Songcrafters.org

First music post in a while from me... and a little rougher round the edges than usual

It's not really a song, but it kinda turned into one... sort of... more of a jingle (or a jangle)... it's only 1:40 long.

It's the first thing I've recorded with my new BR1600. I used this project to transfer my Boss knowledge over from the MBR and to learn how to use the thing. Before I knew it, I'd started adding all kinds of stuff and it turned into this huge wall of sound :D

It started out with one strat, which I used for 4 basic rock n roll electrics, two accoustics, and a bass part... I'm quite impressed with the accoustic and bass simulation - I wish this, the bass particularly, was on the MBR.

The drums are just patterns from the BR, plus one I created step-wise to get a crash at the end (somehow the later over-dubs have kind of only vaguely gone with the spirit of the thing ::) - it was my missus's main comment on her first listen...)

Then I wondered what I could get going with some vocals.... remember this was just a learning project at the time... So, ummm, I got an old SM58 out and proceeded to quickly record a large number of voices... that's when it got the title.

I experimented with some interesting panning and then flanging of the vox on the second chorus. It was actually even more experimental than this... the title was originally "Ooh-Aah Ukka-Ukka-Ukka (It's So Easy)", but the Ukka-Ukkas, effective as they were in all their glorious panning across the stereo field, turned out to sound just a little too avant-garde for my liking when I listened to it the next day ::). So I wiped them, much to my wife's relief...

That left me with what to do with the second "verse"... I still didn't think of it as a song and didn't want to write any lyrics. Solution: A nice guitar solo, I thought... I'll do it before the in-laws arrive for the Easter Saturday visit...

So I got out my Brian May Red Special that my missus got me for christmas... That was sometime yesterday morning... and, Oh dear, did we have lot of fun over the last few days with a Brian May guitar, a single BR guitar patch, and almost unlimited tracks... 8)

So, ladies and gentlemen, the massed choirs and geetars of Tootynge proudly present... this 1 minute 40 seconds wall of noise...

... I'm REALLY gonna have fun with this new box of tricks  ;D ;D 8)

who let phil spectre outta jail. what a wall of sound now i'm really wet andy.

totally awesome and way too short. fmgwabp

Tootynge Bec?

Huge and so amazingly airy. How much did you cram in and still leave room for the listener? Its magic.

Brill lol!
 

HI great song . this rock s great harmonies.
super job. big thumbs up . TC      Neil
enjoyed it a bunch!!!

Man, I love this - it reminds me of the kind of hook-laden vocal lines like Sweet or T. Rex used to do.

Anthemic!

Great sound!  Gonna be interesting to hear how you and this new magic box progress from here.  Looking forward to more!

Really good Andy for just fooling around.  The whole thing has a Queen vibe.  This machine was made for you.  What's next. 

loved it. but way too short.
great vocal harmonies!
intro was awesome

Hi Andy,

this sounds professional, good Start with the BR 1600 8)

Regards,

Six Harvest

You seem to be getting to grips with it - I thought you might!

Paul

That didn't sound easy - It sounded like it was a lot of hard work!  :D

Excellent results from your new toy - You must love the capability to put a bunch of vocal parts on one V-Track bank. Four just ain't enough on the MBR...

Pro work, and great music, too! Sounds fantastic!

Mark

Great stuff Andy, please let's hear more. It may be a bit of fun but it sounds great and all your production skills are in great evidence. Fabulous sound and a very Queen-ish vibe.

Cheers,

Nigel

SOOOOOOO great to hear your wonderful music again Andy! If this is a sign of what is to come from your 1600 we're in for a good year !!!

I hear some Queen and some Glitter-rock vibe and some 80s power-pop and most of all i hear  ANDYr !!!

More please !! More !!!!!!!!!!!

Really does what it says on the label (A huge wall of glorious sound) , this is fabulous Andy , too short by far , but excellent


Rob

Wow, sounds great. Lots of Queen vibe, yes. Great harmonies and really think of the many hours you put into this. To me it sounds really complicated but beautifull.

this is really epic, loved it at all, it sounds like a combination of the flaming lips with the beach boys, and some beatles too, this is pro, and i think that the fact it's short makes it special, simply awesome!!

Thanks folks! :)

Yep, all the references mentioned are in there.

It started out as a little bit of Marc Bolan boogie, similar to the Get It On rhythm, just to check out how to record some guitars.

That suggested to me the Ooh-Aahs, to see if I could do the "Flo and Eddie" type of backing vocals - the answer turns out to be "yes, I can, almost", but I decided to put more lower parts in because these were going to be "lead" vocals.

By the way, the vocals at the start were a late decision - there weren't there originally. I was finding that the Ooh-Aahs weren't prominent enough with all the guitars that got added. This made giving it this title slightly suspect. So I checked out the first one and discovered that it was clean enough to go solo... so I just copied those two bars over the front (and again near the end).

The chorus lyric really was an expression of how easy it had been to record the ooh-aahs and getting them sounding how I wanted! :D (each of the eight voices was a first take, I was expecting to take hours, I was actually rolling around in hysterics after I'd done them).

I deliberately set out for three lead voices for the chorus, left, then right, then centre. I was particularly pleased with how they all combined on the last line.

When I'd recorded and mixed the chorus, I decided to start learning/checking out the effects, and I found that flanging the chorus was quite interesting (phasing it was even better, but didn't sit well with the track). I ummed and aahed for a bit, and then realised I had two choruses to play with, so copied chorus 1 to 2, and flanged the hell out of the 2nd!! It doesn't really show that much now, what with the wall of guitars that arrived later :D

All the extra guitars really did come about because I thought I was going to put a single solo on and have done with it. But the minute I plugged the Red Special in, it became apparent that something else was going to happen.

I've had this guitar for just over 3 months now, and I have to say I'm rather fond of it. The missus got it for me as a "novelty" guitar, but it's far more useful than that. I've done a lot of "Brighton Rock Guitar solo" type stuff, and playing/relearning lots of other Brian May riffs/licks, but I hadn't actually tried this guitar against any sort of backing until now.

I did several things with it on this track:

A: All the way through, 4 rhythm guitars playing solid chord work with no reverb (this was to dry the track up a bit - the earlier guitars and vocals are drenched in reverb and I didn't want to remix them).
Turned up, these 4 produced "instant Brian May rhythm tone"... so...
B: I decided to experiment in the final chorus on trying to produce those guitar harmonies we all know and love. I came up with two distinct orchestras, 4 guitars following the "It's so Easy" parts, and then several doing a a rising thing on the chord at the end. Pan them left and right, and job done. I copied the first lot to the first chorus, but the second lot don't fit, so I had to do something else.
C: In the first verse, did some "hawaiian" harmonies, but they didn't work so well. They're still there, on the left I think, contributing to the general disorientation you feel when the band first comes in. Because of these, I think, it takes you a few bars to figure out that there's a boogie going on... seeing as the whole track was an experiment, I decided to keep this uncertainty, it reminded me of going to see rock gigs when I was young - you'd be down the front, and the backline was so loud that it took half a verse before you realised what the song was!
D: Initially to counter the previous guitars, I put a "Duane Eddie" type guitar part all the way through. You really only hear this clearly at the end when the lead guitar joins it momentarily, but it's been there all along. If I was working this thing up into a song, this riff would be the important one.
E: Lead guitar - decided to go the whole hog and get the sixpence out! :D

I learnt a lot, and had a lot of fun doing this. One biggie I learnt is this - "Brian May harmonies", to get them sounding cute, concentrate on your phrasing and vibrato across the parts, then mix them quite close in the stereo image - this means you need two "banks" of them if you want stereo from them. But most important of all is EQ and compression - rip all the bottom end off each track, and compress them to hell (1:INF), suddenly they sound all smooth and breathy... :)

Oh yeah, it's Broadway, not Bec, Flash Harry ;D

Awesome!

Nice job on this one. I love the voca harmonies and the guitar work is excellent. You have a lot going on in there but it all meshes together well,  nice job on mixing. Real catchy tune.

Wow.........

Easy?


Gulp....

1 year ago today... Andy R posted this gem. I'm diggin it... was a little too short though. Did you add anything to this??? Would love to hear.

:D Ah! So it must be one year since I got my BR1600.

No, never took this any further.

Instead, I piled into "Sleeping With The Ghost" and "The Knife".

Those won't show up on "On this day" (I'm guessing) because the mp3s are hosted on alonetone now. You can hear them quickly by following the links in my sig, but you'll have to go searching on songcrafters if you want to find the original threads to make a comment.

What a FANTASTIC PRODUCTION!!!!!!!
Damm!!! I want MORE!

JIM

I've never heard a bad song from you yet Andy, and this is no exception....
Top-Notch material!
A tad short perhaps....

LG

Bump !!

Spider bump !!!

Now Andy, about time you got out of hiding and gave us some more !!!!

We need more like this to push us further !!!!!!

............and I was just thinking it sounded a bit Queen like and then I got to the bottom of Andy's post about the 'red special', I'm so jealous, I'd love one of those!!

Well good!

This is so cool! The guitar tones are fantastic, and I've never even considered flange on vocals
And a fantastic commentary and explanation on the song, quite curious about the 'ukka' version?!
loved it
andy

Great bump, I'm so glad someone breathes life into these great songs that I've missed............Willie

Thanks for the bump Spider! :)

Yeah, I've been very quiet recently. I've been a bit busy at work, and even more busy outside work - hardly had a moment to touch a geetar or even come on here (Actually, as I've got 5 minutes, I think I'll post a thread in General Discussion to explain cos it'll take this thread off-topic :D)

I was having a little noodle on the red special a couple of months back. I have to say I wasn't really getting on with it. One of its attractions is that it doesn't sound like a Fender or a Gibson, but right at the moment I'm well into my Gibson 335. And the other problem is I can only ever get "Brian May" to come out of it! :D

I'm not parting with it though, because I keep remembering how easy it was to get the harmony stuff out on this track - it was a real joy doing them... (and all I was really doing was finding out what my new BR1600 could do that day!)

OtDB (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=3785.msg154982#msg154982)

Of course it's not ... easy ... but you sure make it sound so easy.

Looking forward to you getting settled in and getting back to posting some more wonderful music !!!

Just spent an hour or so in the new "studio" - music making has resumed! :)

(Bit of a relief actually!!)

Haven't tried microphones yet, I think I'll need to deaden the room a bit (there's a bunch of rugs/etc ready for hanging) when I do.

oh yeah gody goody gumdrops i cant wait to hear what you get up to andy.

Excellent groove and flat out killer vocals harmonies.

Love that gritty rhythm guitar.

Thats a way out cool track - Great tester and taster. More please.

Now you are back in the studio, I look forward to hearing the next one off the line.

Geoff

Frigging great!. I love the wall of sound myself. It wraps itself around you.
A great groove. Yes you could cut and paste it up to 3.5 min easy I'm sure.

At the office right now. Looking for some background music. Nothing too distracting. Thought I'd try the Russebox. What the hell was I thinking?

Bump.

:D

Sadly, though, most of my stuff doesn't appear in my SC Jukebox (or On This Day, Latest Songs, etc) because most of them are hosted off at alonetone. Only these cheesy old ones that I didn't want to publish to the world at large are left on the SC server...