TGF Do Something Challenge Week 2!!

[JT]

 

[la szum]

Here is the track:



My left laptop speaker is dead.
That sounded kinda weird.

Love those changes around :40 to :50. So tight. And they delay riding underneath throughout your
track is pure ear candy! Eager to hear more.

 

[la szum]

I liked it. In fact I sat there playing with it for an hour, finding every chord and voicing I could think of that worked with it. Iow, it just raised my understanding of guitar theory quite a bit!

That's awesome, Tom. I rarely ever play in a majour key (Skynyrd?Allman Brothers Band?) . My son kept saying
it wasn't "heavy" enough.

I did do a 6 month fill in stint with a Reggae/Jam Band a few years ago over a Summer festival
season, and they only ever played in majour keys. It was all "Let's get baked and play upbeat, happy
tunes while the Hippie Chicks twirl around in their Sun Dresses and Birkenstocks with their eyes
closed."

Hippie Chicks are cool, but they all smell like Patchouli for some reason.

 

[TSJMajesty]

That's awesome, Tom. I rarely ever play in a majour key (Skynyrd?Allman Brothers Band?) . My son kept saying
it wasn't "heavy" enough.

Where I'm still confused, is how you stay in that same relative key, but give it a different modal flavor, or flavour, as you'd call it. Lol

I tried playing in D Dorian...

Edit- guess I need to go back and watch some more Jake Lizzio videos.

 

[DrewJD82]

That's awesome, Tom. I rarely ever play in a majour key (Skynyrd?Allman Brothers Band?) . My son kept saying
it wasn't "heavy" enough.

I did do a 6 month fill in stint with a Reggae/Jam Band a few years ago over a Summer festival
season, and they only ever played in majour keys. It was all "Let's get baked and play upbeat, happy
tunes while the Hippie Chicks twirl around in their Sun Dresses and Birkenstocks with their eyes
closed."

Hippie Chicks are cool, but they all smell like Patchouli for some reason.

I read that quick and thought it said Petrucci and I automatically thought of a bunch of hippie chicks smelling liked beard balm.

 

[la szum]

Where I'm still confused, is how you stay in that same relative key, but give it a different modal flavor, or flavour, as you'd call it. Lol

I tried playing in D Dorian...

Edit- guess I need to go back and watch some more Jake Lizzio videos.

D Dorian has the minor 3rd (F) and you really kind of need the maj 3rd (F#).

And the C# over A Maj is needed to work over the A chord, whereas D Dorian has the flatted 7th
and not the straight 7th (C).

B minor scale (Aeolian) would work as that is the relative minor of D maj.

My apologies if this just confused matters.

 

[TSJMajesty]

D Dorian has the minor 3rd (F) and you really kind of need the maj 3rd (F#).

And the C# over A Maj is needed to work over the A chord, whereas D Dorian has the flatted 7th
and not the straight 7th (C).

B minor scale (Aeolian) would work as that is the relative minor of D maj.

My apologies if this just confused matters.

I guess I'm still thinking in terms of soloing in one key, in this case C major/D Dorian, etc., since all your chords were diatonic to that key: C G Am F Em, iirc.
Probably still limiting myself thinking about that way, as opposed to say, moving the notes to work with the individual chords, as they go by.

 

[DrewJD82]

aka House Slop

Gear:
91' Ibanez RG570
Apollo Twin Duo mk2 Thunderbolt
Logic Drummer
a couple of Logic loops
Helix Native--Placater-2 guitar tracks both independent of each other. One with Native's Boctaver . One without.
Valhalla Supermassive

I was finally able to redo the clip to get it to stop properly. I added an Easter egg this time around for @metropolis_4 for being such a good sport after hanging in there through the extended silence at the end of the initial version that I had posted earlier.

I realized when getting a head count I totally missed this, my bad! This is f*cking awesome, man! Back in the day when Satch put out Crystal Planet, in interviews he was saying that it was had more electronic elements than he previously used and this song is pretty much what I had in my mind before hearing the album. That octaver sound is gnarly in a badass way. Really cool stuff, man!

 

[mbenigni]

Ok, I'm birthing this one before I get sick of it, I'm pretty much out of time to f*ck with it anymore, anyway. I put a lot of time into this one thanks to having last Monday off. Big Ryche influence on this one. Tricky getting the mix right, it definitely needs some work but there's a lot of f*cking tracks in this. It's not really 9 mins long, I gotta chop the end off.

Guitars-
Distorted- Orville w/ Aldrich pickup
Clean- Gilmour Strat
12-string Johnson C-POS model
Acoustic- Breedlove (can't remember the model name)

AxeFX handled all the amp stuff, the acoustics were recorded with a 57. The distorted guitars are quad tracked and all the acoustic stuff is doubled. Distorted guitars are panned hard left and right and what I dig about it the most is that it sounds like they're right up the middle, as if it's one giant guitar. You can hear every little f*ck up, too. Used a Splawn Nitro and Quickrod then Leon's GoT Mark IV Filthy preset and another track of JPIIC+. Lead is a JPIIC+ using a Cantrell wah block.

Drums are SD3 and could be a little louder in the mix. Any reverb you hear on the kit is from Abbey Road Plates.

Strings/Choir/Synths are all East West's Opus with multiple libraries loaded in. That plug-in saves so much time when layering pads/strings, I can just jump from library to library in a click. I just use the same MIDI notes and bounce each string/voice section down, same with the synth sounds. There's about 20 tracks of just synths/voices.

My ears need a break for a bit then I'll catch up the newer submissions.

THIS. IS. AMAZING.

- Diary of a Madman/ Mr. Crowley, right out of the gates.
- Queesnryche, yes.
- The bone dry heavy passages: Pantera, maybe even an early Clutch vibe?
- That really quiet 2 note figure at ~4:20 reminds me of the "Iommi" solo album.

And then plenty of "your own thing", of course. Man, this just sounds so good.

How did you get that clean sound beginning at 2:20?? Is that your 12 string?

 

[mbenigni]

Very cool.

A RHCP vibe!!! I could hear Anthony Kiedis singing over top of that any day.

For some reason I thought of Ringo Starr. :) Track sounds great.

 

[DrewJD82]

THIS. IS. AMAZING.

- Diary of a Madman/ Mr. Crowley, right out of the gates.
- Queesnryche, yes.
- The bone dry heavy passages: Pantera, maybe even an early Clutch vibe?
- That really quiet 2 note figure at ~4:20 reminds me of the "Iommi" solo album.

And then plenty of "your own thing", of course. Man, this just sounds so good.

How did you get that clean sound beginning at 2:20?? Is that your 12 string?

Thanks, man!

That’s actually just a 6-string and 12-string acoustic, 4 tracks total panned hard l/r. There *IS* a clean guitar part with a ton of delay/verb on it playing the same part, but I realized when making the huge post about recording workflow in another thread that I had the clean track sent to a bus I deleted, so it’s not actually audible in the mix in that version. And the distorted guitars have 3 tracks in the right speaker and 1 in the left….DOH!

And that 12-string sounds and plays like a pile of ass, the only reason it sounds decent at all is because I slapped Waves CLA-Unplugged on it and it does the ‘sound good effect‘

 

[mbenigni]

Thanks, man!

That’s actually just a 6-string and 12-string acoustic, 4 tracks total panned hard l/r. There *IS* a clean guitar part with a ton of delay/verb on it playing the same part, but I realized when making the huge post about recording workflow in another thread that I had the clean track sent to a bus I deleted, so it’s not actually audible in the mix in that version. And the distorted guitars have 3 tracks in the right speaker and 1 in the left….DOH!

And that 12-string sounds and plays like a pile of ass, the only reason it sounds decent at all is because I slapped Waves CLA-Unplugged on it and it does the ‘sound good effect‘

"JUST"

 

[DrewJD82]

"JUST"

Hahahah well in actuality, it took maybe 10 minutes to get those parts down and even less time to mix. I suppose that negates the years of work that came prior in learning what will make them sound how I want them to, but the actual physical part of it only took about 10 minutes.

But that’s also why workflows are important and while this can all be daunting at the start, once you have a workflow down and experience with certain instruments, IE “OK, last time I recorded an acoustic it came out how I wanted, so I’ll just repeat that process, record it, add the plug-in, done” but yeah, not knowing that ahead of time is basically shooting in the dark. The hardest part was mic’ing it and getting a semi-decent sound into the computer. On an acoustic song I wrote a while back I spent a good 4 hours just trying mic positions and eventually found that having it point dead square in the middle of the neck around the 15th fret area is where a 57 in a sh*tty room sounds best.

 

[la szum]

I guess I'm still thinking in terms of soloing in one key, in this case C major/D Dorian, etc., since all your chords were diatonic to that key: C G Am F Em, iirc.
Probably still limiting myself thinking about that way, as opposed to say, moving the notes to work with the individual chords, as they go by.

It's actually D Maj not C. F won't fit. Need that F# over D Maj and the C# over A Maj chord.

 

[la szum]

Hahahah well in actuality, it took maybe 10 minutes to get those parts down and even less time to mix. I suppose that negates the years of work that came prior in learning what will make them sound how I want them to, but the actual physical part of it only took about 10 minutes.

But that’s also why workflows are important and while this can all be daunting at the start, once you have a workflow down and experience with certain instruments, IE “OK, last time I recorded an acoustic it came out how I wanted, so I’ll just repeat that process, record it, add the plug-in, done” but yeah, not knowing that ahead of time is basically shooting in the dark. The hardest part was mic’ing it and getting a semi-decent sound into the computer. On an acoustic song I wrote a while back I spent a good 4 hours just trying mic positions and eventually found that having it point dead square in the middle of the neck around the 15th fret area is where a 57 in a sh*tty room sounds best.

You living in the house, Drew. A bunch of us still putting markers where we "think" we might want our foundation
to be.

There is so much to learn. It can be overwhelming, because you might wonder if you are learning the right things
in the right way, or will I have to unlearn all the things which I spent 10 hours last week futzing about with.

It all reminds me of what my Grandpa used to say when I was young and he would ask, "What is the best time to
plant a tree?"

"25 years ago," he would say.

Not gonna let another year pass. Getting them fuckers in the ground now! :lol

 

[fretworn]

Well, said La szum…

“Get busy living, or get busy dyin’.”

 

[DrewJD82]

You living in the house, Drew. A bunch of us still putting markers where we "think" we might want our foundation
to be.

There is so much to learn. It can be overwhelming, because you might wonder if you are learning the right things
in the right way, or will I have to unlearn all the things which I spent 10 hours last week futzing about with.

It all reminds me of what my Grandpa used to say when I was young and he would ask, "What is the best time to
plant a tree?"

"25 years ago," he would say.

Not gonna let another year pass. Getting them *****ers in the ground now! :lol

Oh for sure, that’s exactly why I added the -

I suppose that negates the years of work that came prior in learning what will make them sound how I want them to

It’s just like the playing abilities thing, none of it came naturally for me, it was just lots of time and effort. And it can absolutely be overwhelming, I used to get so uptight about gain staging and all these words I’d hear in tutorials on forums I just didn’t understand and then seeing all this sh*t about Lufs and blah…I stopped giving a sh*t and just focused on making something sound as good in my truck as it did in my studio, without trying to make everything hit some number on a meter because someone else’s did. That was when I started actually producing mixes I was happy with.

As cliched as it is, it’s 100% true; if it sounds good, it IS good. The sheer amount of tutorials that exist for DAWs or “How to get the best metal tone” will convince you that you don’t have the abilities/knowledge and there can be some useful information in them, but like I said above, I started producing decent mixes when I stopped paying attention to it all and just focused on what I was doing.

But yeah, there’s a big psychological thing to push past/ignore with recording. Playing a live show you have the benefit of everyone forgetting WTF ya did at the show and recordings can just be a permanent reminder of something you didn’t do what you wanted to with. Or what happens to me; I’ll start writing a song as around the 3/4’s finished mark the voice in my head says “There’s no guitar pyrotechnics, there’s no crazy vocal abilities displayed, this is too simple and not showing off everything I’m capable of and what if people think this is all I can do?” and I have to shut that voice up, the only real answer is to either write 25 minute prog that shamessly displays every lick/trick I know, or just stop giving a sh*t and do whatever my brain puts forward.

 

[TSJMajesty]

It's actually D Maj not C. F won't fit. Need that F# over D Maj and the C# over A Maj chord.

I just played along with it. It's: C G Am F, then you have an Em F. That's all key of C.
Maybe your chord names are different b/c you're in a different tuning?

 

[la szum]

You were right all along, Tom. I mind fucked myself forgetting I had the guitar tuned to C-G-C-F-A-D.



My bad!