The Mix our Song Contest

[rockstarfactory]

all right odsus. . .get ready to rock!

i posted the link to my web site to save odsus's poor server. i tried to e-mail it to you, but it didn't look like it was making any progress. (that could be just me, though.) don't worry, odsus, the link is not available to the outside world, only to this link. for those of you who are on dial-up, the file is 3.3 megabytes.
i welcome any and all comments. (please, be gentle, though!) i can't wait to hear some other versions of the song. the discussion that follows should be interesting.

enjoy!

http://toddbayles.com/mp3/Trigger%20For%20The%20Gun.mp3

todd

[evan]

http://pushy.org/The_King_and_Caroline_ ... n_mix).mp3

A 4.63mb VBR for you.

[greenmeansjoe]

Todd,

Great work, man. Your mix sounds awesome. We've always talked about getting a keyboard player ... now I know we need one.

I love the keyboards. Love 'em. The guitar sounds really good too. You did a nice job building tension in the verses. Really, really cool stuff. And none of it sounds forced. Everything sounds like it was of a piece, y'know?

My only complaint is directed at me. My voice was giving out big time in the middle-eight -- warble, warble. I should've sung it again. Oh well.

Nice job. Can't wait to hear more. Evan's mix is downloading now.

Joe

[greenmeansjoe]

Evan,

Nice. It's cool to hear your mix and Todd's back-to-back. Todd gave it that big, super-produced Jellyfish treatment. You stick to the original feel more and add those oh-so-indie harmonies, which are cool. I like the little keyboard parts a lot. I like what you did with the bass too.

The other interesting thing about your mix is that you grabbed one of the files with the lagging drum track, which was our screw up, and totally made it work.

Very cool.

Joe

[evan]

Evan,

Nice. It's cool to hear your mix and Todd's back-to-back. Todd gave it that big, super-produced Jellyfish treatment. You stick to the original feel more and add those oh-so-indie harmonies, which are cool. I like the little keyboard parts a lot. I like what you did with the bass too.

The other interesting thing about your mix is that you grabbed one of the files with the lagging drum track, which was our screw up, and totally made it work.

Very cool.

Joe

Hey, thanks. I did think there was something queer about that drum track on those crashes...

[greenmeansjoe]

Hey, thanks. I did think there was something queer about that drum track on those crashes...

Yeah, I'm really curious to see how many folks downloaded that one. It kinda sucks that we shipped it out that way, but what can you do?

Like I said, it works pretty well on your mix. The cymbals are a little funny, but hey, it's interesting.

Joe

[rockstarfactory]

thanks, odsus!

glad to hear you liked it. it seemed to be where the song wanted to go, and i'm not afraid to go over the top!

i had a blast doing it, too. thanks for the opportunity. it took a couple of days, but i had them pretty much free. i worked the keyboard parts out quietly one day, then a couple of days later, when i recorded the guitar parts through the amp, i played the rhodes, mellotron, and organ parts live through it too. the little harpsichord thing was pretty hard, because the song is so fast. very fun.

and evan. . .nice work too. i like the breaks in the bass line at the beginning particularly. nice touch. what did you use for equipment? i used a lot of normalizing and a bit of compression on the vocals, kick and snare. then compressed the whole mix slightly too. what was your process like?

hopefully this isn't too surreal for you, odsus! we're talking about your song behind your back. as they said in some play or other, "we'd rather have done it in front of your back. . ."

todd

[rockstarfactory]

oh yeah.

i also forgot to tell you, odsus. that in the "breakdown" section ("just pull me back and watch the. . ."), it was my intention to put a bunch of swirly sound effects and stuff in there and build it up a bit, but i just didn't have time.
i just thought you might be interested to know about that.

did you play all the instruments yourself? what did you use to record everything?

todd

[evan]

and evan. . .nice work too. i like the breaks in the bass line at the beginning particularly. nice touch. what did you use for equipment? i used a lot of normalizing and a bit of compression on the vocals, kick and snare. then compressed the whole mix slightly too. what was your process like?

Hey, thanks. For the keyboard I used a Casio MT-70 direct-in, and had a bit of delay to widen the track. Backup vocals were done with a 57 -> RNP -> RNC. Various bits of compression here and there, mild delay on the lead vocals. I used Vegas for mixing. Nothing complicated. I also had to use normalizing, since the initial tracks were a bit quiet, and also some mild EQ'ing and multi-band dynamics (my "mastering") on the final WAV.

[rockstarfactory]

oh yeah. . .duh!

i forgot to mention (although i'm sure it was obvious) that i actually did a little trick with the vocals. i decided not to use the effected vocal track (except for at the end, where it was the only one that was there, and plus it took the song "up" a notch, so it worked out well--i used the line from the first chorus--it was the best),

i copied the clean vocal track, so there were two, "thusly":

lead vox 1
lead vox 2

i put the cool echo on #1, #2 was dry. i gave them the exact same compression and volume settings. i ran both of them out to the same channel on my external mixer, and put a little bit of reverb on that channel. so for the verses, i used the #1 vocal, with delay, then muted that and switched over to the "cleaner" sounding #2 vocal for the choruses and big parts. it's subtle, but it seemed to be effective, and it was easier than having to push "bypass" a bunch of times on the reverb unit.

p.s. if i wanted to go way over the top with the production, i would have added a string quartet version of the chorus (the chorus has almost a beethoven-esque melody) before the song starts, with maybe a glockenspiel doubling the melody, then morph all that into the beginning of the song.

ahhhh. . .the possibilities. . .

todd

[spankenstein]

http://justinpenney.com/samples/Trigger2.mp3

Nothing too much done. I went for direct and a little gritty.

[playinbass]

well here's my version.... a bit "mooshier"

http://belltower.net/mixtest/Trigger_playinbass.mp3

I liked the 2nd incomplete vocal line so grabbed the entire 1st chorus and copied that to the final chorus position too. Attached the existing fade out onto that part.

Not too much else....left the first vocal track in the background loud enough to be obvious..added a harmony on the 'just pull me back" section and some echo....

Most of this was done on the Roland 1880. Had to play the tracks in analog and then manually line them up. Did just a bit of make up volume in Peak before converting the mp3.

This was an amusing project. Anybody else got some tracks they want victimized?

[greenmeansjoe]

Todd,

I'm not sure if you're clear on this or not, but odsus (Odie) and I (Joe) are actually two different people. We're both in The King & Caroline and we both post here.

In my avatar, Odie's the one on the right, I'm on the left.

Just wanted to straighten that out. Seems like there might be a little confusion ... or maybe I'm just going bonkers. That's always a possibility.

Anyway, I'm playing guitar and singing on that track. Odie's playing bass. And that's our former drummer Dave keeping time.

But yeah, man, your mix came out really nice. We were both impressed. Cool stuff. You took some poorly-recorded source material and made it sound very professional like. My girlfriend said the overall feel of it reminded her of the most recent New Pornographers record.

What sort of rig were you using on the guitar track?

Joe

[greenmeansjoe]

p.s. if i wanted to go way over the top with the production, i would have added a string quartet version of the chorus (the chorus has almost a beethoven-esque melody) before the song starts, with maybe a glockenspiel doubling the melody, then morph all that into the beginning of the song.

ahhhh. . .the possibilities. . .

todd

That would've been so bad-ass!

Joe

[greenmeansjoe]

spankenstein and playinbass,

I'm downloading your mixes now on a shitty dial-up connection. I'll get back with you soon!

Keep 'em comin'. This is a blast.

Joe