Composition Challenge #7 - Voting

dindude

Good summary @polarityman. My drums and bass were indeed taken from a hippity hoppity sample set, the bass is a 3 second repeated phrase throughout the whole song, wanted that hypnotic vibe. The voice samples were extracted from an old 60's interview I found with Dr. Timothy Leary - a phycologist who actively advocated the use of "mind expanding" drugs, here he's talking about LSD.

From the off the idea for this was to have someone rambling on about the virtues of mind bending drugs without ever being so crude as to mention them.

Lev

This is really tough, I've listened twice now and am none the wiser how to vote. I'll have a couple more listens and see what sticks in my head. As others have said the quality is really high, well done to everyone.

Thanks @PolarityMan and @Chuffola for the kind comments. I realized after listening to the other entrants that I possibly didn't play up the psychedelic aspect of the challenge enough. The main riff that I started with was conceived with a large dose of fuzz but as I started to record the tracks the fuzz track was getting lost in the mix. So I added a clean telecaster track playing the exact same line as the fuzz rhythm and it really helped lift the riff. The net effect was a better sound but less fuzz and less psychedelic. I'm not a slide player at all but thought I'd give it a go for this track. My lack of skills showed in a couple of places where I didn't quite hit the pitch of the notes. The feel of the track was pretty loose anyway so I didn't go back and try to correct these.

Everything was recorded on a Zoom G3 into Reaper. The rhythm parts were a baja tele and the lead parts were recorded on a US deluxe strat. I used a Soul Food on the lead parts also. The bass was a squier vintage modified Jaguar. The drums and organ were created using Ignite software instruments with an Alesis QX49 keyboard. With the exception of the guitars all my recording gear is very much on the budget side but does the job.

Lev

1 @dindude - very melodic but still psychedelic, excellent guitar skills, early Satriani comes to mind when I listen to it.

2 @chuffola - kinda hypnotic in the way the main guitar line and the drum beat interact. Loved the leslie sound on the background to the solo, very nice indeed

3 @daveww - That Andy Summers type chord sounded great (what effect did you use?) and the the knopfler-esque guitar intro was very well executed

Really difficult choice, well done to everyone who entered!

daveww

@Lev thanks for the kind comments and vote. The intro chord had some flange, chorus and phase and the intro lick just had some reverb with a touch of compression.

@PolarityMan thanks for the constructive comment. I recorded the track pretty early on but the final mix was redone with more effects on the lead guitar in an effort to make it more psychedelic. Perhaps I over did it in the mix and should stuck with the original.

All I can say about everyone's entries is wow! I'm really impressed with the standard of playing and production. As someone commented earlier I thought mine was ok until I listened to the others! I had a listen to all the tracks as soon as they were put up onto sound cloud. Need now to go back and listen again before casting my votes. I've got a guitar exam tomorrow so more busy practicing at the minute but promise to vote over the weekend. Again well done everyone! Great stuff!

daveww

Apologies for the above but can't seem to format text on my iPad. - now fixed

dindude

My votes after several listens of each:

1. @Steamabacus - great track, nicely balanced mix and lots of subtleties make it a pleasure to listen to, great stuff.

2. @chuffola - again, nicely balanced mix, very Portishead in places, which I approve of, and I really liked the outro lead guitar, sweet tone and nice touch.

3. @Lev - as a straight up blues I think it's excellent, only marked down as not quite psychedelic enough compared to some others.

Special mentions:

@mrchi - great track and as others have said, with a little more tweaking could be near pro quality, just not on-topic, but really enjoyed it.

@polarityman - if this is you playing Da Blooze, then bring on the pscyadelic metal challenge!

@Daveww - after the first synth chord, I though Beat It was going to kick in, ha.

Thanks for the kind words on my track btw, I drove my wife mad making this over a number of weeks so I'm chuffed that some are liking it.

PolarityMan

dindude said:

@polarityman - if this is you playing Da Blooze, then bring on the pscyadelic metal challenge!

Hahha yeah, when i first played the bass line at the end that was my main inspriation it sounded slightly blues-ey ...... honest.

Wait til you hear me attempting jazz.

steamabacus

Thanks for the votes and comments.

I've listened through to all the entries several times now and, once again, the standard is very good. It's also made me think about what exactly constitutes 'psychedelic' and 'bluesy'. If I'm honest, some of the entries stretched the psychedelic bluesy connection to breaking point for me - maybe the drugs have changed?


In the end, I had a top three that stood out for me but sorting out the final order was a bit more problematic. This is what I'm going with ...

3rd   @Dindude   'Blues Is My Drug'  (1 point)
I love the rolling bassline and keyboard motif and you can't get more psychedelic than Timothy Leary (who's dead, in case anyone didn't know   ). Some very effective guitar parts as well.


2nd   @Lev   'Psycho Blues'   (3 points)
Great track, nice relentless groove spiced up with the slide and keys. I was really digging the guitar playing (maaaan) but, with a little more psychedelicising, this could have got my top vote. Crying out for a little Itchycoo Park style tape flanging over the mix, maybe?


1st   @Chuffola   'Ain't Funny'   (5 points)
The Bristolian Pink Floyd Show? Floydescent trip-hop vibe - no matter how these challenges are devised, the influence of a certain Mr. Gilmour always seems to be strongly in evidence. Top marks and you get my 'Dave of the Month' award as well.

Chuffola

Jeepers!

I'm blushing. Thanks guys for the great comments.

I must admit, Portishead were at the forefront of my thinking with this one and I'm glad some of you feel that I've captured that "vibe" (man) a bit. And, yes, Gilmour is my hero - the leslie simulation was provided by a very expensive and boutique pedal - the Zoom G1on that cost me all of £49 (its an ugly, cut-down G3 - but it has some lovely effects). The recording was via a Yamaha THR 10 into Ableton and using a little midi keyboard for the tinklybell (as I like to call it). 

The overall quality on display in these challenges is constantly flabbergasting. Great stuff!

I think there's a case to be made for any one of the entries to win this one. 

DulcetJones

1.  @Dindude -  5 Points.  Your track embodies everything 60's psychedelia had to offer, and I was there!  The Timothy Leary clips sync in perfectly and I here/feel hints of Zappa/Mothers from that era as well as the aforementioned Pink Floyd references.  Of course, the guitar was also a big reason for choosing this track for number one, along with a great job of recording/mixing.

2. @Lev -  3 Points.   Even though this track doesn't use most of the usual psychedelic tools and even follows a fairly standard blues pattern you still captured the feel and essence of a groovy track.  When the lead guitar comes in at around 1:20 I could almost picture some guy with too much hair and a headband saying "far out, Man".  

3. @SteamAbacus - 1 Point.  The overall weirdness between random voice clips and groovy music works great, although I would have liked to have heard more of the guitar solo that went to voice clip too soon.

Like everyone that has voted so far I have to say choosing wasn't easy, everybody brought something worthwhile here.  While they all had great playing and production for the most part my choices were made on how psychedelic and tripped out they sounded.     

Roland

DulcetJones said:

Like everyone that has voted so far I have to say choosing wasn't easy, everybody brought something worthwhile here.  

This morning i listened to all of them, and realised that I would need to listen a few more times to make a choice.

TTony

The votes & comments from the TT jury are just in ...

DulcetJones - liked the track, but I wanted a change of tempo or progression somewhere in there and it seemed to run out of energy about 2/3rds of the way through.  That said, I liked the guitar tone and the bass riff that underpinned it all.  Yup, liked it.

Stewe10 - my comments on this would be very similar to the DulcetJones track, except that I felt the lead guitar track over-powered the rest of it a bit in places (the 2nd minute).

SteamAbacus - nice intro and I really liked the vocals throughout, adds a good bit of a variety & interest.  Usual polished production from Mr SA.

Dindude - production on this also sounded excellent (on my PC Bose kit) and the guitar tone was another killer one to my ears.  Guitar work alone was enough to put this in my top 3.

Chuffola - didn't really get a "psych blues" feel from the track, so it felt a bit out of place.  That's the only criticism though, as everything else was good to my ears.

Mrchi - another one where the vocals added an extra edge to the track, there's a trend emerging here.  But also another one where my ears don't get the "psych blues" link?

Daveww - I liked the mismatch between the guitar sound and the bass/drum - and the guitar tone too.

Lev - probably more going on here in terms of the structure and variety of the track than most others this month.  I'd listen to this again and again purely out of choice (ie not just to work out where the votes are going!).

Fretwired - the first 90-odd secs got me really listening to this track, and enjoying it too.  Plenty blooze, but I missed the "psych" bit again, and I'm trying to assess them all against the theme as much as possible.

Polarity Man - liked the track, it sounded like a proper, complete track to me - plenty happening, great guitar work, progression/development of the track, and a good balance of the instruments too, but I didn't get "psych" (not much blues either tbh!).  

So my votes go to

1st @Lev

2nd @Dindude

3rd @SteamAbacus

Everyone did better than me - I didn't get around to submitting anything this month

dindude

Cheers @Ttony - appreciate the comments. Like you (if I recall correctly) I'm an iPad recordist and for this one I made the leap from GarageBand to Cubasis, if you haven't done so already I would highly recommend it, it's a superb app, you can get a lot more serious with it but it's nowhere near as intimidating as a full on PC DAW. A 10 minute you tube tutorial gets you up and running.

Regarding guitar sounds, I always do it the old fashioned way, take my set up and my sound and stick a mic in front of it.
Would be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or if most are using modelling or emulated outs of some kind?

Lev

Wow @ttony, thanks for that comment, means a lot.

Chuffola

Fair comment Mr TT, but as far as I'm concerned you are dead to me.

:P

steamabacus

dindude said:

Regarding guitar sounds, I always do it the old fashioned way, take my set up and my sound and stick a mic in front of it.
Would be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or if most are using modelling or emulated outs of some kind?

I very rarely get to play properly through an amp these days. I live in a basement flat in a Victorian terrace and, even with landords/friends above who are musicians themselves, playing at any kind of 'amp-like' levels would resonate through the whole block. I play everything pretty quietly but am on an endless quest for how to reproduce at least some of the 'feel' of loud guitar - this means much more preamp gain than I ever used in a live band situation and careful attention to compression and dynamics. But I'm still fighting physics, really.

I have a DI'd setup that has evolved organically over many years of playing with computer/electronics musicians in various ambient/improv/soundscaping situations. All my guitars go through my 'preamp' pedal board (drives/etc) into the clean channel of my Blackstar HT-5H. The fx send of the HT-5 goes to my delays/looping board and, from there, is split into stereo. I no longer use the DI out from the Blackstar (I find it too dark and compressed) so the stereo outputs from my looper go to two Award-Session pre-amps (a JD-10 and an MB-10 - I've used JD-10s since around 1995) and then into a Drawmer DL241 dual-channel compressor. From there it goes into the desk where I have an aux send to a Lexicon MPX200 for reverbs.

Although a bit of a complicated setup, this is all permanently wired up so I just have to throw a couple of switches and I'm ready to go. I find having a stereo set up (more of a pseudo two amp setup, really) really helps create a sense of space around the guitar - I think room acoustics are something that is often forgotten when thinking about the 'sound of an amp' compared to various DI'd options.

As I said, it's all played pretty quietly - I'm sitting with my ears less than 2' from my monitor speakers.

I do use a bit of modelling for the bass. I have the free version of Amplitube 3 on my geriatric computer (WinXP) but there's no way I can use it monitored 'live'. But I do use it on the bass, which I record DI'd through a Trace Acoustic compressor and then process with Amplitube after. Often, I will have to 'print' the bass track to audio at some point so that I can disable Amplitube and free up processing power.

kin

Another iPad user here,

 I used one of the HDdrumloops I downloaded from the app store, then jamup pro and tonestack for the guitar sounds, the bass was one of the apple loops which came with garageband ( which was my daw for this track. )

I used my Godin icon  plugged into my audio interface which is a Alesis io dock 2.

@dindude , which iPad do you have? I am struggling with my iPad 2 to run Auria , I was going to give Cubasis a try but Auria was half price at the time. Looks like I might need something more powerful to get the best out of either though.

dindude

@kin my iPad is an Air 1, 16GB - one thing I love about the ipad is it is rock solid, never have any issue unlike any time I've tried to use a PC DAW, which has always been excruciating. I use a Focusrite itrack dock as the interface, although I'm so taken with Cubasis I'm thinking of going the whole hog with an Apogee duet.

@steamabacus - I'm in a Victorian end of terrace, I really don't play too loudly at all, if I do turn it up a little then it's in very short bursts, but still nothing eye watering at all. I have tried so many devices and modelling but I can find anything that sounds right to me. 

One of my secret weapons which I'll share is the mic, I have a good old SM57 but I find it can sound dull unless the amp is cranked. I recently switched to a Rode M3 - it's a condeser than can be had for £60 and unlike most cheap condensers it can withstand high SPL. Close mic a guitar amp and it sounds sweet as and captures energy even at modest volumes.

daveww

Finally had another listen this morning and have managed to down select the ones I think best and those that most satisfied the challenge topic.  I think it's also interesting that psychedelic probably means something quite different to many of us.  We're probably quite a varied age range and most of it likely comes from that and our musical tastes.  A lot of tracks used voice sample talking about blues and drugs but on it's own that to me doesn't make it psychedelic on its own.  Having said that some of those are also my favourites.

@PolarityMan Nice playing. Loved some of it but not really blues or pyschedelic in my book.

@Fretwired Very creative and nicely done.  Loved the samples and guitar work.  Enjoyed it but not quite psychedelic enough.

@Lev Hit the target for me on all counts.  Reminded me of all sorts of stuff I couldn't quite place.

@MrChi Great stuff I loved it!  As a track clearly one of the best but didn't really fit the task IMHO

@Chuffola Great stuff and very Floydlike from the period.  Could have been a tad shorter or had a bit more variation but really enjoyed it.  Only just missed my top three.

@Dindude Very creative and loved the guitar work and samples.  Could have been a bit more psychedelic perhaps but still in my top three.  Loved it.

@SteamAbacus Not my favourite just to listen to but realy well done.  Hit the target spot on in my opinion.  Almost gave me flashbacks!  Paranoid feel to certain bits with equal measures of good trip / bad trip.

@Stewel10 Hit the objects of the task well in my opinion.  Enjoyed it but probably would have been improved if things were balanced and seperated in the mix.  Not that I'm in anyway an expert!

@DulcetJones Hit the spot on both counts but preferred some of the others.  Very accomplished but as commented previously seemed to run out of energy.

My votes >-

1. SteamAbacus - Alice Blues
2. Lev - Psycho Blues
3. Dindude - Blues is my Drug
   

xmrchi

Thanks guys and totally agree it started put as psychedelic with a bluesy riff but as with all my recordings it takes a different direction on its own as I record...