Is anyone interested in laying down some leads? or Collaberating?

[Yodelgoat]

Because of the integration of the two drum modules, the kits on both are highly modified, so as to integrate them. I had to reassign some basic sounds like the Kick and Hihat on the TD11 to non-typical sounds. - Yes, typical drum sounds -Hi toms and splash/Crash/pang cymbals, but not what is typically assigned to those numbers.

[Yodelgoat]

OK
KBass is uploaded,
KDrums is uploaded

Funny, it only allowed 160kb sample on the mono bass track. It should still be Okay.

The drums apparently have reverb on them - I must have added that accidentally on one of my sub mixes. Its not real heavy.

Listening to the drums, I guess I just dont have a very critical ear, It sounds OK to me - as far as the sounds go. But then I have probably lost some hearing due to age. I dont have a lot of damage due to studio work, because I tend to listen at very low SPL's. In the 80's our stage was probably louder than it needed to be, but in the 90's, we could carry on a normal conversation on stage without any problem, we probably had one of the quietest stages around. My bass and vocal monitor was 2 4" speakers. Probably a blistering 70db max. No big thundering bass. I got the lows off of the backside of the mains The drums were digital, the cymbals weren't but they were behind plexiglass most of the time, we played bigger stages which meant I didnt have to sit with a hihat blasting 2 feet from my head. Most nights I experienced no ear fatigue at all. We were always conscious of how loud the stage volume was. We quieter on stage, the better the sound out front. I did play 3-6 nights a year between the ages of 45 and 50.

Download and I'll get it off soundcloud. I am thinking I'll leave the full version out so anyone "catching up" on the thread can have some idea of what we're discussing.... I'll even upgrade the mp3 from 128 to something a little more... presentable.

Bruce I noticed you have the same High spirits flute that I have, I also have the really big one of theirs. I enjoy playing them, though the music you can produce is somewhat limited... Really fun and relaxing instruments, that sound amazing. I also play a regular flute in addition to my Tenor Sax.

[Koreabruce]

Got 'em both - thanks again!

[Yodelgoat]

I have been looking into Superior drummer 3... are you going to try to use the "MIDI" extractor on the stereo mix of drums? If it works as well as they say it does (it always does right?), it may be a quicker way of getting those drum sound improvements you are looking for. If you try it, let me know how it works. I think I have the MIDI note number thing figured out. I have yet to re-assign the Note numbers on the TD11, but I have figured it out - pretty easy, in actuality. I'd like to see how well the MIDI generator works. That could save an enormous amount of time. I havent gone to get the MIDI cables yet to hook up the MIDI and record. I need to string some wires around the studio and that will take some time. I hate moving stuff around, and my studio is pretty cluttered at the moment.

By the way, what is the price for the v3 upgrade versus non-upgrade?

[Koreabruce]

The upgrade to V3.0 is still $222.00 (179 EURO). A little out of my very tight budget, but something to ponder in the not-too-distant future. Mind you, I haven't even begun to get below the surface of 2.0!

MIDI extractor? Hmmm... 2.0 doesn't have that feature, which seems to be an integration of their Drumtracker. Smart idea...

I spent some time yesterday lining up the bass and drums that you sent me. For the most part, what I did was move the bass around to line it up more precisely with the kick drum. That makes a difference! That way, I can jam with the whole rhythm track... or just have the drums going on (which is what I'm used to doing).
In the meantime, I'll keep trying to get the Drumtracker to work if possible. It might be easier now that the bass is separate.

[Yodelgoat]

FYI - I spent a few hours in the studio today laying down scratch vocal tracks on a different "epic" - I am not sure what to think of it, but I always have to put vocals down and then listen to them for a few weeks changing them and re-engineering the parts - Its such a convenience, and I wonder how much better some artists albums would be if they took time to listen and alter things after they have it done . It never sounds on tape like it does in my head. tonight is sounding really good, but Tomorrow I may hear nothing but crap.

[Koreabruce]

Ha! I totally know where that sentiment is coming from. What sounds fab during one evening can leave me crying the next day.

Evermore is a GREAT song. I grow more impressed with it each day. I did a few remixes to take with me on hikes so I can get ideas about guitar solos: guitars-only, guitars+drums, guitars +bass+drums, and then a mix minus the guitars with the keys more prominently featured. You're a pretty fine keyboardist! I was rocking out on your organ playing in particular. As for the piano, I think it actually works well in the parts where you're using block chords to play a rhythm (where the sax solo is, and after that). It's the little cadenzas at the ends of some phrases that seem unnecessary (or would work better played on the organ). Anyway... these are of course just my opinions. You don't have to agree with any of it, obviously. It's your song!

I have to jump on every opportunity for recording loud-ish guitars when my wife goes out to meet one of her friends, as she did this afternoon. I started by laying down replacement rhythm guitar tracks for the first section electric guitars, i.e. right after the acoustic intro. Mic'd up a small amp and got a pretty usable facsimile of the sound you'd mentioned (Hell's Bells meets 2112). I had to play it quite a few times to get it right (hands were cold!), but when listening back to the layers I'd built up, I thought the tone of it was shaping up pretty well. Today that is.

For now, I'm not using any effects though I'll do a few passes with some delay on the next recording day for comparison. FYI, you used a Strat on those electric parts, which means single-coil pickups, and I'm using a 335-type guitar with humbuckers, so it's a different sound for certain. If things go as planned in the next few days, I'll do a quick mix of one small section of the song and post it for you to hear.

Finally, could I get the lyrics to Evermore? I can't quite make out what all of them are, especially since the harmony vocals are overlapping in a number of places. Pretty impressive stuff, too, I might add. How long did it take you to conceive and then record all of those? That whole vocal track is surprisingly intricate.

[Yodelgoat]

The vocals are still in flux, although many of them will stick. I arraigned the more complex vocals mostly after already putting something down, then listening and coming up with counter melodies after the main part is down, so I dont think I ever would have had some of those parts without the main vocals first and then listening and saying: "Can this fit?" I am hoping the final words and parts will be similar, yet something potentially stellar. Achieving a balance, where the thing rocks like it should, plus great vocal parts and words... That would be an achievement I could only dream of. I try to take my words to places that cut through the normal life and get down to how we really think. So I am talking to and about the "real" person inside your head, not the one we present in public. I dont think I have succeeded yet, but I try to get into my own head and make me think about things I might never have thought before, or have thought and then shut it down because it's stupid. I am a eschatological thinker, so that's how I write lyrics. It's intended for me, personally - not really for others. I have been told that Contra Mantra has something of that kind of quality. With my personal "discovery of Quantum physics, years back, there's a lifetime to think about in all that weirdness...I know that 10 years from now, I will likely be the only person listening to this song, so it needs to mean something to me. Does that make sense?

I often state an opinion without stating who it is making the statement. This is like life itself. You do not get to see the motives behind the things people say - there are places where a person I would say, represents "a darkness" says something that sounds cool, but depending on how you think, you may decide whether its right or wrong. "The partisan, forever part of me" - represents a person who sees everything through the eyes of a partisan. Is that something you can agree with? No judgement, just a thought about why someone would say certain things...

I dont know if I even have a written copy of the current lyrics you are hearing, its a few iterations back from what I'm thinking right now. I can send you a current version, but it will likely change in a week.

[Yodelgoat]

Ha! I totally know where that sentiment is coming from. What sounds fab during one evening can leave me crying the next day.

Evermore is a GREAT song. I grow more impressed with it each day....

I have to jump on every opportunity for recording loud-ish guitars when my wife goes out to meet one of her friends, as she did this afternoon. I started by laying down replacement rhythm guitar tracks for the first section electric guitars, i.e. right after the acoustic intro. Mic'd up a small amp and got a pretty usable facsimile of the sound you'd mentioned (Hell's Bells meets 2112). I had to play it quite a few times to get it right (hands were cold!), but when listening back to the layers I'd built up, I thought the tone of it was shaping up pretty well. Today that is.

For now, I'm not using any effects though I'll do a few passes with some delay on the next recording day for comparison. FYI, you used a Strat on those electric parts, which means single-coil pickups, and I'm using a 335-type guitar with humbuckers, so it's a different sound for certain. If things go as planned in the next few days, I'll do a quick mix of one small section of the song and post it for you to hear.

Thank you for enjoying Evermore. I was not sure at all that anyone would "get it"

I would be so happy to get a hard rocking guitar, that has that "melody" in the guitar part. I think its as good a riff as I have ever written. It deserves a proper tone. I dont know how anyone could get it without using some kind of echo. Feel free to make it as massive as you can. I just hear it differently in my head than I have recorded it. It's not a "fuzz box" sound, its like a thousand cranked Marshalls pumped through a set of headphones, making your ears bleed...

Really excited to hear what you've got!

[Koreabruce]

I went back and listened to what I recorded earlier. The tone was very promising, as was the idea of layering it (there were 8 layers!)... but my cold hands did not make good music! I'll re-track it again now that I know what to expect and have played those parts a few times. I like how you divided up the melodic line into separate parts. I think I'll do that too next time - easier to play that way.

The Stratocaster sound has one advantage in a song like "Evermore:" that single-coil sound is more likely to stand out in a dense mix than a humbucker sound would. We'll make it work somehow though.

I'm enjoying your words. Typically I'm very slow to pick up on lyrics as I'm usually captivated by what the MUSIC does to me first. Now that I've been paying attention to the lyrics, I can see that we have a similar outlook on life... even though I've not gone down the rabbit hole of quantum physics (yet).

Just out of curiosity, how long was this song in the making? I imagine such an epic took quite a while. Tony Banks once said that "One for the Vine" took him about 9 months to complete. On the other hand, he also said that "Afterglow" was written in the time it took him to play the song through.

[Yodelgoat]

Well, I have been working on it off and on for at least 5 years. Some of the movements have been in my head since 2005, Ideas that never made it on to Contra Mantra. There are no borders on this kind of songwriting, because it never really has to be done. I have just taken most of it to the point where I dont have any improvements to add myself. You've kind of breathed some new light into it, just by spending time with it and making observations. Thank you for that - (without adding a single note!)

Like I say, in just a year or so, it's almost a sure thing no one else will be listening to this but me. It has to be right to the "me" out there in a couple years, or its likely to go back in the hopper to be churned out as something else. I do like "rototilling" musical ideas and work them into something different. it's what seems natural to me. I think overall, that music would benefit from the idea of taking something that actually is great and re-using the musical ideas and present them as something else that may be interesting or maybe even better. I just recently listened to the opening of thick as a brick, and came up with something, while not particularly like it, kind of similar in feel, and its likely the start of something that echoes of that incredible song. Not something anyone would likely say "Hey, that's a TAAB rip off!" Since I have no plans to release it - what is the harm? It's rototilling.... It's only a single 90 second part that will likely find itself into another 20 minute "epuke" (epic). I will eventually have something else to listen to. Its the process of creating music that I love, not having a CD to sell. That part of creating music kind of sucks - at least for me.

Hmm since I am "Yodelgoat" (a term my 15 year old daughter used once to describe my voice to her friends when she thought I couldn't hear her), maybe I should use the term "cud" to describe this style of music. rather than rototilling. pre -chewed, only partially digested musical ideas... Sounds like a concept to me...

Do you hear other sounds/influences in Evermore? Just curious.

Oh hey, can I get you some Rick Derringer gloves for your hands? - Is it really that cold in Korea? It's like on the same latitude as Los Angeles for cryin out loud!

[eporter66]

Love that you guys are working on this together. Keep it going. I'm getting back into it, and it's a blast. It's hard to find those blocks of time you need to really do a good job. I always end up putting down scratch tracks of my ideas, and never get around to doing them right.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Koreabruce]

Rick Derringer gloves... now there's an idea!My room is a little cold, but I've always had poor circulation in my hands and feet, so they tend to get cold quickly. Temps here haven't been above freezing very much in the past couple of months except for very recently. Averages are in the mid-20's Fahrenheit. It can get down into single digits at night. (Summers are hot and very humid, too.)

Influences I hear in Evermore:

Vocal harmonies: Journey, Yes, Queen, and Moon Safari
Lead Vocals: Sammy Hagar, Paul Stanley, Roger Taylor, and a little Roy Orbison in some of the quieter bits
Guitars: Rush, Yes
Bass: Rush, Yes
Drums: Rush...
Keys: ELP in the livelier moments

Your pre-chewed bits are good for my own creativity. Keep the cud coming!

[Yodelgoat]

Love that you guys are working on this together. Keep it going. I'm getting back into it, and it's a blast. It's hard to find those blocks of time you need to really do a good job. I always end up putting down scratch tracks of my ideas, and never get around to doing them right.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Hey thank you! I am hoping some people are enjoying reading about this. I certainly would be interested reading about any other collabs between others myself. Its just become a lot more fun. I kind of had all this stuff under wraps for over a decade, because I felt like I needed to own it after I kind of lost control of Contra Mantra(it came back though!). Contra Mantra was going to be a double CD, but I wound up releasing it as a single. Eventually, I'll finish up the disk 2 of Contra Mantra, but it'll once again be something just for the fun of it.

I understand about scratch tracks - It's almost a waist of time, but it's a necessary step - at least for me!

[Yodelgoat]

Rick Derringer gloves... now there's an idea!My room is a little cold, but I've always had poor circulation in my hands and feet, so they tend to get cold quickly. Temps here haven't been above freezing very much in the past couple of months except for very recently. Averages are in the mid-20's Fahrenheit. It can get down into single digits at night.

Wow, that's cold! I had no idea the weather was that cold. - In spite of all those MASH episodes I've seen...

Can I send you a space heater then?

[Plasmatopia]

It can get down into single digits at night.

Only one finger still working? Now that's cold!

[Koreabruce]

Wow, that's cold! I had no idea the weather was that cold. - In spite of all those MASH episodes I've seen...

But those were all filmed in California.

[Koreabruce]

Only one finger still working? Now that's cold!

I only play middle-finger barre chords when that happens

[Yodelgoat]

But those were all filmed in California.

Yeah, But I knew it was probably 85 degrees out when Hawkeye was shivering in his cot... It just doesn't seem right to get that cold at that latitude. Of course why would they host the winter games if it was more like socal. Is there a serious altitude in Korea? How do they explain the cold?

[Plasmatopia]

I only play middle-finger barre chords when that happens

Get creative with the open tunings.

[Koreabruce]

Yeah, But I knew it was probably 85 degrees out when Hawkeye was shivering in his cot... It just doesn't seem right to get that cold at that latitude. Of course why would they host the winter games if it was more like socal. Is there a serious altitude in Korea? How do they explain the cold?

No, the altitude is not high, but there are prevailing winter winds that originate in Siberia, hence the cold weather. This site explains it, and it even uses the city of Chuncheon where I live as an example:

"Winter, from late November to mid-March, is cold, especially in the north and in the interior, where the average temperatures are below freezing (0 °C or 32 °F), while it’s milder, but still with night frosts, along the southern coast. The sun often shines, and sometimes snow can fall, but it’s relatively rare and not abundant. A cold and dry wind often blows from the continent, sometimes full of dust. Because of the greater exposure to cold winds of Siberian origin, at a given latitude the winter is colder on the west coast than on the east coast. The average January temperature exceeds 0 degrees Celsius (32 °F) only on the southern coast, while on the east coast it's around freezing even in the north. The interior is obviously colder than the coastal areas, in fact in the north-central inland area the average temperature in January is around -4 °C (25 °F), as we can see from the temperatures of Chuncheon."

This year it's been a little colder than average, and the average summer temps in recent years have increased. It was in the 90's F during much of July and August in the past three years, and that's with very high humidity levels, too.

Chuncheon, South Korea.jpg

[Yodelgoat]

I got a call from my Sweetwater rep, and I gave him a ton of questions about Superior drummer 3 - He is going to look into all my questions, because now, thanks to you guys, I think the drums could be improved.

I have been working on vocals for another song for the past few days so I can get that posted - I am not going to post without at least some scratch vocals because no one can hear potential in a song without at least some of the vocal ideas there. This song has my acoustic drumming on it, It also has separate snare and kick tracks, so getting Superior drummer to work with it may be easier than from a mixed stereo track. Anyway I am probably a week away from having that ready to let you hear it - warts and all. I'm curious to hear what you say about the acoustic drums. I was not satisfied with the sound after 3+ years trying to mic it. Hence the Electronics.

We'll see....

[Crawford Glissadevil]

It does my heart good to see you guys collaborate. May your muses invigorate and intoxicate your grooves.

[Koreabruce]

Okay... after many months, I finally got the time to lay down a few guitar tracks to Yodelgoat's "Evermore." The reason for the delay was that my mom suddenly passed away at the beginning of May. That was admittedly a bit hard; I really miss my mom, who was a very active person right til the end. Still, we all have to face the eventual demise of our parents. At the time, I ended up going back to the Ohio for the memorial service and then again from July-August to do assorted maintenance-type things on the house. Obviously, my creative endeavors had to take a back seat for a while...

However, I recently decided to dive into this again. So far, I've re-done the existing rhythm guitar parts for the first 6:38 of this 23+ minute-long epic. I tried to be as faithful as possible to Jim's original guitar parts, which I rendered on four different guitars: a Seagull 6-string acoustic, a Cort Source (Korean ES 335 copy), a Danelectro DC59 reissue, and an Epiphone Gibson Les Paul electric 12-string. I used IK Multimedia's AmpliTube 4 for amplification as well as mic'ing up a little Roland Microcube, of all things - which by the way sounds surprisingly good! I used that on the Cort for the electric guitar parts up to around 4:03. The rest is with AmpliTube 4 as well as putting my Epiphone 12-string through my trusty old Rockman Model IIB in the Clean 1 setting.

This file is a rough mix of my replacement guitar parts plus all the other parts Jim had on his original demo including his impressive multilayered vocals, very cool driving bass, great keys, and highly energetic drums. The only remaining guitar part of Jim's left here is the repeating harmonics bit that bridges the 2nd and 3rd main sections. I was going to add that today but wanted to first get this up so others can hear it. I also spent a bit of time closely aligning the bass guitar with the kick drum to make the rhythm track really tight. Jim I think eventually intends to re-do the e-drums using Superior Drummer 3. And so the work continues... https://www.dropbox.com/s/e23ntojhm0...es%29.mp3?dl=0

Here's a link to a mix of just the drums, bass, and guitars: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbsggsxydi...rs%29.mp3?dl=0

[aith01]

Really sorry to hear that about your mom, Bruce.