New Song - Say Say

I finally got around to actually turning the lights back on in my recording studio and put some sounds to tape, or at least to hard drive. I have two songs that I had been working on earlier in the summer, but life got in the way, and I shelved them until the muse decided to re-visit. "Say Say", is a pretty straight ahead Rock/Pop song. Its quite an old song, I wrote it almost ten years ago, and recorded a few demos but I never really finished it. It didn't quite fit with the sound of any the bands I played in over the years, although I always played it when I did solo acoustic shows. I am trying to record some songs that have some commercial potential, so this was written with an eye to that. This is a very rough mix, I finished adding the harmonies over the weekend and did a quick mix so I could listen to the song outside the studio, in the car etc. The mix took very little time, which is a good omen. I still need to add some ear candy, and there is a 2 bar gap at 2:05. I left this to leave room for some creativity, and I plan on playing around with some ideas when I get back from a business trip to London next week.

As always, follow the link to listen to the song, (right click and "save as" to download), and let me know what you think!

Say Say

All rights reserved copyright John McDermott, Macca Records.

Tinariwen - Amidiwan

It has been a fantastic weekend for music. I saw possibly the best concert I have ever seen last night. When I get a chance I will put up a post about that. In the meantime check this out. This group (not the one from last night), is from Mali, and was formed in the Libyan training camps for Tuareg rebels (fighting for independence from Mali), in the 80's. It would be pretty hard for any of the whiny emo bands currently in vogue to top a back story like that. These guys have real reason the be pissed off, and my understanding is that the music is largely about their fight for freedom, and the hardships their people have suffered. This might give the impression that this is serious stuff, but the music is joyous and incredibly hypnotic. If you give it a chance, it gets under your skin. I found out about Tinariwen from a Slate article last week, so I went on iTunes and bought their latest album Aman Iman. It's well worth checking out. For those of you in Ireland, they are supporting the Rolling Stones at Slane this summer.

Outside Looking In - Mix 1

As promised the first mix of the new song. This is a very rough mix. I spent less than 20 minutes on it, just enough to get an idea of how I need to progress. The vocals are scratch vocals. What this means, is that they are recorded just to guide the other instruments. They are not the final take. I didn't spend much time on getting all the settings correct, I just wanted to convey the energy of the song so the drummer could react accordingly. There are a few bum notes! I am not sure about the falsetto at the end. The drummer likes it, my wife doesn't , I kinda do. At least, enough to work at it.
I also haven't applied equalization to any of the tracks. For example, a standard EQ setting would be to lower the mid range frequencies of the guitar to allow other instruments or the vocals some space, or the remove the lower frequences from the bass drum to prevent the bass guitar and bass drum from muddying each others sound.
The drums were recorded with a set of Roland V Drums. These are pretty amazing. Roland digitally modeled hundreds of drum kits, and it saves an amateur engineer like me a lot of headaches, when recording. Micing up a live drum kit is an art, I've done it but it takes a lot of skill. We recorded the V drums as MIDI data. This means instead of recording an actual audio track, we record a track of digital triggers, how hard the snare was hit etc. As long as the drum brain is attached to my system, we can send the MIDI data to it and it will play what the drummer originally played. The great advantage of this, is that right up to the final mix, we can tap into the drum kits brain, and change any of the drums sounds or settings. For example, I am not that happy with the cymbals on the current mix, they are too wimpy. I intend changing the sound to a larger or darker sounding cymbal. When I am happy with the drums, I can send each individual part of the drum kit back into my system, and record each on a seperate audio track. Then I can do the mix down, (I had to do this to make the mix below).

The guitars were recorded with the amazing Line 6 POD. This is my favourite guitar toy. Like the drums, it is a digital modeling tool. In a piece of equipment not much bigger than my hand, Line 6 have digital models of all the top guitar amps. Again it makes dialing in the guitar tone a breeze, and recording guitar very easy. My only bitch is that the model of my favorite amp, the original 60's AC/30 with Top Boost, doesn't sound that great. I have a perfectly preserved AC/30, and the digital model is completely lacking the shimmery top end that makes the amp so famous.

As I see it the next steps are:
Editing the drum sounds, and doing some suble editing where the drummer sped up a little, ( this is pretty normal when recording live without a click track). Recording the lead vocals, and adding harmonies. I might throw on some acoustic guitar, or maybe some organ sounds on the chorus. Then I will have to re-evaluate. I'll post the new mix.

You can download the mix below. I'd love feedback, especially from recording engineers and musicians - talk about asking for punishment!

FYI there are 10 seconds of silence at the start of the song.

Outside Looking In Mix 1