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New song "Daughter" Now Uploaded


Anderton

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[Edit - the video embedded here is the post-SSS suggestions version]

 

I'm probably going to keep this one pretty much as it, but then again, I think that every time I post something for the Production Squad to dissect. Sooooo...comments are welcome. And fair warming, it's sorta a ballad and sorta sentimental...

 

[video=youtube_share;lvLNkdGv4Kg]

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Very cool song Craig. What I find interesting is the juxtaposition of the kind of..Well..Jazzy/Bluesy/TechnoSpooky music with the real and heartfelt sentiment in the singing and the lyric...The subject matter is not at all what one would expect with the score. It's a surprise and that is very cool..

Scale of one to ten, solid Ten.

 

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Wow....very different effort. Not sure I want to wade in with a bunch of "if it were my song" comments. The instrumentation in the verses reminds me a lot of Patrick O'Hearn what with the bass and the digital keys. I'm a big O'Hearn fan, so no issues there.

 

Ok, I'll say one thing - I want to hear more "played" sounds. Especially the bass. A little sinuous stuff, a few noodles and riffs. What would Jaco Do? sort of thing. Or Knopfler - this would be his sort of song, too. To bring some instrumental intimacy and feel to what in the lyrics is a very emotional song, but the overall effect of the instrumentation is a bit cold and stark, considering.

 

Can't say enough in appreciation of the personal angle, 'tho. Got a daughter of my very own, in her 20s.

 

nat whilk ii

 

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As always, thanks for the comments and suggestions. Regarding the played sounds, I must admit I tried to add some more melodic elements but couldn't figure out how to do it without distracting from the vocal, which I really wanted front and center. Eventually I realized the song had acquired its own vibe, and anything I added was rejected liked a foreign body. About the only thing that did work was the Minimoog bass part between verses that supplemented JD's parts on the chorus. I'm still very much open to suggestions, but my being able to pull them off is a different matter altogether!

 

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Sounds great, Craig. A couple of thoughts:

 

I'd add variation in your drum loop. Instead of a 1 bar loop I go with a 4 bar loop to include a variation in bars 2 and 4. Something as simple as the snare playing 2 16ths on beat 4 of the 2nd bar then another simple variation on the 4th bar. I know it's intentionally setup as a hypnotic repetition but I think the song would be better served with some variation in that loop.

 

The background vocal has some pitch issues or possibly wrong notes. I'd open Melodyne, correct that, then go all Melodyne generated harmonies on those verses. Sort of a vocoder effect. Really get a nice bed of Craigs singing harmony with Craig. Not for a whiz bang thing as much as a soft warm bed of harmonies. Mixed back tastefully.

 

Last thing. It feels like the verses are crying out for some additional instrumentation. Either brought in in the 2nd half of the first or the 2nd verse. Even just a simple muted Strat single note thing playing a 16th note pattern with accents. It needs build.

 

Or not. It sounds great. !!!

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I don't know if this is just me, but there's the lines at the end:

 

". hold you in my heart each day

 

and I miss you."

 

 

 

". believe I did you you right

just remember that I am so proud of you

 

and I will miss you."

 

Because of the very melodramatic feel of the song, the giant pauses after those lines, and the apparent fact that there is great finality in the song in that you seem to be permanently saying goodbye to your daughter, I actually have a hard time listening to because it's really chilling. That I've lost a few friends this year and am about to lose my cat to tongue cancer undoubtedly enters in to it. I hope you don't have an ailment or anything else that you're not telling us about.

 

So I've just listened to it once. Some of the vocals seem slightly off, warbled notes, I'm not sure, and adding another element like Lee suggests above as the song moves along might be good, but I understand that if you're trying to add stuff and it doesn't seem to be working, then you might want to leave well enough alone.

 

Sorry I'm not much help, but I just don't find myself wanting to listen to that song again right now.

 

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Lee, excellent comments as always. I think the best approach for the "loop" is just to overdub some of the sounds used to create the loop, not create new loops.

 

FYI all the harmonies ARE Melodyne :) I guess the company does a pretty good job of not adding artifacts. That said, I'll circle back on the pitch and check it out further. The only thing that sounds off to me is the first "here," though. I don't want to impose but if you can point out the lines with problems, that would be helpful.

 

Still not sure what kind of additional element would work. There's not a lot of space for something. Maybe something off the wall, like a bell.

 

Ken, I'm sorry you found the song chilling. Don't concentrate on the good-bye part, concentrate on the love for the child. You can always listen to "Maladie du Coeur" as the antidote.smiley-happy

 

I've had one pet in my life, my cat Sophie. She was the perfect cat, a little black cat with a tuft of white fur on her front. She was a stray who was essentially feral and fiercely independent, and I was the only human she truly trusted. After 18 years she became very ill and the vet said I maybe could keep her alive for a few more months by various complex and expensive procedures. But I realized that would be for my benefit, not hers. She was in pain and she looked at me like she knew I was the only person who could relieve her of that pain. She meant too much to me for her to suffer just so I could have her around for a little longer.

 

I decided to put her to sleep and the vet offered to take her away. I didn't want that. Sophie and I had traveled down so many roads together I held her in my arms as she died. I wanted her to die in a warm set of arms who loved her, not on a cold metal table in a vet's office.

 

Several years later, my daughter (who had never met Sophie) was going to get a dog. She found a cute little toy poodle - black with a white tuft of fur on her front. I thought she was a great little dog and we hit it off immediately. She was smart and cool like Sophie, but a dog so she was more friendly.

 

One night I called her "Sophie" by mistake and she ran over to me like a shot, got incredibly excited, and kept barking and trying to jump into my arms. She had not acted that way with me before, and hasn't since.

 

 

 

 

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...can point out the lines with problems, that would be helpful.

 

 

The lines "I can not always be there" and "Every night for you a prayer". And any other parallel 3rds there may be. What I think is happening is... when Melodyne analyzes pitch it tends to make fairly large globs. Then, when you decide to fix a glob, it corrects to the average of every thing in that large glob.

 

I tend to use the divide tool a lot of if I'm going to generate a harmony or really just trying to correct even. A lot of times that glob is 2 district pitches and then it "corrects" to the average. Which is going to be, by default, out of tune. The only way I use Melodyde is to make sure every pitch I was intending... gets its own blob. Anything I'm correcting at least. Then, and only then can I get it in pitch. The bonus is I tend to have to adjust a lot less, just the most offending, without effecting the surrounding notes that Melodydne anaylyzed as one and the same.

 

To exasperate the situation, if you create a parallel harmony based on the large globed pitches of the original, you've got double whammy weird. I make sure I divide... then conquer any pitch "correction" and subsequent harmony creation.

 

Or not.

 

 

 

 

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That's kind of what I remember. It was on, but might warble a bit in the beginning. Not sure. Sorry I didn't listen more. I usually listen to your stuff a few times before opening my mouth, but this is a rough time of year for us with people passing away and our cat careening toward that. And now, due to declining enrollment, I have been involuntary transferred to a school site where I have to teach a population of kids that I have no desire to teach and have no experience with either...and this makes me incredibly sad as well.

 

Dammit, sorry, I just hijacked your thread a bit. Let's get it back. Lee's mixes are amazing, so if I ever stick a mix up here, I'll probably do everything he says and buy him a six-pack. :D

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Thank you guys. I hope it goes unsaid but, I mean any input I give in the most benign way. And it feels a little awkward giving "the king of DIY recording" input, but I barrel on and do it nonetheless. Over at the songwriting forum this is what we do every day. Always meant in a take or leave it fashion. A popular phrase over there is, "or not."

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Thank you guys. I hope it goes unsaid but' date=' I mean any input I give in the most benign way.[/quote']

 

How else could one look at free consulting :)?

 

And it feels a little awkward giving "the king of DIY recording" input, but I barrel on and do it nonetheless.

 

I am a huge fan of collaboration. I don't care about the "credentials" of the source, but the value of the opinions. For whatever reason, I find your opinions to be spot-on. It may just be that we have a similar viewpoint on how music should sound, but it works. Many times your comments strike me as "that's obvious, how could I not have seen that?" But I didn't, which is why collaboration is so valuable. With writers it's about a second set of eyes. With musicians, it's a second set of ears.

 

I find the other comments equally valuable. Sometimes I end up incorporating suggestions in future songs. However, I appreciate that you participate actively in my mixing process, and that Mark L lets me collaborate with his music. In both cases it makes what I'm doing better. How could I refuse that?

 

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And if I am the "king of DIY recording," it wasn't from getting there all by myself. The recordings I did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s were incredible learning experiences. When you get to work with the people who did Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Miles Davis, the Kinks, Bruce Springsteen, Cream, the Bee Gees, classic Motown, Barbra Streisand, etc....suffice it to say you learn a lot. The first thing you learn is just how much you don't know :)

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Okay, the revised version is up - I replaced the link in the first post with the new one. Adding the extra percussion accents made a HUGE difference - unexpectedly so. It changes the vibe of the song quite a bit...moves it along in a more energetic fashion. After that, I didn't see the need for any more "played" parts.

 

And yes, I tweaked pitch on the vocals :)

 

Thanks everybody!

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I don't like giving people advice on how their songs should sound, which is why I've waited until the finished version has been posted before giving my opinion

 

This is a very sweet song with simple (in a good way) lyrics and heart-felt delivery. Your voice suits this kind of thing. Atmospheric, clever backing as well. I wonder if your daughter has heard it yet...

 

It could be a double A-side with my song 'Superdad' ;)

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Glad you like it, Mark. It is pretty straightforward. But it's all your fault.. Your."Only After You" was the first ballad I'd done, and I was surprised that it turned out okay...so now I figure it's acceptable for me to do things that are less than 100 BPM :)

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