Addicted - with (Lenny Lee)

Hi there people, got a new one for you

Get it here:

or here (although I’d prefer if you got it from the first link) :slight_smile:

My good friend Lenny Lee singing and playing bass on it.

What kind of song is it?
Well…

It is about a young boy who is being drawn into the R’n’R circus by his mother who did not quite make it herself.

His mother is trying to live stardom by proxy, as a result the boy goes down bigtime

Basically a song about going to hell when one is placed in a situation that you are not comfortable with/can not control/has no wish to be in it.

I hope some of you will like it.

Everything done in Cubase 6/6.5 64 bit

Kim :sunglasses:

very pro sound…wish I could play the guitar like that!!..nice airy mix, good rock Vox, what more do you need,I don’t think the off beat drum parts worked (for me anyway)but this is up there, Kevin

Killer track and guitar was the bomb, I LOVE the drums! Lenny sounds killer of coarse. What were you using for key sounds/organ etc?

Love your playing, love Lenny’s playing and singing, what can I say but Nice! Thanks. Love your stuff.

Such a full sound! Good song and absolutely love the sound of that guitar!

Great sound! You’re a pro!
Sincerely,
J.L.

a really nice job! had some chops in there as well…ending was a bit different.

great guitar work and excellent vocals lenny . nice dig it .

Hi there people and thanks for listening :slight_smile:

Seems like many of you liked the guitar sound so here is the recipe for the main guitar sound :slight_smile: :

The guitar:

The Stomp Pedals:

The Amp:

Speaker setup:

Post Speaker:

Will be back with more info later + that I’ll sit down and comment on some the other great music here.

All the best, Kim

On Lennys bass I tried to do what I had recently read in an in-depth article in Sound On Sound magazine about recording/mixing Rock/Metal bass guitar:

Keeping Lennys Exellent Di signal from his Ampeg but sending that out to a small virtual guitar amp with a lot of overdrive which I then both hi and low passed.

So the bass group set up was like this:
Group one: Lennys DI bass more or less unchanged. Routed to group 3
Group two: Small bass and hi cut guitar amplifier with a lot of ovderdrive. Routed to group 3
Mix and blend to taste, experiment with phase correction.
Group 3: Master bass guitar volume with a compressor slammed on to keep it all in line.

All the best, Kim :nerd:

All synths were one instance of Halionsonic.
1 Organ, 2 different Clavinets and 2 different pads
Each routed to their own stereo track in Cubase and processed from there.

Drums were Superior drummer 2 Avatar and Ez drummer Twisted kit combined.

From the twisted kit I only used the snare and the hihat.
Those two instruments played the same as the more hifi sounds of S2 avatar played but really low in the mix just to get some more grit into the drums.

This is probably the only song I have done from start to end in 64 bit.
The beautiful thing about it was that I could just pile on the samples in stead of worrying about the 32 bit 4 gig limit.

There were some plugins I could not use due to this but I think it turned out ok anyway.

Kim :ugeek:

Nice song and performances. I like the steady pulse of the guitar in the left channel. Interesting chord changes – very cool.

I’m curious as to why the story is about a mother living vicariously thru her son, instead of a father living vicariously thru his son… ?

Also, not sure why, but I can only turn this up about 50% on my system before it starts to sound pretty harsh… I don’t think the issue is on my end, because I crank up “the next tune, She Knows” really loud and it still sounds good

Hi there Twilightsong and thanks for listening, glad you liked it :slight_smile:

That it was a mother living through her son and not a father was just because I thought of that first.
There are plently of examples of the opposite. Beyonces father being her manager etc.
Sons and daugthers trying to get the easy way in because one of their parents were sucessful artists etc.
The sons of Lennon, Will Smiths son, hehe

About the difference between “Addicted” and “She Knows”…
Hmm I haven’t really listened to them side by side at very loud volume.
My guess would be that “Addicted” was premastered with quite a bit louder rms db than “She Knows”
So “Addicted” will max out your amp and speakers faster (at lower volume settings)

To all:
I said that Lenny is doing the bass and vocals here (and WHAT a job you do Lenny!)
What I also should have mentioned is this:

The lyrical idea was mine, but Lenny rewrote almost all of it while still keeping my idea
By doing this he made the lyric 100% better than my draft/version.
In fact only the first line
“Well he started out a kid with a cheap guitar”
and
“there’s no such thing as second best”
is what’s left of my words, haha :slight_smile:

Thank you so much for doing it Lenny, you are hereby credited as the main lyric writer on this tune.
I just forwarded the theme to you.

All the best, Kim

If I recall, the split (one DI, one amped) approach is one that Geddy Lee uses too on stage.

Hey all! :slight_smile:

I haven’t been around for a while, but I’m hearing good things about the way this place has been shaping up,
and I do miss some of the gentlemen who’ve been here all along, so - hello!

Thanks for the kind comments - it’s always a pleasure to work on tunes with Kim. It seems we’re so often
on the same wavelength, musically. This song was really in my wheelhouse - and I had a blast with it.

This wasn’t exactly Geddy’s approach. At my end, I plugged my bass directly into my Ampeg SVT3 - and went
DI out of the amp straight into Cubase 7. I applied moderate compression with an LA2A, and boosted
my lows with a FabFilter EQ. That’s how I sent it to Kim.

that makes the split at Kims end (one amped, one double amped, then slammed) :slight_smile:
I thought it sounded fine the way I sent it out - but it also sounds good with Kim’s tweaking (though I would’ve preferred a touch more gas during the verses) :wink:

No doubt! That’s a decent catalog the two of you have been building. I told Kim awhile back you should make it official, adopt a name, and declare yourselves “a band.” In this day and age, you know, the fact that you live 5,000 miles apart is irrelevant :sunglasses: