"Damn Beatitude" original by Ted

[Ted]

Damn Beatitude

©2013 Ted Johnson
Everything: Ted
Recorded on Micro BR, Garage Band, and a bit of Audacity

Did you thumb a ride? Did you jump a train?
With that crazy cute girl, like "The Subterraneans?"

You had one last snack, left a mess and a note
Saying you'd be back, and you loved us, you wrote.
And you covered your tracks.
I give you credit for that.

Chasing meaning and self-inflicted pain.
Did you thumb a ride? Did you jump a train?

With your mother's wanderlust,
And your father's malcontent,
Shake off this crummy town's dust.
You never wanted my two cents.

Did you thumb a ride? Did you jump a train?
Didn't tip your hand; must have been spontaneous.

As the weeks go by, me, your dad, and your mom
Are like amateur detectives in a stupid sitcom.
And we hope and we brood
For your damn beatitude.

Just a bored kid wanting to be entertained.
Did you thumb a ride? Did you jump a train?

[Chorus]

Well, well, well... look who it is.

This song is about someone else who went missing.

I'm curious how this mix sounds. This is my most ambitious use of Garageband yet, but I'm not as confident in its mastering magic as I am with the MBR. I get vastly differing results depending on the headphones I use.




PS: I'm going back to lurk mode, but feel free to be as shameless as ORH is in grabbing my attention by PM, e-mail and Facebook if you want me to comment on your work.

[andy casson]

Ted the mix sounds marvelous in my dodgy iphone headphones! Love the bass lines and the crunchy guitar, curious to know who else went missing (as I have been pretty quiet for several months myself) - will PM/email etc you next time I post something!
Loved it

Andy

[Oldrottenhead]

nearly missed this but for the facebook link 

braw tell yuer maw, one for the pirpod. loving the vox like neil young muxed up with tom petty . magic.

[Jarle]

Nice work. Cool bass.

JOA

[Will23]

I think this is balanced well.  Well mixed, played and recorded.  What kind of equipment do you use for recording? 

[Geir]

Well well well ... Look who's back .. Even for just a quick visit.

This is fab Ted !!

On my third listen already, and there will be many more!!

It's is one of your best, and you have a lot of good ones. The bass is excellent and the guitar is really something else .... It lives it own life but ties it all together nonetheless !! Very clever.

I'm curious how you put this together too. My guess is that drums and strings are from garage band and that bass, guitar and vocals are recorded on the MBR. The harmonies are ace btw.

I agree on the mastering challenges in GarageBand. If you did the final mastering in gb I'm impressed. I've only mastered one song in GarageBand and I wished I'd exported it to the br for mastering as I did with the next gb song I recorded.

Please do elaborate on your process!!

And we want more !!!!


I'm a fan!

[Ted]

Thanks, Andy, Jim, Will23, Jarle, & Gier.

My guess is that drums and strings are from garage band and that bass, guitar and vocals are recorded on the MBR.

Bingo!

The first draft of the song was on acoustic guitar.

The second draft was in Garageband, using it like a word processor to arrange the song, drafting everything -- including guitar and bass using only the computer keyboard and the synth sounds. Then I exported those to the MBR and used them as reference tracks. Part of the guitar solo was even drafted using my Korg Nanopad2.

I recorded the guitar, bass, and vocals dry in the MBR. Then I bounced the guitar and bass separately to v-tracks adding my favorite MBR guitar/bass effects. I exported the dry and wet versions of these tracks so I could compare the MBR effects to the Garageband effects.

Before importing the guitar, I opened it in Audacity and added the wah effect to the solo sections. The vocals harmonies were by my Digitech Vocalist Live 2 with some compression, so I also used Audacity to mute the background noise added by the compression.

I decided I liked the guitar and bass effects of Garageband, so I did end up using the dry tracks from the MBR. I never even auditioned the wet tracks from the MBR.

I deleted the synth guitar and synth bass tracks from the project, so the only thing left were the drums and strings.

I'm used to songs from the MBR sounding different based on the listening environment (headphones, speakers, piPod, stereo, etc.) I'm using, but the variation I hear in this song is a lot more extreme.

Are you saying I could have exported the song from Garageband without any mastering effects, and then mastered it in the MBR? I considered it, but I wasn't sure if it would have made much of a difference. Even though I'm really burned out on tinkering with this song, I may try that and see if MBR mastering balances things out.

[Ted]

Are you saying I could have exported the song from Garageband without any mastering effects, and then mastered it in the MBR? I considered it, but I wasn't sure if it would have made much of a difference. Even though I'm really burned out on tinkering with this song, I may try that and see if MBR mastering balances things out.

Geir: I spent about an hour last night exporting the unmastered mixed from Garageband and importing them to the MBR to see if I'd get a better master out of the MBR. I didn't like what I was hearing, so I abandoned the idea. It still might be an idea worth trying, but I'm going to live with this mix and move on to the next song.

[Bluesberry]

Deadly song Ted, I'll be back for more listens as the days turn warmer........I just got an iPad myself and am dabbling a bit.  So far all I have done is record out of the iPad headphones out into my BR-1200.  I am so comfortable recording on the Boss machines and cant get on with garageband at all so far.  My head is thick like that sometimes.  I am loving the sound of this and am inspired to explore iPad recording some more........oh yeah, great song Ted, a real groover.

[bruno]

Great song - love that swirly guitar sound.
B