The following will only be of interest to music obsessives. You have been warned!
We originally recorded "Teddy Boy" three and a half years' ago. I'd only just started using Apple's Garageband sequencing software, and I encountered two main problems (apart from my own musical ineptitude). First, when I used similar instrumentation to that employed between 1955 and, say, 1965, the results tended to sound sterile and there was a lot of empty space - the backings seemed hollow.
Second, I couldn't figure out why songs that sounded loud and beefy during the recording process went all limp and weedy when turned into MP3 files. What I was hearing on Garageband was nothing like the same song when it was uploaded to iTunes. When I transferred those tracks to YouTube 18 moths ago (the only way of getting an audio recording onto Google's Blogger system), they sounded like they were played on a tinny transistor radio by a builder three doors down.
Well, I figured out what I was doing wrong a while back. Partly it was because I hadn't checked a particular tick-box on Garageband, and partly because I wasn't using Garageband's Master Track settings to change the sound of the recording at a stroke. I also needed to compensate for the slightly artificial quality of software instruments by coming up with my own settings for them (the hard, honking saxophone sound on "Teddy Boys' Picnic" had to be tortured out of the digital instrument - and I still can't figure out a way of sliding between notes). Finally, I'm dirtying up those empty background spaces with a ride cymbal (after all, it was good enough for Ringo on every track on With the Beatles.)
My aim with most of the stuff I produce is to make it sound as if it's a recording done in one take by a live band in a primitive recording studio circa 1962. I think I'm almost there with the percussion (I've finally found the loose snare drum sound I want - shown to best effect on "Twangtastic") and the bass (thanks to advice from a music-mad friend); guitars are easy, because, after all, they're real instruments - they just have an annoying tendency to distort when turned into MP3 files; as for the rest, it's trial and error - and an awful lot of fun!
Awesome.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why rocknroll ever need have moved on from this.
Why, thank you, Mr. B! Glad you enjoyed it. And a big thanks to your part of the world for giving us this sort of music in the first place. I don't really mind music evolving - as long as I don't have to listen to too much of it, and I can keep on enjoing and trying to replicate the early stuff.
ReplyDeleteCould you have a word with my wife? I played this on her laptop (if a song sounds okay on those tinny little speakers, it'll sound okay on anything, I reckon) - but when the saxophone part came on she was convinced something had gone seriously wrong with the machine! I'll just have to do more work on it, I suppose.
I have taken my wife's advice (as I invariably do) and have changed the saxophone sound to something that sounds less like an electric kazoo!
ReplyDeleteTo slide between notes, glissando, portamento etc, you most likely need a more sophisticated keyboard with a toggle stick - the keyboard equivalent of a whammy bar. They are not that expensive. Your wife was right about the wasp in a tin sax. Try isolating the sax or whatever you are experimenting with from the rest of the mix to hear it as a solo instrument and then do the usual tricks like compressing, gating or adding reverb to see what it sounds like. Or treat yourself to some more software. There are some excellent packages giving you additional sax/horn/orchestral sounds and samples for not much money.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see the Fulminators back.
Thanks for the advice - I'me especially intrigued by the idea of a toggle stick. I've sort of managed to make the sax sound okay by using the standard setting, adding reverb and compression and then having a simultaneous track of it an octave lower and at a lower volume - gives it some bottom. But I will explore the alternatives you suggest.
DeleteAnd thank you from The Fulminators - they say it's nice to be back.
This is your best yet..the timbre of the golden days of R&R.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that, southern man - much appreciated praise from a connoisseur.
DeleteMighty fine playin' my man! Keep on rockin'. Is that by any fine chance the class photo of Upper 6B circa 1969 by way of an illustration? Were y'all on your way to the KCS prom with those crazy Ursuline Convent babes? Mmm...party party.
ReplyDeleteHow's it hangin', Cecil? Much looking forward to you teaming up with The Fulminators again sometime soon - none of us can sing worth a damn and we definitely need someone who can play guitar a lot better than our current deadbeat picker.
DeleteI may have some photos from that era. Watch this space. As for those Ursuline girls, they were well out of my league back then, which is probably why I spent so much time listening to obscure music alone in my room. Never did meet a girl who was quite as interested as me in The Champs or Johnny and the Hurricanes.