Sooner or Later - AndyR Original

[Ferryman]

Andy, this is just fantastic on so many levels. It's a very strong song and hugely commercial, with some clever key changes and drum programming (Ted has competition!). The vocal performance is excellent and all the instruments are so well played (altho I would have loved a screaming guitar solo at some point  ). And the bass part is indeed excellent. But it's the production that takes it to a higher level for me, I can understand why it takes you a long time to produce a song like this. So many subtle touches that make this as polished as anything you will hear anywhere. I knew the MBR was capable of something like this, and you have proved it.

Thanks you so much for all your recording tips, they are SO helpful. I will be trying that vocal trick on my next effort. And will be striving for that bar you just raised!!

Oh and it was me that asked for the lyrics - the "underwear" lyric piqued my interest  Thanks for sharing, they're great lyrics.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Greeny]

All the slick, masterful production would count for nothing unless there was a top quality bit of songwriting and musical ability sitting underneath the sheen. And man, this is really is a great song and performance. We can learn so much from you production-wise, but we can also just listen and enjoy songs like this. Your vocals alone are outstanding. It's wonderful.

[launched]

Thanks Andy for sharing many of your technical details with us - Excellent!! So many things I want to try now...

Thanks,

Mark

[AndyR]

Thanks again folks - just listened to it again myself, I'm satisfied now, I've even started to forget the "issues" I know are there but probably no-one else can hear...

Ferryman - guitar solo, hmmm... just done the durty blooz thing... I'm not sure my playing is up to "screaming guitar solos" anymore (if it ever was!), I specialise more in tasteful little guitar bits that adorn mixes now!

I'll bear it in mind though!

My only negative is.. I can't friggin download it.. Sob...Sob...

Ah! I didn't think of that... I don't really want to make the stuff on soundclick downloadable - and I thought I was saving space here on the MBR server!! I can't attach it to this thread now it's started, can I? Or can I??...

EDIT: Nope can't see how to do it...

[Ted]

My only negative is.. I can't friggin download it.. Sob...Sob...

Ah! I didn't think of that... I don't really want to make the stuff on soundclick downloadable - and I thought I was saving space here on the MBR server!!

Damn. My regular geek trick doesn't work either.  SoundClick and MySpace are onto me.

Andy: Great song and great production.  How's that therapy coming?  Remember? We were going to try to capture our ideas, and try not turn everything into a massive production.  This song sounds like a relapse for you.   

Question:  I've got tweakophobia.  Do you suppose I'd get the same "compress it to death" effect by just using HardComp, untweaked?

[AndyR]

Therapy's going great, Ted! I tend to do to a song what it needs - and this one needed, er, polishing in all departments... my thinking when I made that (possibly foolish) statement about capturing ideas was along the lines of "let's try songs that don't need the full works..."

Greeny's latest one has got me thinking though. I do have a whole bunch of old songs that have never been arranged much further than me and an accoustic... I have synths with strings on...  2 plus 2, equals, er...

On the compress it to death question - I'm not near my MBR at the moment, so I'm not sure about HardComp. I strongly suspect that the answer is "no" though - I've heard HardComp on a mix, and the job it does is not what you're after.

This is what I did: I took something like MixDown or PreMaster, and saved it over User and Song presets, naming them as appropriate: AngGCmp, AngVox, AngBVox, AngBass, etc... (my nickname is Angus).

Give it a go, take one of those presets, go into LOC and stick it on the vocal track to be hammered. Go into CMP, and set the Lo, Mid, and Hi ratio all to INF (don't mess with anything else in here yet). Go into EQ and take loads of Lo and Mid off, and boost Hi. That's how I did it. Next time, I'll lower the Lo, Mid, Hi thresholds in CMP to about -20 to -30 each and see what that does...(!)

[guitarron]

good song-good arrangement-nice production
nice vox too Andy

[hooper]

Congratulations on a fine production. I like the detail in the (almost orchesteral) arrangement and the well-engineered mix. This song has all the stuff!

Also- As you may be aware, Bob Dennis who was the mastering engineer at Motown back in the day describes the compression tecnique you mention as the 'Exciting Compressor'.  It appears (and sounds) to me that the [ENH].... the Enhancer effect of the Micro-BR does a similar job.  Ie: It boosts a selected frequency, say 5K, and I think adds compression.

[knniggits]

Very polished song,great vocals,BRAVO

[AndyR]

Also- As you may be aware, Bob Dennis who was the mastering engineer at Motown back in the day describes the compression tecnique you mention as the 'Exciting Compressor'.  It appears (and sounds) to me that the [ENH].... the Enhancer effect of the Micro-BR does a similar job.  Ie: It boosts a selected frequency, say 5K, and I think adds compression.

Yep that's the stuff - "Exciting Compressor". I found the articles via a thread on here (I've got links on my explorer at home, I'll dig them out and post them). Interesting what you say about the Enhancer on the MBR - I wrote it off because the articles I read said how the "Exciting Compressor" method, for the author, beat the Aural Exciter and various 70s-80s inventions that claimed to do the same thing, because it sounds more natural. I did actually find it gave me a more controllable/understandable effect than the Enhancer when I tried it a while back.

But maybe give the MBR enhancer effect a go, Ted?

There's another trick I use but it won't work on the MBR because you need to be able to access the reverb only, not the original signal. If I ever have a problem on a vocals I'll transfer to my DAW and do the following:

Copy lead vocal track
Slide it slightly later by a miniscule amount
Stick your reverb (set up for wet only) on an auxiliary bus
On the delayed version only, set the aux send to pre-fader
Turn the track's fader down so no dry signal gets to the mix
Use the original vocal in the mix
Use the delayed track's aux send as a "reverb volume" control

This has the effect of separating the vocal slightly from it's reverb - you can put LOADS of reverb on with out muddying the vocal An engineer taught me this and said it's an old rock and roll trick that John Lennon used a lot on his solo stuff - basically you're sticking the reverb on a single tight delay. But for it to not sound too "John Lennon in the bathroom" you've got to be able to lose the delay itself and only get the reverb from it.

Anyway, I'm begining to understand that the main thing is "less is more" I think
My early efforts were "wot's an enhancer? (for example) Dunno, certainly could do with some enhancing, bang a bit on then... can't hear it, bang a bit more on... oh yeah, that's doing something, that'll do..."

Now, I'm getting to the stage of "Why isn't this basic part working? Is it this actual track's fault, or is it another track causing it? OK, now I've identified the culprit, how do I fix it by taking something away rather than adding something..."

If only I could apply that thinking to the number of over-dubs!! I'm begining to think that the famous Brian May harmony guitars sound might have a little of this behind it in it's genesis... the first two albums are a little bit "ho-hum" on the guitars - nice stuff, but possibly they were subject to "there's something missing, let's put another guitar part on it..."

Then suddenly on Sheer Heart Attack that signature harmony sound jumps out at you. I can imagine Brian May thinking "I'm sure I need layers of guitars, I can't stop doing them anyway... so how do I get this stuff right, under my control, with the minimum of fuss..." and then coming up with a very disciplined method of selecting, arranging, and carefully recording only the parts that do the job.