Share Your Music (it probably sucks but that’s not why we do it)

[sidis 9822]

uvalde really got to me.  two elementary school daughters and wife is a specialist at an elementary school.  haven't been able to shake it since it happened and i think about it constantly every single day.  part of processing seems to have led me to this.  there are certainly some stylistic cliches throughout for the type of music but happy with where this first cut at it stands.

 

[Goredho 17394]

1 minute ago, sidis said:

uvalde really got to me.  two elementary school daughters and wife is a specialist at an elementary school.  haven't been able to shake it since it happened and i think about it constantly every single day.  part of processing seems to have led me to this.  there are certainly some stylistic cliches throughout for the type of music but happy with where this first cut at it stands.

 

Gonna have to listen later.

[Goredho 17394]

5 hours ago, sidis said:

uvalde really got to me.  two elementary school daughters and wife is a specialist at an elementary school.  haven't been able to shake it since it happened and i think about it constantly every single day.  part of processing seems to have led me to this.  there are certainly some stylistic cliches throughout for the type of music but happy with where this first cut at it stands.

 

Strong and moving lament.  It is very heavy and fatalistic, with no ray of hope for the listener.  That is probably all too true with regards to what you are feeling, what was experienced by the victims, and the possibility for meaningful change that might prevent such events from occurring.

[sidis 9822]

58 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Strong and moving lament.  It is very heavy and fatalistic, with no ray of hope for the listener.  That is probably all too true with regards to what you are feeling, what was experienced by the victims, and the possibility for meaningful change that might prevent such events from occurring.

Appreciate the feedback goredho. You’re right on with the fatalistic sense of no hope. At the end when everything is at its loudest, I originally wrote it so that all the harmonies would come together and resolve very beautifully to an A minor/E major lush chord phrase. I consciously decided to not resolve it quite so nicely and instead, leave some unease/dissonance. 

the epilogue is similar. There are 19 solo piano chords for obvious reasons. The lack of a twentieth bar is extremely unpleasant to the ear. It sounds like something ended it prematurely…

[Goredho 17394]

On 6/4/2022 at 9:31 AM, Goredho said:

A new thing I am working on.  Still kind of arranging, but you'll get the idea.  Not sure if I am going to keep this sparse, or if I am going to flesh it out with a lot of additional instrumentation.  There will likely be at least a melody line going on with this.
 

An elaboration on the intro bit, using a looper so I could play some melody/lead lines in a baroquish style.  So it might be a single accompaniment track with a lead/melody on top, or I might bring in bass, drums, keyboards, etc... at least at the end when it gets to be sort of heavy with the strummed chords and droning filter going on. Not sure which way to go.  Anyone got thoughts?
 

 

 

On 6/18/2022 at 6:18 PM, Goredho said:

At @sidis suggestion, I added a change up in this piece and I like the arrangement I got.  Working up to laying tracks.  Here’s a practice run through the solo that will be over the change up.  Ignore my fucking bald spot.
 

 

Wrapped up this track today, I think.  I might tweak the mix a bit, but no more major changes.  I bought a keyboard controller, and thus this has a lot more sonic variety than my previous compositions.  With all the new sounds, and inspiration from my son (he once was looking at stars and exclaimed "Those stars are mere light years away!") I went big with it and tried to make it an epic piece worthy of a journey to the stars.  I am really happy with this piece, and wish I'd have bought a keyboard like 11 guitars ago.
 

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Goredho

[Goredho 17394]

Published that last track on all the things through DistroKid.

 

[Goredho 17394]

I wrote this today for my mother.  She passed away a week ago today.  I don't know if it will take more of a form than this, but this is what I am feeling right now with her loss.
 

 

[G650 14229]

On 6/29/2022 at 1:58 PM, sidis said:

uvalde really got to me.

I don't think it was Uvalde in particular, but that was certainly a huge part of the general feeling of despair that has kind of awakened me from whatever torpor my music has been in. It's been a slow build since probably '16, but it seems like it's accelerated lately.

 

I want to say this thread is awesome. I love hearing every bit of creativity from all you guys. I don't know if I have ever posted about my background in music here as I've kind of been off doing other things for quite awhile. My father was a touring musician when I was born, and I was fortunate to come up in musical household. Played in school band, orchestra yada yada yada as a kid, and basically only graduated high school because my music classes helped prop up my GPA. But, funny enough, the one thing I didn't want to do was be a full time musician as I watched my dad burn out so bad he didn't pick up his bass for like a decade. I swore I'd never lose something so precious to me as my music. Well in the mother of all ironies I did just that not through burnout but ennui. I think I picked up my guitar 10 times in the past 6 or 7 years. I always listened to music, it would never leave me totally, it's way too much of my being, but making music seemed to just fade. There's been a slow build in the far back reaches of my mind though, and it's exploded back out finally. The two things that have pushed it back out are the state of the world, and my son getting old enough to start to learn. So I've been on a mission lately to get our old EP's updated and republished, and to write some new stuff. My old drummer is back in the fold, and it looks like the bass player as well, and other guitarist, who has been gone for almost 20 years may contribute remotely. I am definitely enough of a dinosaur to be absolutely wowed by how easy it is now with cloud storage and digital to make music with people across the world. Anyway, apologies for the novel. I dig hearing everyone.

[sidis 9822]

13 hours ago, Goredho said:

I wrote this today for my mother.  She passed away a week ago today.  I don't know if it will take more of a form than this, but this is what I am feeling right now with her loss.
 

 

Lovely tribute, goredho.  And again, my condolences on your mother's passing.

[jimmyjazz 45878]

17 hours ago, Goredho said:

I wrote this today for my mother.  She passed away a week ago today.  I don't know if it will take more of a form than this, but this is what I am feeling right now with her loss.

Nicely done.  I am sorry to hear about your mother.  Whether this remains as a signpost or whether it continues to evolve should not be of any concern right now.  It's perfect the way it is, and I could see it fleshed out with orchestration, too.

I will say that my first reaction to the reprise of the initial melody sparked the feeling that "things will get better", in no small part due to the small rhythmic change.  Sorta felt like the first sign of spring after a long hard winter.  That might not have been your intention, but that's what I took away.

[Goredho 17394]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Nicely done.  I am sorry to hear about your mother.  Whether this remains as a signpost or whether it continues to evolve should not be of any concern right now.  It's perfect the way it is, and I could see it fleshed out with orchestration, too.

I will say that my first reaction to the reprise of the initial melody sparked the feeling that "things will get better", in no small part due to the small rhythmic change.  Sorta felt like the first sign of spring after a long hard winter.  That might not have been your intention, but that's what I took away.

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words.  I think your interpretation is fine.  Who am I to judge someone’s reaction to a piece of music?

If I had an intent there (this kind of just gushed out of me), it was to come full circle and bring things back from grief, loss and the long goodbye to what endures beyond the boundary of death — the love I have for her, the memories of our time together, carrying on her example for my own children.  Death, as absolute as it is, cannot take away what still exists of my mother in my heart and mind.  In that sense, the reprise was meant to be “positive.”

In a way, deep grief is a long hard winter.  Spring comes when that has subsided and you are filled with the gratitude for the time you were fortunate to have with one you shared a deep love with.  I am not there yet.  The song is aspirational in regards to my personal experience.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Goredho

[AnotherUTFan 9727]

Here's some shitty punk rock we recorded back in March and just got back finally.

Listen to Dirty Years by Racer5 #np on #SoundCloud

I play guitar on the 1st and last track, and bass on the 2 muddle ones.

[Goredho 17394]

12 minutes ago, AnotherUTFan said:

Here's some shitty punk rock we recorded back in March and just got back finally.

Listen to Dirty Years by Racer5 #np on #SoundCloud

 

I play guitar on the 1st and last track, and bass on the 2 muddle ones.

 

Listened to the first two, will have to listen to the next two at lunch or after work.  I really dig it.  2nd song is my favorite.  I love the slow, brooding riff to start that sounds like someone edging toward a psychological cliff before they fucking floor it and zoom off.

[AnotherUTFan 9727]

Listened to the first two, will have to listen to the next two at lunch or after work.  I really dig it.  2nd song is my favorite.  I love the slow, brooding riff to start that sounds like someone edging toward a psychological cliff before they fucking floor it and zoom off.

We open with that one live and I'll go on stage and start playing those 3 bass notes super slow while the house music is still on and people are still outside smoking or whatnot, kinda acting like I'm just tuning or dialing in my amp something. Just dronie / monotonous for as long as it takes for anybody else to reach the stage. Then Andy starts doing the same on guitar, just making ugly ambient sounds and our singer will start saying stuff through the mic. Then we'll make eye contact at some point and Jo hits the ride and Rocky starts singing that somber line and people kinda realize we've started after they are already waist deep in it.

I stole the idea when I saw @Celery Man do a similar thing on guitar with his old band at the beginning of their show. Plus our drummer is a beginner, so it helps her come in easy.

[G650 14229]

Track No. 1 title gets a thumbs up from me.

[Celery Man 20929]

2 hours ago, AnotherUTFan said:

We open with that one live and I'll go on stage and start playing those 3 bass notes super slow while the house music is still on and people are still outside smoking or whatnot, kinda acting like I'm just tuning or dialing in my amp something. Just dronie / monotonous for as long as it takes for anybody else to reach the stage. Then Andy starts doing the same on guitar, just making ugly ambient sounds and our singer will start saying stuff through the mic. Then we'll make eye contact at some point and Jo hits the ride and Rocky starts singing that somber line and people kinda realize we've started after they are already waist deep in it.

I stole the idea when I saw @Celery Man do a similar thing on guitar with his old band at the beginning of their show. Plus our drummer is a beginner, so it helps her come in easy.

haha I was like "oh yeah that's a great way to start a show". Dig all the tunes AUTF, makes me want to start a new band.

I'm trying to remember what we used to do that with. It may have been several different songs but if I were to guess, it was this one and I would have been playing bass.... although at some point we stopped fucking around with the bass/guitar switching and I bet we did this with other songs. I always liked doing it with this one though - starts off with droning E (Eb actually) - my gallien krueger 400rbiii combo had a big square grate and I could jam the tuner head in so the amp was vibrating three Es on the bass. I could control the swell by rolling the volume on the bass, and would ride the little tuning mute button on the amp to make it jitter in and out. meanwhlile everyone else is tuning, setting up the pedals, then the drums start and we're in

 

man i really liked that song. that wasn't one of our more popular songs I don't think, but that is one of my favorite bass parts I ever wrote, and certainly to play. I loved the little 5 second bit of this studio video where I'm playing the bass track because that was a one take special. Ran through the song the first time, I think I had a couple of notes on parts I wanted to hit again and jim said "nah we got it" and I sat on the couch for 7 hours while we fucked with guitars and vocals.

 

[G650 14229]

10 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

haha I was like "oh yeah that's a great way to start a show". Dig all the tunes AUTF, makes me want to start a new band.

I'm trying to remember what we used to do that with. It may have been several different songs but if I were to guess, it was this one and I would have been playing bass.... although at some point we stopped fucking around with the bass/guitar switching and I bet we did this with other songs. I always liked doing it with this one though - starts off with droning E (Eb actually) - my gallien krueger 400rbiii combo had a big square grate and I could jam the tuner head in so the amp was vibrating three Es on the bass. I could control the swell by rolling the volume on the bass, and would ride the little tuning mute button on the amp to make it jitter in and out. meanwhlile everyone else is tuning, setting up the pedals, then the drums start and we're in

 

man i really liked that song. that wasn't one of our more popular songs I don't think, but that is one of my favorite bass parts I ever wrote, and certainly to play. I loved the little 5 second bit of this studio video where I'm playing the bass track because that was a one take special. Ran through the song the first time, I think I had a couple of notes on parts I wanted to hit again and jim said "nah we got it" and I sat on the couch for 7 hours while we fucked with guitars and vocals.

 

Sounds really good man. Where did you guys track this?

[Celery Man 20929]

I don't know if the studio has a name or is... still functioning, but that was Mike McCarthy and Trail of Dead's place. Near Amaya's Taco Village, which was key.

[G650 14229]

That made me nostalgic as hell. I went to troll through some pictures from yesteryear. Have some real oldies from circa 1999 or so.

 

 

 

 

 

[AnotherUTFan 9727]

haha I was like "oh yeah that's a great way to start a show". Dig all the tunes AUTF, makes me want to start a new band.
I'm trying to remember what we used to do that with. It may have been several different songs but if I were to guess, it was this one and I would have been playing bass.... although at some point we stopped fucking around with the bass/guitar switching and I bet we did this with other songs. I always liked doing it with this one though - starts off with droning E (Eb actually) - my gallien krueger 400rbiii combo had a big square grate and I could jam the tuner head in so the amp was vibrating three Es on the bass. I could control the swell by rolling the volume on the bass, and would ride the little tuning mute button on the amp to make it jitter in and out. meanwhlile everyone else is tuning, setting up the pedals, then the drums start and we're in
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man i really liked that song. that wasn't one of our more popular songs I don't think, but that is one of my favorite bass parts I ever wrote, and certainly to play. I loved the little 5 second bit of this studio video where I'm playing the bass track because that was a one take special. Ran through the song the first time, I think I had a couple of notes on parts I wanted to hit again and jim said "nah we got it" and I sat on the couch for 7 hours while we fucked with guitars and vocals.
 

I remember it was on guitar because I saw your Matchless on stage, so positioned myself over there. You all came out and you were 1st and just started strumming some chord like you were doing a little sound check, but it turned out to be an intro when everybody else jumped in. What we do is different and goes on a lot longer, but the idea is the same.

I also remember that I drove about an hour and a half to that show through the pouring rain, white knuckling it through the Santa Cruz mountains and smoked a joint to calm down when I got there, my memory may be fuzzy.

Thats the only time I met CM face to face. He was on tour so long he barely knew where he was. We were in Santa Cruz and he seemed to be surprized that it was that near San Francisco.

/csb

Ill listen to the track when I get to some speakers. I hate phone speakers.

[G650 14229]

Worlds longest hyperlink

[ohchaucer 1443]

This thread kicks all kinds of ass. Keep it coming as I love hearing all of y’all’s stuff.

Been working with a handful of guys off and on in Austin for years and, after I moved away a few years ago to NYC, I will occasionally come down a play or do a show together.

I would love to know from anyone who’s working with band mates etc remotely how you’re doing it. What’s been the best way to share work, collaborate, what tech or platforms, etc? It’s easy to share and listen individually but sometimes just feels like a bunch of ping pong back and forth.

Would love to up my game. (I’m 90% drums in these collaborations with a little keys mixed in).

[G650 14229]

1 hour ago, ohchaucer said:

This thread kicks all kinds of ass. Keep it coming as I love hearing all of y’all’s stuff.

Been working with a handful of guys off and on in Austin for years and, after I moved away a few years ago to NYC, I will occasionally come down a play or do a show together.

I would love to know from anyone who’s working with band mates etc remotely how you’re doing it. What’s been the best way to share work, collaborate, what tech or platforms, etc? It’s easy to share and listen individually but sometimes just feels like a bunch of ping pong back and forth.

Would love to up my game. (I’m 90% drums in these collaborations with a little keys mixed in).

Well I'm about 30 days into trying to setup a solid system so maybe we can be each other's support group

At the least I can live blog all the surely innumerable failures I'm getting ready to have as a warning to all.

[jimmyjazz 45878]

I'm about to start a cover band with a bunch of my HS buddies, spread across the US.  We're planning on using Garage Band (which I've never used, I might cheat and try to go with Reaper for my tracks) and pass around a USB microphone by mail as needed.  We'll see how it goes -- it has all the makings of a total disaster.

[ohchaucer 1443]

Alright I’m looking forward to updates. Maybe it deserves a new thread so this one stays focused on actual music.

I like garage band fine but it is terrible with my Roland drums as the interface. Although there could be some serious user error.

[Goredho 17394]

2 hours ago, ohchaucer said:

This thread kicks all kinds of ass. Keep it coming as I love hearing all of y’all’s stuff.

Been working with a handful of guys off and on in Austin for years and, after I moved away a few years ago to NYC, I will occasionally come down a play or do a show together.

I would love to know from anyone who’s working with band mates etc remotely how you’re doing it. What’s been the best way to share work, collaborate, what tech or platforms, etc? It’s easy to share and listen individually but sometimes just feels like a bunch of ping pong back and forth.

Would love to up my game. (I’m 90% drums in these collaborations with a little keys mixed in).

@sidis and I collaborate remotely.  The best thing we have arrived at:

1.  Use the same DAW (we use Logic but I assume this would work with others)

2.  Get a Dropbox account and have the project creator save the DAW project into a Dropbox folder

3.  Share the Dropbox folder with your collaborators so they can have the folder with DAW project on their local file system.

Once you do this, all your files that are part of your project get automatically backed up into the Dropbox cloud and synced down to your collaborators file system and vice versa.

This works great for capturing and sharing audio tracks, but you can have issues if you have a plug-in or software instrument you use on a track that your collaborators do not. Sidis has a crap ton invested in that stuff that I don’t have, so he generally has done the mixing and mastering on our collaborations while I’m contributing audio tracks for guitar and bass that aren’t using plugins and such.

Other alternatives:  You can export/bounce stereo tracks to audio file, email them and import, but the Dropbox auto sync has worked better with less time/overhead for us.  We also tried splice.com, but it was buggy as fuck.

Edit:  You also want to avoid working on the same things at the same time.  If two people are tweaking the same track, it’s unclear whose changes win.  Just make sure people are just working on tracks they “own” in the project, and have one person mess with the master track.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Goredho

[Goredho 17394]

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm about to start a cover band with a bunch of my HS buddies, spread across the US.  We're planning on using Garage Band (which I've never used, I might cheat and try to go with Reaper for my tracks) and pass around a USB microphone by mail as needed.  We'll see how it goes -- it has all the makings of a total disaster.

You might want to try the method I just described.

[ohchaucer 1443]

That’s awesome Goredho. And makes a lot of sense. I think the biggest challenge for me also involves how to record the drums into the daw to begin with. So it’s a separate problem I need to solve for. And generally for composing I suppose I can just use garage band or a simpler midi interface for holding basic grooves and beats but it totally hampers percussion creativity. You lose the “what if I play it like THIS” or “try it more like THAT” part of collaboration more so for the rhythm section than others.

But maybe that’s what flights to Austin are for once we make some progress on songs, structure/ideas, etc.

[Goredho 17394]

4 minutes ago, ohchaucer said:

That’s awesome Goredho. And makes a lot of sense. I think the biggest challenge for me also involves how to record the drums into the daw to begin with. So it’s a separate problem I need to solve for. And generally for composing I suppose I can just use garage band or a simpler midi interface for holding basic grooves and beats but it totally hampers percussion creativity. You lose the “what if I play it like THIS” or “try it more like THAT” part of collaboration more so for the rhythm section than others.

But maybe that’s what flights to Austin are for once we make some progress on songs, structure/ideas, etc.

Yeah, my next piece of gear is probably going to be an electric drum controller, and then I’ll just invest in some quality virtual kits/samples.  I don’t have the room/acoustics to mic a real kit.  Something like this Alesis Nitro Mesh budget kit.  No mics, no hassle.  You just record the midi input and have that trigger a virtual kit in your DAW.

My eyes glaze over as soon as mics are involved.
 

 

[jimmyjazz 45878]

3 hours ago, Goredho said:

Yeah, my next piece of gear is probably going to be an electric drum controller, and then I’ll just invest in some quality virtual kits/samples.  I don’t have the room/acoustics to mic a real kit.  Something like this Alesis Nitro Mesh budget kit.  No mics, no hassle.  You just record the midi input and have that trigger a virtual kit in your DAW.

My eyes glaze over as soon as mics are involved.

Yep, our drummer has an electronic kit and is committed to buying whatever sample set he might need to create something mildly realistic.  Any port in a storm.

[ohchaucer 1443]

I have a full Roland mesh kit and Roland TD17 module which should be more than up to the task. Like I said, probably user error that it isn’t recording into garage band properly. Will investigate and fiddle more.

[G650 14229]

9 hours ago, ohchaucer said:

That’s awesome Goredho. And makes a lot of sense. I think the biggest challenge for me also involves how to record the drums into the daw to begin with. So it’s a separate problem I need to solve for. And generally for composing I suppose I can just use garage band or a simpler midi interface for holding basic grooves and beats but it totally hampers percussion creativity. You lose the “what if I play it like THIS” or “try it more like THAT” part of collaboration more so for the rhythm section than others.

But maybe that’s what flights to Austin are for once we make some progress on songs, structure/ideas, etc.

 

Being remote as the drummer is going to be your biggest challenge. Over the years tons of the biggest albums have been tracked in different locations, but usually the rhythm section does the basic tracking together. But it's certainly not impossible. Our strategy right now is to have a zoom session every now and then during practice. We have the drummer, bassist and myself here and the singer/guitarist in New York.

 

@Goredhos dead on with the advice to make sure you use the same DAW as the rest of the gang. I've tried both ways and it's a pain to use different ones. We use Protools since everyone is very familiar with it, and a plus is there is so much supporting information out there. How you interface really depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I always track actual drums and not samples, but I absolutely don't begrudge anyone who doesn't want the headache. You can get Slade Trigger and go to town for sure. It's not necessarily hard to get good drum sounds, just time consuming. If you have a spot you can leave everything setup then that shifts the balance a bit towards live drums. I'm thankful my drummer has gone from 8 piece down to 6, I can tell you that.

 

If you want any recommendations on DA converters I'm certainly happy to give some options. I really like the Presonus Quantums but for your setup something like the Focusright Scarlett is probably more than enough. A lot really depends on how involved you want to get

[Goredho 17394]

5 minutes ago, ohchaucer said:

I have a full Roland mesh kit and Roland TD17 module which should be more than up to the task. Like I said, probably user error that it isn’t recording into garage band properly. Will investigate and fiddle more.

Yeah, you should have the hardware necessary, then, for input.  At least the alesis kit pictured above can connect direct to your computer via USB (or it can connect via midi if you have an external midi interface like the scarlet @G650 mentioned).  Can you describe your problem more?

YouTube is usually the first resource I go to for home recording DIY stuff.  Here’s one I found for the alesis kit I’m looking at and GarageBand.  It should be similar for your Roland kit.  
 

 

[Goredho 17394]

For more real-time collab while being remote, I’ve used zoom effectively but you aren’t going to play in time with someone on the other end given the latency.  It can still be good for brain storming, composing, arranging or teaching.

I’ve heard of other people using twitch (online gaming platform) and saying it works well.  I have not tried it, but it makes sense.  Gaming leagues with significant real money involved happen on twitch, so they have put in a ton of work towards minimizIng latency issues.  But I think it would be hard/impossible for anything to allow simultaneous distributed tracking in real time remotely over the WWW.

Please share what solutions you settle on, @ohchaucer.  I live in a very remote rural area so I am only really going to be able to collab remotely.

[G650 14229]

9 minutes ago, Goredho said:

For more real-time collab while being remote, I’ve used zoom effectively but you aren’t going to play in time with someone on the other end given the latency.

Yeah for sure. It's just for discussion. I don't think there's anything out there that would be able to monitor and play in real time.

[Goredho 17394]

Here’s an entry point if someone wants to give twitch a try...

https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/twitch-music-getting-started?language=en_US

[ohchaucer 1443]

This is all good stuff and inspiring me to sort it sooner than later. I’ll probably stick to electronic kit as input because if I miked acoustic I would only be able to play short windows when during the day. And I have the Scarlett interface so maybe that’s what I’ve been missing to midi out from kit and input to my laptop running garage band.

[G650 14229]

6 minutes ago, ohchaucer said:

I’ll probably stick to electronic kit as input because if I miked acoustic I would only be able to play short windows when during the day

 

Yeah plus you get to miss out on the joys of nudging tracks to align phase after someone who shall not be named did a shitty job micing.

 

 

6 minutes ago, ohchaucer said:

And I have the Scarlett interface

 

Ah, you are golden then.

[jimmyjazz 45878]

On 7/20/2022 at 12:37 PM, G650 said:

Yeah plus you get to miss out on the joys of nudging tracks to align phase after someone who shall not be named did a shitty job micing.

You're seeing a delay in the overheads?  That's kinda hard to overcome -- speed of sound and all that.  I assume the snare is close mic'ed.

I usually just flip phase (polarity) on the close mics to get the beefier bottom end in the mix and call it a day.  I rarely use more than two overheads, a kick mic and (maybe) a snare mic.  Keeping the overheads equidistant from the snare as well as equidistant from the kick beater seems to work most of the time.  Right now I'm mixing a track with a pro drummer we hired (the guy for Hall & Oates) and he tracked something like 9 mics.  It's . . . fun . . . but challenging.  Not sure how many of the close mics I'll use.

[G650 14229]

2 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

You're seeing a delay in the overheads?  That's kinda hard to overcome -- speed of sound and all that.  I assume the snare is close mic'ed.

I usually just flip phase (polarity) on the close mics to get the beefier bottom end in the mix and call it a day.  I rarely use more than two overheads, a kick mic and (maybe) a snare mic.  Keeping the overheads equidistant from the snare as well as equidistant from the kick beater seems to work most of the time.  Right now I'm mixing a track with a pro drummer we hired (the guy for Hall & Oates) and he tracked something like 9 mics.  It's . . . fun . . . but challenging.  Not sure how many of the close mics I'll use.

It's over the whole kit. Generally speaking the OHs should be equidistant from the snare, and in a place where you can run either straight or 180 phase with snare to align or you can get cancellation. The biggest issue here was the OH where not the same distance from the snare and thus way out of phase with each other. I like split overhead but it's definitely more work than say XY which doesn't suffer from phase issues. Things like top and bottom snare are good candidates for phase flip obviously.

I'm definitely a mic the whole kit kind of guy, which is honestly a fucking beating and I don't recommend it unless you are a masochist. But it's what I like sound wise. My drummer at least has narrowed his kit down some. I run 12 mics on his 6 pc right now, one of which is a mono room mic.

 

At the end of the day though it's really all about the sound so I never get preachy on the specifics. If it sounds like what you want that's where it's at.

[G650 14229]

Also I love Hall and Oates. Zero apologies.

[jimmyjazz 45878]

40 minutes ago, G650 said:

The biggest issue here was the OH where not the same distance from the snare and thus way out of phase with each other. I like split overhead but it's definitely more work than say XY which doesn't suffer from phase issues.

Yeah, I run XY fairly often.  Coincident capsules, zero phase issues (between the OHs).  Another one I've done is mid/side out in front of the kit.  I was tracking some Spoon demos and convinced Jim Eno to let me try it -- the sound was fantastic.

[G650 14229]

Hell yeah, like a reverse Glyn John's it sounds

[ohchaucer 1443]

. I run 12 mics on his 6 pc right now, one of which is a mono room mic.
 

Do you play in Steely Dan?!

[NoRagrets 1125]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:02 PM, ohchaucer said:

This thread kicks all kinds of ass. Keep it coming as I love hearing all of y’all’s stuff.

Been working with a handful of guys off and on in Austin for years and, after I moved away a few years ago to NYC, I will occasionally come down a play or do a show together.

I would love to know from anyone who’s working with band mates etc remotely how you’re doing it. What’s been the best way to share work, collaborate, what tech or platforms, etc? It’s easy to share and listen individually but sometimes just feels like a bunch of ping pong back and forth.

Would love to up my game. (I’m 90% drums in these collaborations with a little keys mixed in).

My band uses Apple’s Logic program for recording because it’s easy and we all have macs. We share the Logic project files in Dropbox. So typically, one guy starts something, saves it in Dropbox, we talk about it on a zoom, and everyone adds their parts.

We are also going to start using Slack to keep us more organized. 

[NoRagrets 1125]

16 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

You're seeing a delay in the overheads?  That's kinda hard to overcome -- speed of sound and all that.  I assume the snare is close mic'ed.

I usually just flip phase (polarity) on the close mics to get the beefier bottom end in the mix and call it a day.  I rarely use more than two overheads, a kick mic and (maybe) a snare mic.  Keeping the overheads equidistant from the snare as well as equidistant from the kick beater seems to work most of the time.  Right now I'm mixing a track with a pro drummer we hired (the guy for Hall & Oates) and he tracked something like 9 mics.  It's . . . fun . . . but challenging.  Not sure how many of the close mics I'll use.

I have no idea what you just said

[G650 14229]

3 hours ago, ohchaucer said:

 

Do you play in Steely Dan?!

 

Hey, I said a lot of mics, not ten months getting the hi hat right....

[AnotherUTFan 9727]

Also I love Hall and Oates. Zero apologies.

Boy, do I have something for you.

719-266-2837

Trust me. Do it

[Goredho 17394]

Endorsement post since it sounds like there are going to be more people active in this arena soon.  I started publishing things out to all the platforms via DistroKid, and I have to say its a pretty cool service.  $20 per year for their most basic subscription, and with that you can publish unlimited tracks, albums, etc... for one artist to all the things like spotify, apple music, itunes, instagram, facebook, amazon music, pandora, tidal, and a whole bunch of other shit that I have never heard of (and you can choose exactly where its released if you have it against some platform).  It does nothing with publishing rights (it recommends SongTrust to manage publishing which I have not looked into yet given I am still pretty ignorant of all the rights associated with music).  It only collects money for you from the services it pushes your music to.

Anyway, you can push a track, single, EP or album out to all the things in 10 minutes or less.  Here's my "artist page" that was generated in spotify the first time I pushed out with DistroKid.  I did this kind of quickly on a lark so that last song could be played at my mom's funeral.
 

In Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/lance-woodson/1633001809

Anywho, if/when others are looking for ways to get all their stuff out there to the various web/streaming music platforms, you might look at DistroKid.  I know there are alternatives, but I didn't investigate them.  I have a buddy doing this with DistroKid already who said it was the easiest/best thing he's found to manage this.  I can verify its cheap and easy.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Goredho

[shadow_operative 15932]

kicked a lil freestyle while riding in the car today, jamming some Goodie Mob:

 

i just wish my voice didn't dominate the beat so much. oh well, still wrecked.