I started this song in 2012 and never put the other instruments on it. I went back through my old tracks and decided I needed to put this piece to bed. As a reminder for anyone that heard old version…Joni", inspired by the great Joni Mitchell who holds a spot in my heart. I wrote this after I watched “Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind” on Netflicks. Just how I was feeling after seeing that movie…
First draft was Piano/Bass. I then added percussion and Bass Clarinet please share any suggestions. There are two versions (mastered differently so volumes may not be same)
I am trying to decide if I should use the percussion or just the Bass, Bass Clarinet and Piano. I have the tracks marked as private so let me know if you can’t open and I will change them to public
Hi Kenny, the first track would not come up, but the second track played fine. I would say that the percussion is not adding a lot, but it’s adding something, and I like it. It’s a very nice track with great feel, and if you’d just get one of your expert guitar player friends to play on it, it would remind me a lot of Pat Metheny! At least I recall a couple of your tracks with great guitarists on them. This one seems to call for guitar! But I love the bass clarinet; don’t get rid of that.
Thanks for sharing it. Now I have to look for that Joni Mitchell documentary!
Jet thanks so much for listening! I marked both as private to keep them under the radar till I figured which worked, I changed both to public though. Your thoughts are important to me I am glad to hear you like the sparse version w/o percussion
I like the arrangement and orchestration. A soulful, moving composition; thanks for making music that has dynamic range and nuance. Nice engineering. Finished (mixed and mastered) in Cubase?
I enjoyed listening to several of the compositions. Is this all live recording or are you also using some MIDI generated music? Not that it really matters – just curious. It all sounds live and the band and players are swinging. Great stuff, Kenny.
Stephen,
Thanks so much for listening! It is a mix of live and Midi. This piece was done in cubase 7 and mixed/mastered in cubase 8 using an SPL mixdream (analog summing mixer) and I am playing Bass on Trillian/ and Piano is a live unedited midi track using Vienna Imperial Grand run through Vienna Mir and all is run though UAD AKG (which I just got) reverb or UAD 250/140 verbs. I have a couple of other tracks on soundcloud that were recorded live on site and not mixed in Cubase but 90% of my stuff is cubase. The Clarinet was recorded in Pro Tools 10 at Chris West house and Percussion (if I keep it) was the same deal. I started this with just piano improvisation
Again, Kenny, excellent music and playing. I listened to almost all that’s on Sound Cloud and will return to listen some more.
It’s very helpful to my learning process to hear a bit about how you put it all together; thanks for taking the time to explain some of the key elements used in creating these cool sounds. Take care.
Love the composition and the playing as usual. I didn’t listen to the “perc-less” version, but I do like the additional movement that the percussion adds to the piece so I probably won’t listen to the other version.
I am glad to hear you like the sparse version w/o percussion