First release of this song. I love the horns and guitar solo and absolutely hate the vocal tracks.
I have a tentative commitment from a female friend of mine to do backup vocals. I may strong arm her to do the main vocal line too.
Thereâs a place off the side of the road / Off of the beaten trail
And when the sun goes down for the night / The horns really start to wail
And the party starts to get going / People come from towns all around
When the music starts a playinâ / Everyoneâs a-gettinâ down
When you come in the waitresses greet you / With-a smile upon their face
Donât expect to be sitting down long / Itâs standing room in this place
First the bass starts to get a-thumpinâ / Then the drums start a grooving beat
And the people start to jump on up cause / They wanna move their feet
Everyone is a singing and dancing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Everyone is a-smiling and laughing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Every boy has chosen a girl (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Dancing like itâs the end of the world (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
And the party doesnât stop in the night / It goes right on âtil dawn
All the boys and the girls keep singing / And dancing with everyone
The band keeps the beat moving / And the singer sings his song
The horns they blast out sunshine / All night long
Everyone is a singing and dancing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Everyone is a-smiling and laughing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Telling jokes and trying-to-be clever (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Make her laugh that he can win her (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Everyone is a singing and dancing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Everyone is a-smiling and laughing (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Every boy has won his girl (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
Dancing like itâs the end of the world (Stomping at the Crickhollow Inn)
BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD THE FILE FIRST IF YOUâRE HAVING ISSUES PLAYING BACK.
The guitar, bass, and organ are live. Everything else was done in Cubase: Battery for drums, and Kontakt for the horns. VB3 is the audio engine for the organ, and Kuassa provided the distortion for the guitars.
Hiya Larry. First impressions: Vocal is too polite, you need to belt that vocal out. Horns sound pretty good, kudos Kontakt The break is good. Bass is too hollow, needs body. Solo is a tad too loud, down around 4db for that I reckon. That chorus must have hurt your throat, try a different register for that I think. I was trying to think what to AB this with, Beach Boys kept coming to mind so maybe find a lively track of theirs thatâs similar to this?
The autotune is really strange in a song like this. I would choose to be auto of tune for that matter.
I like the song a lot but where are the balls?! I mean this songs is about singingâ and dancing. So it needs to be energetic. Phil mensioned Beachboys, yes there mixes are also not that powerfull (What I remember of it) But I think this song deserves more power. Place the horns on a bigger stage, let the drums kick through, and as earlies suggested the vocals can be more agressive.
I have no balls. My wife will certify to this. If I can get my female friend (who used to sing lead for the last band I was involved with if you can remember her [extremely powerful] voice) to sing the lead thatâll correct the lack of gusto for the main vocal line.
I have updated the vocals completely and will update the first post with the correct link after posting this. (Done.)
Explain what you mean by âput the horns on a bigger stage / let the drums kick through.â Did you mean âdrumâs kickâ as in give it more punch? I still donât know what you mean about the horns, though.
Well listening through headphones the brass is tugged away on the far left and right. I like those hornblasts and would give them more âspaceâ I donât know another way to put it. It sounds fine, donât get me wrong. Whenever I listen to a mix to judge I just figure what I should do. Maybe an extra reverb to echo the blast throughout the stereo field to create the feeling of space.
With the drums I meant the whole drumkit. I canât really tell what should happen, I donât know how the mix is. I think the transients or more direct sound.
I listened again and I think itâs a matter of taste maybe. Not wrong or right.
Thatâs easily adjustable since I have group channels galore. Iâll fiddle with it tomorrow after Iâve had a chance to listen to it through my car speakers.
I did use Melodyne, but what youâre hearing isnât an artifact from it. Itâs a few other things instead:
I mistakenly left a chorus on the backup vocal tracks after experimenting with something.
The shadow lead tracks (panned hard left and right) are too hot in the mix. Theyâre both offset by +/- 5/100ths of a second which (at the levels theyâre at) is causing a comb effect.
This wasnât as evident to me on the monitors but it definitely stood out in the car.
Better version but know I think that it also has to do with the internet player. Maybe the conversion truncated the stereo field. Did you uploaded Mp3?
If so I would suggest to hop over to soundcloud. I have a premium account but the free account has an hour worth of losless playtime. It doesnâ't matter if you upload Mp3 or the highest quality. They donât count in amounts of data but plain time. It could be that your work is better of there?
Dylan: I use Bandcamp, and have it uploaded there as 44.1/24-bit (but hidden up to this point). The version youâre listening to is an MP3. For this last revision I tightened up the horns, i.e. they were spread L96, L48, R48, and R96. Now they are L64, L32, R32, and R64. I wanted a bit more cohesion so that they punch through the mix better as a whole.
Wim: thanks!
Edit: I un-hid the track so you can listen to it on my website.
Glyn has graciously offered to lend his considerable talent to redoing the vocal tracks on this song, Grad Student Blues and two unreleased tracks in the making.
Hey cool track. I liked this a lot, really great arrangement. Mix does sound a bit âflatâ which is something I run into on my tracks. lol So I canât give any direction on that, but Iâll take any of the pointers you get! hahaha Great guitar solo, I liked it a lot very well played. I like the chord changes, some really cool and unexpected stuff here and there! Nice!
The chords, if youâre curious, are pretty standard except for the turn into the break which drops to an F#7#9 > Fmaj7b5 > Em6/9. And then again at the outro where it goes D > C > Bb13 > Am > F#7#9 > Fmaj7b5 > Em6/9.
The break is good. Bass is too hollow, needs body. Solo is a tad too loud, down around 4db for that I reckon. That chorus must have hurt your throat, try a different register for that I think. I was trying to think what to AB this with, Beach Boys kept coming to mind so maybe find a lively track of theirs thatâs similar to this?
If I can get my female friend (who used to sing lead for the last band I was involved with if you can remember her [extremely powerful] voice) to sing the lead thatâll correct the lack of gusto for the main vocal line.