K Rex wrote: The piece is solid. I am particularly attracted to the stick parts on this one, whereas I was drawn to the keys on previous offerings. Not sure why.Not as aggressive as your other stuff, that's cool. Not everything has to be aggressive (does it?) How do you guys approach your collaborations? What is the process?K Rex
bachdois wrote: Wow, really liked the way it turned out. Good music, nice sound, it develops In a very solid way throughout the hole song. Thanks for the link! Plus, I totally subscribe K Rex's question. What is the process? Cheers Sent by Tapatalk
Thanks guys! I appreciate the listens and the comments!
There's actually nothing on earth I enjoy more than talking about process. I love to watch those George Martin vids where he walked you through all the hidden tracks on Day in the Life, for example. I could watch any video ever with Prince in the studio, where he just picks up a random sax and plays a solo, then a guitar, then a vocal line, then programs some drums, then gets on Vanity or Appollonia...(who runs a youth group as a pastor's wife now!)
This song was supposed to be just that, a song, and a quintessential rock song. I deliberately set out to create the most accessible "rock" or even "pop rock" song that I could. It's really a 4-chord song in a major key (D), with D, Bmin, G, A; and a chorus/bridge still in D but with 4 different chords (D, Emin, D/F#, G).
Now the timing is a bit odd. It's 3/4 or maybe 3/4 split time--I'm horrible at my time signatures.
This song started like most of my songs, with a riff. There is a Dmaj7 piano arpeggio that runs through almost the entire song, played in higher and lower octaves. That right hand riff continues while the left hand grabs power chord bass D, B, G, A for most of the song, and then D, E, F#, G for the bridge/chorus.
That alone--the Dmaj7 riff over the bass line--was the entire song. It wasn't Smoke on the Water or Black Dog, but it's a nice, pretty riff, if I do say so myself.
I then wrote out 6-string guitar parts with me playing huge chords, one per measure. Then, the same thing with some simple rhythms in each of the four chords.
Then I dragged and dropped my guitar chords wherever seemed appropriate, and sliced and diced up my chords to make rhythms. Most of the rhythm guitar is in my ability to play, but I don't record that way. It's one chord at a time when playing 6-string guitar. I'm very much a hack in that regard with guitar.
So that gave me this little ditty, called D7 because it's really supposed to be "Dmaj7" but D7 sounded better. But it needed a lead or vocal line or both, so I never released or did anything with it but say "Here's something cool I did with guitar...."
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/d-major-7
So, I've had that and never knew what to do with it. Then along comes Scott.
So I gave it to him as an MP3, and he loved the guitars. Then I told him how I did them, and he had to do something (better) himself. So I mixed down a version with none of my guitars at all, but with everything else in it and gave that to him.
He put it into Logic Pro X as one track, and then laid 20 tracks over it, and then sent me his source files for me to load back into Pro Tools. He added an intro that I decided also made a good outro.
I sliced and diced up his guitar--just the opening 4 seconds and the Stick parts with 12-string--to make the end, just to demonstrate the same technique using much more superior source data, like Scott's guitar.
Then I added all of his guitars tracks to one channel and EQ'd and also used a Waves CLA Electric Guitar "Cleartone" patch on it. That added both reverb and delay and also tweaked the molten fury of his tone slightly. Then it went through WAVES SSGL Channel, with another Chris Lord Alge patch to cut and boost frequencies for guitar. Every track had that SSGL Channel patch on it to wrangle the frequencies.
Then I mixed Scott's guitars and my guitars back into the song, and tweaked levels measure by measure until everybody lived happily together in what I hoped was a Mutt Lang Wall of Sound.
Then I added the Railboard bass line and mixed it into the master mix. I sent to Scott for a level sanity check, and then pushed it out to the world.
Cover art was done a couple weeks ago, not that finding spare fractal art is hard lately. I have fractal art for all of China if they need album cover art.
My process starts with a riff or riffs and then builds iteratively like that. Scott and I seems to thrive sending each other tracks back and forth and then adding our bits, commenting on the other's bits, and generally breaking our hand patting ourselves on the back (okay that's more me than humble Scott. But he's awesome enough to carry my slacking ass...)
So far both pieces we've done were my creations that Scott added to and then I added to. He's got stuff, too, that I haven't ruined yet, but I seem to have an abundance of tracks that could use his expertise, more than the other way around!
Thanks guys! We'll keep at it, separately and hopefully together as well. I need to get into more of my Railboard than just the bottom 3 strings as well!
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Making covers better is usually not much work, and when it's your own song you're covering, then how much work can that be? I love to watch these creations organically grow with each new instrument added as we pass it back and forth. Good times!