This song, originally written in 2005, has been in the works in its current incarnation since 2011. It’s the story of someone who is showered with attention by members of the opposite gender and has their veritable “pick of the litter” but falls for someone that isn’t necessarily interested in them.
Piano was done by the amazing Kenny Zarider, and the sax was provided by (of course) Wim Koopman. A huge thank you goes to both of them for their great contribution!
So many women, so little time
Dinner at eight and the theater by nine
I don’t know why I’m feeling so blue
Doesn’t my heart have enough to do?
So many women and yet so alone
So I sit here waiting by the telephone
I feel so empty I know it must be true
It must be 'cause I’m missing you
I’ve been told so many promises
Of how my love they longed to share
I’ve been offered things in exchange for a ring
For some reason I don’t seem to care
So now I wonder where out there you are
Just takes a summons then no matter how far
I’ll come to you running with hugs and kisses too
I feel so helpless, what’s a guy to do?
So why don’t you let me help you help me to choose you
Just give me one chance 'cause I’m missing you
Gear:
Vocals - Neumann TLM103 > EnVoice MKII > Cubase
Guitar - '81 Ibanez Artist > EnVoice MKII > Cubase
Bass - Scarbee
Drums - Jamstix 3 > Battery 3 (Full Jazz kit)
Piano was provided in MIDI and rendered in Alicia’s Keys
Sax was provided in audio format by Wim
Stock inserts were used as well as:
Celemony Melodyne
BlueCat Audio’s Peak Meter Pro, Triple EQ, and Frequency Analyst
SoundToys LittleMicroshift
Sounds pretty good, Larry. You capture the traditional vibe pretty well. Only wish you’d let Wim finish his solo! And give Kenny one too. Guitar sounds good through GR5. No qualifications at all to comment on singing, except bravo for doing it when you couldn’t get somebody. I’d say it needs to “slide” more - a little more jazzy.
nice track and recording ,vocals sound good ,i didn`t recognise your voice though .every thing sounded good apart from the ride cymbal,it is too loud and i would pan it away from wims sax , it covers the sax too much, lovely playing though and great keys from kenny.
My mistake. I did not use GR5. This is DI save for the tube-pre / compression combo that the EnVoice provides. The guitar sounds sexier natively than anything I could ever get through emulation.
And, yeah, I’d agree with your last statement. I’m not a good singer in the first place, and jazz takes a certain amount of expressiveness to be effective at communicating the story.
Yeah, I struggled with the ride. When I mix drums, I have a number of Transformer presets that filter out everything save for the various things you’d want to track: kick, snare, hi-hat, cymbals, toms, and “other”. On a jazz kit, I also have a separate track for the stir-fry. The kick and snare are rendered to audio as mono tracks and everything else is in stereo. I trimmed the cymbals both in volume and by using a LPF with the cutoff at about 12kHz. That was considerably better than the original rendering of the track.
I’ll have a listen when I get back from my business trip and make adjustments if I can do so without degrading the overall quality.
One good thing that may come out of this is that the husband of a coworker of mine is a jazz guitarist. She used to work with another woman who is a jazz vocalist. Even though she lives 2h from me, my coworker emailed her to possibly make an introduction for the purposes of collaborating. I’m crossing my fingers.
Had a look and, surprisingly, the ride on the jazz kit in Battery 3 is panned center. I moved it a bit to the side so that it no longer gets in Wim’s way.
I also added an extremely fast fade in on Wim’s riff during the bridge since his first note has an incredibly sharp (and loud) attack. This dampened it just a tad, which was enough to avoid jarring the listener when he first comes in.
hi larry ,id probably lose the ride and find another one that doesnt drone as much .is that a brush snare as well , that also seems a bit prominent ,still a great tune and some lovely delicate stuff happening .
Good question. It’s the stock Full Jazz Kit in Battery 3, so it’s all brush work (which may explain some of the droning).
I won’t deny that I’m a bit loathe to replace it though since there is a certain amount of consistency to the attack on the ride and the other cymbals / hi-hat due to the fact that brushes were used. I’ll try to find another ride that doesn’t break that “image.”
Respect for attempting this genre. For me, much of the phrasing of the lyrics just doesn’t swing – sounds forced, especially how in the first verse the word “I’m” has about 5 notes attached to it. In the last verse, the words “far” and “are” sound like a bad note – a half step too low? Lastly, drums need some work; maybe you can find a real drummer to do this?
I’m not a jazz vocalist, so I’m not surprised you said this. As far as the drums go, the first time I used a live drummer on a song I was less than impressed and that was straight ahead rock. As a result, it was the last time I used a live drummer too.
The notes on “far” and “are” were intentional to create the tension that is resolved in the next line.
certainly a nice collab , what immediately struck me was the very prominent bass in the song. On my system to much upfront mixed so it pushes a lot of the piano and vocals away. It is played on every count and sounds to much straightforward played. It could use somewhat less notes on less counts. The vocals sound well recorded and clean.
Yeah, I see what you mean about the driving nature of the bass line being in contradiction with the laid back mood set by the rest of the song.
As far as the mix goes, I’ve always been a “bass forward” person. Perhaps it’s just me, but the bass and drums need to be firmly established to set the backbone of the song. But, playing Devil’s Advocate with myself, the bass does seem to slightly overpower the drums here so maybe some rebalancing would be in order.
