the brass and how I did my big band track

trev · August 21, 2011, 12:31:10 PM

Thanks for all your really positive comments on my big band track and as a few of you have asked how I did it - here goes... first of all I'd love to say that I just played all of the brass instruments but I think we all know that that didn't happen

The brass sound itself is not a synth but real brass samples - so I started off with a couple of brass samples and then made the intro adding bass and drums etc, The verses are all me playing piano, strings, bass guitar (A line 6 bass guitar on the acoustic bass setting) and vocals. It took a bit of tweaking to make everything sit together and the only other samples on the track are the sax solo and a string swirl in a couple of places which is an orchestra sample. All of the other strings are just played in from a keyboard. It was strange not putting any guitars on (except bass) and even stranger trying to sound like a rat pack type of person. The brief for the track was to reflect the highlife and glamour of the jet set in the golden age of the Sinatra type movies. Its great having somewhere to post things like this as otherwise (unless the film company go for it) it would probably never have got played again.

thanks again everybody - hope this answered your questions

Trev

Blooby · August 21, 2011, 12:52:17 PM

Was the arrangement a lot of trial and error, or did it come together pretty quickly?

Blooby

Farrell Jackson · August 21, 2011, 12:54:44 PM

Thanks for the explanation Trev! You did a great job of making all the instruments work and you did a real convincing vocal take by capturing the martini vibes of Frank S., Dean M., and the rest of rat pack boys! Again, nice work!

Farrell

trev · August 21, 2011, 01:28:50 PM

Hi Blooby

The basic arrangement came together quite quickly but I did do quite a bit of shifting stuff around to tighten it up to try and keep the energy levels up. I need to fix the ending on it too and I would have liked to have some backing vocals on it too but there just wasn't time - it was a good laugh tho!

and thanks Farrell glad you enjoyed it.

trev

Rata-tat-tat · August 21, 2011, 02:58:33 PM

Hey... Trev thanks for the rundown. I love seeing others recording methods. Definitely gives some perspective alternate recording methods. I still dont think I've found my preferred method.

trev · August 23, 2011, 03:18:20 AM

Hi Rata-tat-tat

I think I'm the same regarding recording methods. I tend to change my methods to suit what type of thing the track is - generally I tend to to a drum track first and a guide track to state the chords and then try to get the drums and bass working together before I do much else - most of my guide guitars make it through to the end result as previously would do a guide guitar track that I quite liked bits of, but wasn't played well enough, so I would then spend way too much time analysing it and replaying and often as not losing the original feel. Now I tend to just whack a guitar on when I'm not really thinking and then edit it to see which bits I can keep and it works better for me now. I'm also trying to keep things simpler so I spend a lot of time taking things out now instead of putting more in.

Trev