TapeOp's Rain Dogs

[Shabbadoo]

yers is very cool too and about a gazillion times bigger & cleaner. With headphones especially you hear the space and the scale of the whole thing.

A big part of that space is from using lots of Altiverb.

It's nice how when you have a good song as the backbone and you don't feel too personally invested in it you can try different approaches and just see what comes together.

yeah I agree, it makes you feel a bit freer to try weird stuff you might not normally.

[Bear]

okay, back up with ye! It was hard to get that fast guitar thing at the start to sit right with the way the vocal came in. Now it seems to work a little better...

http://www.skullphonic.com/hangdown.mp3

This is rad. The recording sounds awesome, and the performance is totally there. Is your voice clipping when it gets loud? Whatever that is, keep it. It sounds sweet. The acoustic sounds excellent (what did you record it with?), and another good accordian. Damn. I'm gonna have to get my shit together.

[madpie]

I think it's just that the vocal and backups have distortion on them and are mixed too prominently. I'm always having hot vocals, but I like to hear the vocal so, y'know, that's how it comes out.

I was just realizing this weekend (I'm a little slow) that the sound of indie rock, in general, is characterized by relatively buried vocals. Or maybe it's just that it's risky to put the vocal way out there b/c a voice can be so off-putting. .... Anyway I bought an old Mary Wells record this weekend, and her performance on "Bye Bye Baby" is totally distorted and fantastic, apparently just because she was singing really fucking loud and doing about 100 takes of the song.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the RIAA, here's the last 20 seconds of "Bye Bye Baby," which will rock you hard if you have not already encountered this song.

That acoustic guitar on my track is just an AKG D790 (which is the only mic I own) into my crappy little Tascam US122 converter with the level turned all the way up. And the accordian is a Casio! Strictly lo-fi, but whatever. Thanks for yer kind words.

[joeysimms]

Your song is great madpie. And fuck yes on the mary wells. Bye Bye Baby is awesome.

[xonlocust]

this thread is great... good job guys!

[Scodiddly]

Dammit... things happen fast around here, don't they? I really do need to check this forum more often, or I'll end up missing out on something like this again.

[OM15.2]

excellent job shabbadoo. Madpie I'm dwnloading yours now.

Finally tracked some instruments last night. I'm 90% there.

[aurelialuz]

wow, madpie, great job man. very well done.

shab, i'll get on your's tomarrow...

[jca83]

i'm writing out the banjo part for my track...

[apropos of nothing]

I got a pretty decent rough mix of Ninth and Hennepin done last night. Had the durnedest time with the panning. I think the thumb piano is still a touch too loud, and the vocal needs some frequencies shaved out, so I will pr'y do another mix and put it in place of this one, but I wanted to get this posted.

http://www.unc.edu/~jkidder/samples/nin ... nnepin.mp3

Feedback?

[phalex]

I got a pretty decent rough mix of Ninth and Hennepin done last night. Had the durnedest time with the panning. I think the thumb piano is still a touch too loud, and the vocal needs some frequencies shaved out, so I will pr'y do another mix and put it in place of this one, but I wanted to get this posted.

http://www.unc.edu/~jkidder/samples/nin ... nnepin.mp3

Feedback?

Awesome, the bass and percussion is perfect. You're right, just shave some of the vocal frequencies.

[madpie]

I got a pretty decent rough mix of Ninth and Hennepin done last night. Had the durnedest time with the panning. I think the thumb piano is still a touch too loud, and the vocal needs some frequencies shaved out, so I will pr'y do another mix and put it in place of this one, but I wanted to get this posted.

http://www.unc.edu/~jkidder/samples/nin ... nnepin.mp3

Feedback?

Fuck, this is cool. If you do change the EQ on the vocal, will you do me a favor and list the changes you're making (like 6db at 1k or whatever) and why you're changing them? Are you just trying to get it to sit better? It already sounds great to my ears, but I don't have that good a sense of how these things should go.

That thumb piano sounds like a loop. Is it the real thing or a sample?

[apropos of nothing]

Fuck, this is cool. If you do change the EQ on the vocal, will you do me a favor and list the changes you're making (like 6db at 1k or whatever) and why you're changing them? Are you just trying to get it to sit better? It already sounds great to my ears, but I don't have that good a sense of how these things should go.

Um. Seems like there's a couple resonant frequency humps that feel a little grating on the ear through headphone.

That thumb piano sounds like a loop. Is it the real thing or a sample?

Yes. That is to say: Yes.

Heheh.

Okay, I listened to the Tom Waits version and tuned my thumb piano to it, and then used some stereo omnis to sample the individual "hits" of the TP, and dropped those into a VSTi sampler and triggered them from my Kat DK-10. So the sound was originally from an honest-to-god thumb piano, which I then midi sequenced but did not quantize.

If y'r interested in the samples, dig here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sarend ... 41468.html

[Bear]

I got a pretty decent rough mix of Ninth and Hennepin done last night. Had the durnedest time with the panning. I think the thumb piano is still a touch too loud, and the vocal needs some frequencies shaved out, so I will pr'y do another mix and put it in place of this one, but I wanted to get this posted.

http://www.unc.edu/~jkidder/samples/nin ... nnepin.mp3

Feedback?

This is fucking awesome. Really awesome. Great recording, cool performances, excellent sounds, and thick with atmosphere. The only thing I can think to bitch about would be to bring the vocals up some. Unless you don't mind that it isn't all intelligable. Either way, great work.

And I've always loved the line: "There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix."

[apropos of nothing]

This is fucking awesome. Really awesome. Great recording, cool performances, excellent sounds, and thick with atmosphere. The only thing I can think to bitch about would be to bring the vocals up some. Unless you don't mind that it isn't all intelligable. Either way, great work.

Thanks for the compliment.

Vox too low. That is a problem. I hope that bringing down the thumb-piano will solve that. Hmmm. If it still isn't working thereafter, mebbe I'll assign everything besides the vox to a group and bring that down.

And I've always loved the line: "There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix."

Yeah, me too.