluesy vocal
by christine ! Can´t become
much better than that !!!

Cheers
Dani

Thanks Peter!

Thanks, Trax!

Man, if I was a tenth as good as Gary Moore was I would be a happy guy. He was something else!

Thanks very much, Alan, I really appreciate those kind words

Thanks, Mario!

We started out doing it as a straight blues but it was sounding quite similar to a song we had done a couple of years ago so we switched it up to make it more of a ballad feel.

Thanks, Greg!

Thanks, Robert!

Always great to hear from PGmusic staff, thanks Deryk and Ember!

Thanks for the listen and comment, Cliff, I appreciate it!

Sounds wonderful!

Love the grit in the vocal on the refrain "these days to come"

and the guitar soloing is outstanding

I listened to both versions and I think I hear the kick and snare clearer on the soundcloud version.


Very glad I stopped to listen. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, Noel, I really appreciate that

Thanks, Kenny! Always great to hear from a fellow guitarist

Yes, the idea was to slowly build the intensity with each verse and then climax during the bridge, thanks for noticing!

And thanks for the comments on the mix too, spent quite a few hours over a couple of days working on it

At this point any accolades that we offer will be redundant...but we're gonna do it anyway

- The build is very, very effective.

- The write is everything the tunes needs and nothing it doesn't. Classy.

- The guitar work is both scorching and super tasteful.

- The piano sits in perfectly. The first few notes were to us gospel tinged. Maybe Aretha is on our mind. Love it all.

- The vocal is outstanding (and so well processed)...hard to imagine anybody else doing this.

Oh yeah, there are the drums..wowzer. EVERYTHING just smolders...mix is tremendous on our monitors.

J&B

DAVE!!!

This made me sweat, brother. So glad you've found some vocalists too, since the old days. Chris can freakin' sing. Well put-together song, sounds great, and feels great.

Well, for a blues song simple is always best IMHO. If you try and get too clever with the arrangement it's no longer blues.

Thanks for the listen and comment

Thanks very much Rob and Anne-Marie!

Thanks for the listen and comments, Beatmaster!

Thanks, Dani!

Thanks very much for the listen and comments!

I typically prefer the way the songs sound on reverbnation, although I haven't A/B'ed this particular song.

Reverbnation requires a 128K MP3, for soundcloud I upload a WAV, but they convert that to either 128K MP3 or 64K Opus for playback, not sure which.

Awesome comments, thanks J&B!

And thanks for mentioning the drums! I had a blast building that drum track. Also I tried a couple of new (for me) techniques when I mixed the drums. I'm experimenting a bit with sidechain compression to control the reverb for example.

Looking forward to your new one!

Hey Tang,

Well, the story with Chris is I was just getting back into music after taking a few years off for various reasons. I uploaded an instrumental over on soundcloud which she heard, and she asked if I would like to work with her on a song or two. That was 2015, and we have done almost 30 songs together at this point.

Good to see you here and looking forward to hearing your music again!

Dave / Chris,

This is tremendous! I love the way the song progresses and the build... Great vocal by Chris - one of her best.

Loved it!

Bob

Thanks for the listen and comment, Bob, very much appreciated

This is outstanding. One of your best so far and a favorite performance by you guys.