Fellow Frost*ies, I need help!

[Steven]

Great! It's actually set up as 42bpm in Ableton, but this is so absurdly low it started causing me problems with timings on faster parts, I think it probably should have been some multiple of that. You can get my mix at www.steventhomson.co.uk/music/audio/heartbreaker2.mp3, as long as that plays at the same rate as the individual tracks it'll all be fine!

[Rook]

Ok here is a quick draft

http://soundcloud.com/rook-scores/hello-heartbreaker-rd-scratch

Mixed entirely on headphones and only using things built in to cubase, so.. Yeah. Sorry about those drums. Regard them as a placeholder.  Also the guitars need a bunch of work to sit them in the mix, but this at least gives you an idea of how I imagine it

Oh, and I fudged a bunch of timing in the last third...

[RobRideout]

In regards to the 'auditioning Reaper' thing, I found that it's quite easy to adapt to, even after using Logic every day for like 4 years. It's very costomisable, so you could make the controls basically the same as Ableton anyway if you wanted to.

Or going even further, use an Ableton skin... http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=49864

[Steven]

Nice job Rook! That really does sound pretty different to mine. Yours is much less dense, which is really cool to hear. You've really dropped the piano much much lower in the mix than I had (since to me it was the main instrument, the one I wrote the song on!) and it sounds a lot lighter and less chewy on the ear, if that expression makes any sense. I love the way the high strings kick in at the first chorus, then they drop out and the cello swells up again at the start of the next verse. I think I'd perhaps need to back off on the vocal processing a bit for them to be able to stand so up front in the mix, but that's easily doable. I'm impressed you found a drumbeat that worked so well on the last sections, I couldn't make anything other than the 'heartbeat' sound fit in at all. I really like the way the last verse sounds with the guitars much more dominant and the piano removed from it's centre stage. That's certainly something I'm going to have to keep in mind - just because I wrote all of something on piano doesn't mean I need to be so dependant on it in the final result!

Rob, that's a really cool find, thanks a lot for digging that up! I need some software for my laptop, since it's got no DVD drive and I've never gotten round to installing any music gear on it. I'll be away from home for a while sometime soon with only the laptop, so I think I'll give Reaper a try on it for a week or two and if I like it, it'll join and perhaps even replace Ableton on the main computer.

[Rook]

Cool, yeah it was a different interpretation, something that can be rather difficult o o in your own music. there is a tendency (well at at leat I find so for myself) that if a part is good enough to make the cut then it needs to be front and center. Along with everything else going on at that time. Whereas when mixing someone else's piece with a fresh perspective I am much more prepared to mix something in subtly, and panned off to one side. Or even omitted for a section to allow more dynamics in the song.

As for the drums at the end of the song, it probably helps that I had the tempo set at 126 bpm, three times your tempo, in a 6/8 time signature. Also the timing in the solos and vocals at the end was kinda screwy so I moved some things around. If you we're trying o fit drums to how it was... Yeah, not gonna work. Unless you can swing some Zappa-esque polyrhythms...

Glad I could give you some ideas, and I'm keen to see what you do with the project

[Steven]

I can see the 126bpm helping, but the 6/8 nature of it somehow passed me by entirely! I feel really rather silly now! I noticed a few timing edits (or at least, I think I did!) and I know there are a few points I should probably tighten up a little in my own version. Your own point of view on this song is really helpful, and I can see that big ol' piano sound in my version might have to undergo some drastic surgery because I really like how much lighter and fresher your version sounds without it.

I'm not working on Heartbreaker tonight (I think I'm working on a new one while I assimilate all my ideas of Heartbreaker) but I'll hopefully finish it up by the end of the week. I'm away next week, so I won't be able to work on it, so either I finish it by the end of this week or it takes a little hiatus til I get back.

I'm tentatively working on quite a few songs right now (5, by my fuzzy count...6 including a 'joke' song consisting of the word 'liar' being repeated in different languages to a bleepy beat) but I fully intend to finish Heartbreaker and Liar. I just need a small break from them tonight, and my creativity is still firing on all cylinders so I just can't stop writing new things. Sadly, this does mean the new song is still about the she-devil, but it's much more proggy and metaphorical and hopefully won't be as explicitly about her as Heartbreaker and Liar clearly are!

I love music. And I love the new Shineback album, which I've had on repeat since yesterday afternoon, brilliant stuff!

:edit:

How rude of me, I didn't thank you Rook! Thanks very much for taking the time to do that mix for me!

And I see from my website logs there's been at least one other download of the raw audio files, so whoever you are, you mystery downloader, I'd love to hear from you too!

[Rook]

Quite welcome, Steven. We Frosties got ya back

[Steven]

Alright, so while I'm surrounded by such kind, generous and wise people, I figured I'd post something new for a little feedback.

It's here - https://soundcloud.com/steventhomson-1/hope-never-really-dies-vocal, and it's something I just threw together tonight based around a synth riff I wrote last night. Tonight I added guitars, drums etc, and some of my scraps of lyrics scribbled on sheets of paper around me seemed to coalesce into something semi-coherent, so I figured I'd try singing it without the safety net of a vocoder. These are the results.

The song itself isn't written much beyond this little riff that's looping in the background here - structurally, it's pretty unlikely it'll have a section this long in it without a little bit of a break, but as a vocal test, I think I'm reasonably happy with it. The lyrics are mostly nonsense cribbed together from various scribbled ideas, they're loosely something to do with me wanting her back while well aware it's a terrible idea, hence the reason adjacent lines often contradict each other. It's deliberate, I'm being all arty, y'see. Anyways, the lyrics aren't the point.

As far as processing goes, it's just put through POD Farm with a signal chain consisting of 'Boost & EQ', a compressor, a stereo chorus, and an 'analogue' delay, with various combinations of settings. Basically, it's a preset I've used for recording clean electric guitar that I happened to click on by accident, and I liked the sound, so I tweaked it a little from there. This was recorded with me sitting in my chair, singing softly into my Rode M3 around an hour ago, trying not to disturb everyone in the flats around me (it's a little after midnight UK time as I type this).

I'd be most grateful for any comments and (gentle!) criticism from anyone on the vocals, either in the singing/delivery or the processing, since I'm new to both. I think the timing in the first 'verse' (for want of a better term) is a little loose, but I tighten it up a little as I go and I think it's not too shabby at all by the end. What do you ladies and gents think?

[Rook]

Congrats on stepping out from the safety net it really does just take doing it a whole bunch before it stops sounding flat out weird to yourself. Hope you develop the idea further.

I was going to have a listen and comment last night, but ended up doing some random acoustic guitar sessions at a friend's studio.

Maybe you might want to contribute something to the "friends of frost II" track. If that is still going...

[Steven]

And it's done!

https://soundcloud.com/steventhomson-1/hello-heartbreaker-2

At least, I think it's done. There are still a bunch of things that irritate me (one phrase in the outro with particularly dodgy timing, an irritating plosive somewhere in the first chorus, something's off with the lead instruments in the solo, etc etc...I could go on forever) but overall, I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out. I don't intend on making any more than minor changes to this version. I'm putting it here first, I'll wait til tomorrow (technically 'today') before I start putting it on Facebook etc!

Thanks so much for your help Rook, I took on board a bunch of your changes. I dropped the piano much lower in the mix (not quite as low as you did!), I did that really neat strings trick on the first chorus and second verse, and I added drums which ended up being in 6/8 just like yours were, though I didn't even realise at first, I thought I'd found something odd in 4/4 that seemed to work! I think there's an interesting lesson in there about the interplay between tempos and time signatures, since you can count in 6s from the beginning of the track if you're so inclined, even though in my mind it was in very slow 4s. I did a few other things you suggested too, I think, though they're escaping my mind at the moment.

Pedro and rogerg, thanks again to both of you for your comments too! Pedro, I didn't change the vocal melody - sorry, but I kind of like it as is! Though I agree that it never perfectly mirrored the piano notes, but now with the piano being a little lower in the mix, hopefully it won't be as distracting as it was before.

I spent most of today moping around feeling sorry for myself, wondering whether she was with her new guy, why she was checking my website daily all of the last week and whether she'd come back to me (which she so far hasn't), so I guess I was in just the right melancholy frame of mind to want to tackle this track again, and it ultimately made me feel a lot better after I finished, so that's good. That was, after all, the point of writing these songs!

Thanks again for the advice everyone. Next up, Little Miss Liar, but I'm away for the next week or two so I probably won't finish that one for a while!

[Rook]

Great job, Steven. MUCH more dynamic; the song has some shape now, and I think that's going to get rid of the feeling of sameness some people had. Of course there is always more to tweak and fix (there always is), but you have a piece there you should be rather proud of

[Steven]

Thanks Rook. I am pretty proud of it, couldn't have done it without your help and without listening to your own alternate mix! If I ever meet you in person, I owe you a few drinks!

I'm just up, it's the next morning, and I'm just listening through it again. The drums make a big difference to the final sections, I like how they've turned out. Yep, overall I'm pretty pleased with it!

[Pedro]

No apology needed, sir.  The important thing is that the tune goes where *you* want it to.
I like the direction you have it going in now structure wise (kudos to Rook).
It is a clear expression of what is still obviously a very raw emotion.
I think there's still plenty that could be done in terms of timing, throughout really, but then it would move into being a "polished piece", which I don't think you're looking for right now (correct me if I'm wrong).
Good luck with it all.

[Steven]

Yeah, you're quite correct Pedro, there are timing inconsistencies throughout, but for the moment I think I'm done with this one. Unless there are any particularly jarring ones? I know there are a few that bug me, but I didn't think there was anything too serious. I think setting the bpm to such a stupidly low value was an error that's contributed to that, if I'd had a faster tempo it'd have been easier to keep to the click track's timings. Lesson learned for the future!

I hope I'll come back to it after a little time has passed and I can be less emotional and more objective (both about the song and the girl!), but equally I'm not sure it'll do any future relationships any good for me to keep returning to songs about my ex, so who knows where this will go in the future! I'd like to polish it up someday, but if I start thinking too much, I come up with a huge laundry list of things I'd like to fix or re-do. It's definitely done for the next few weeks, I'm not taking this session with me when I go off for a bit!

[Pedro]

Good thinking. Onwards!