Joy

[GMaq]

Hi,

This is the first completed original song of a project that has been in the works for almost 20 years I will confess some work-in-progress mixes were put up on the Ardour forum last year but this is the final product so I thought I'd put it up here since I've never posted any tunes here. This song was completed in Ardour3 Beta5 on AV Linux 6.0 and on this particular song everything is played by me, however many of the other tracks in progress were done with other musicians. Any comments, critiques and questions are welcomed...

Have a listen here:
http://www.bandshed.net/music/Joy-REMIX.mp3

[tux99]

I like it, it seems well put together to me, the only thing that IMHO could be better is the drums which are almost drowned by other sounds in some parts and sound a bit muffled. But this is just my personal impression as casual listener, I'm not a mixing expert.

[danboid]

Brilliant stuff GMaq!

Echos of Mr Kravitz there - thats a pretty slick guitar solo. Your vox kinda reminds me of Todd Rundgren which should be took as a compliment as he is the maestro.

More where this came from please!

PS My mums called Joy

[steevc]

Sounds great. Care to give us some details on how it was recorded? Are those real drums? Use any plug-ins for the guitar?

[GMaq]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to listen and comment guys.

@tux99, I can see your point, this song is kind of an instrumental free-for-all and I wanted the drum and percussion tracks to kind of be one big noise together and not maybe as clearly defined as they would be in a different type of song.

@danboid, Thanks, I certainly do like Lenny and his love for big analog sounds. The guitar solo was one take which NEVER happens for me, I wish it would happen more often...

@steevc, The drums were done with Hydrogen using a custom kit that is a mish-mash of various kits including some samples from my own Pearl drumkit, unfortunately some of the kits I used were non-GPL so I can't share the kit itself, all the percussion (tambourine, shaker, bongos) was played by hand, I really find hand percussion loosens up a programmed drum track in a good way. The guitars were all recorded with a little Fender Pro Junior tube amp and the overdrive is natural tube overdrive just from turning the amp up, the guitar solo has the Calf Vintage Delay on it synced to the song's tempo and that's it. The bass is a square wave sound patch from an ancient Turtle beach Pinnacle sound card and the organ is a commercial Hammond B3 soundfont played through Qsynth. As far as other plugins the lead vocals have linuxDSP's pro dynamics compressor on them, really not a lot of plugins on this tune...The song was mastered within Ardour and features Barry's Satan Maximizer used conservatively and linuxDSP's awesome PEQ-2B EQ on the Master bus.

[GMaq]

Actually...

I changed my mind and redid the drum track (and updated the link) because I wasn't 100% happy with the varying different Reverbs on the samples in the mish-mash kit so I replaced it with my own Hydrogen Kit sampled from my own 'Black Pearl' kit. It surprisingly cleaned up the mix and gave the drums more definition to not have the various clash of ambient Reverbs. For anyone using AV Linux this is a slightly newer revision of the 'Black Pearl 1.0' kit included in AV Linux plus Roto Toms, since this kit is my own GPL creation I though I'd put it up here in case any Hydrogen users are interested.

Find it here: http://bandshed.net/avlinux6-debs/hydro ... .h2drumkit

[tux99]

Yes, the drums aren't muffled any more now, they sound clearer, it's sounds even better now! (this forum is missing a thumbs up smiley!!)

[GMaq]

@tux99

Thanks for your comment about the drums in the first place which gave me a nudge to dig a little deeper...

[StudioDave]

Outstanding work, G, I got joy at 7:30 AM EST !

Great drumming throughout. That's 1st-class work, does Hydrogen proud. Have I ever mentioned that the drums were my first instrument of choice ? Played in school bands, then for a couple years in rock groups, before I started playing guitar. I like to tell people that I'm a recovering drummer, you're never really over it.

Fine vocals, good tune. I'm listening through the laptop's audio, with Sony MDR-7506 headphones, drums come through fine. Nice panorama, sounds like and unlike a stage setup. Good mix, it's all well-balanced over the cans.

Continue, please.

Best,

dp

[GMaq]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your encouraging comments, I wasn't aware you you had a drumming notch in your belt as well, cool stuff! I do recall a rather humorous song about a 'drummer in a blues band' I heard a while back, was it semi auto-biographical?

I have a pile of tunes sitting around the 80% completed mark that I'm on a mission to put out this year since now I actually get to 'use' software rather than package and maintain it...I'm especially looking forward to a collaboration with a tremendous singer on a remake of a Blind Lemon Jefferson song,

nudge, nudge, wink, wink,....