Wrapped up a new one today. It's a quirky little piece written with an eye towards TV advertising placements. You can hear it at this link

SoundCloud

If you have ever heard of Patrick & Eugene, YouTube This piece is a similar style. Those boys are a pretty hard act to follow, but I will give it the old college try. Anyway, this was done entirely with BIAB, only my lead vocal and one backup vocal part are "real" for lack of a better word. The female backup vocal is the harmonizer in RealBand. It's funny, when I am on tour with Acoustic Smoke, I use the TC Hellicon's voicelive touch 2 to create on the fly backup vocals during the concert. It's the same algorithm BIAB has programmed by the same company. "Suzie," As I have taken to calling her is great. I use the very same sound on stage as I do in the studio. I started using the harmonizer on stage because my wife won't let me travel with a female backup singer. I guess I don't blame her. Watching people search the stage frantically looking for that backup voice is pretty funny!

Anyway, rabbit trail. I Love Me, is 6/4 time so getting all the vocals lined up was an enormous pain. Turns out I was suffering with lots of latency, had to make the change to ASIO drivers. Then, I ran the vocals through Melodyne to tighten up the timing. A big shout out to GuitarHacker for turning me on to Melodyne. It saved my skin on this one. It's in Gb, it was in Ab where I write most stuff, but the soaring vocals at the end were really harsh in Ab so I changed keys.

This wasn't really done with any style, the instruments are all hand picked. Largely this is because there is a real dearth of Ukulele Real Tracks in BIAB and they are ALL swing beat. As I knew it was the primary instrument I had to build around it. But . . a nice 50's style five piece drum kit in swing with lots of brush backed up by a cool dude slappin' down the law with an upright bass and we were off and running. Throw in a vintage electric organ for color and we're the Sultans of Swing.

Now I have to go convince my friends and family the song wasn't written about any of them. My mother tells me it's nerve wracking always knowing what I'm thinking when I put out these songs.