Hocus Pocus - Focus - with phantasm777 drums and vocals!

[bruno]

*** Updated 29th Feb - added Franks drums and remixed ***

Version History
Updated with Franks vocals.
Original first track (1st Draft) link to soundcloud  :

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Track for phantasm777 as a potential collab

Apologies first - its a rough draft, put together in under two hours this evening. Its pretty complete though - drum machine always sounds naff though. Have to do this when everyone is in bed though - Mrs B hates this track with a passion, one of the few tracks I'm not allowed to play in the car :-) Thought it was complete enough to share though. Needed to get the idea of the track down do see if it would fit together and get across how I wanted it to sound finally.

phantasm777 do you fancy having a go at this?

Its a crazy song played at 100 miles an hour - but that's part of the charm!

For the technical folks - it was recorded on the BR1600 using internal model for Soldano amps - 5 guitar tracks using the Music Man Luke, bridge pickup EMG humbucker, L&R rhythm tracks doubled up, 2 tracks for the harmony guitar bit, 1 solo track, fretless bass and drum machine. Pushed the levels up in the mastering, using a Dance mix to give it a slightly heavier bass sound. Mastering is important!

B.

[phantasm777]

im sure i do, cannot listen right now it late. i'll have a listen tom. good thing you put drums on it, it reminds me where some of the drums fills are, iknow theres a few parts thats almost sound like a short drum solo and i gotta know when to do that. oh and whenevr you'd like a collab. email through this site, i would have hated missing this offer. fast is cool, i like slow and all speeds. this will prob be a song i can really let loose on. my main instrument and what im best at is drums, but in a few years look out on my bass playing, ask chris, i did damn well, wish i never stopped playing even though i was guitaring, and drumming in during not playing bass. anyways. i'll give a listen tomorrow. very late now. thanks,.

[bruno]

Cool - we can set it up and see what comes out the other end. Can use this as a guide- and I'll record the guitars over the top. I'm quite happy with the structure, although for some reason the drum machine was set to 107.3 bpm, very odd! I'll re-record with a mic'd up amp - and use the ToneBone (itching to use that!).

The really interesting thing about this song is that the main riff is really a jazz chord progression, and I never realised that until I learned to play the track - its not just minor chords, but all kinds of crazy chords - which means that your fingers get twisted into knots, and makes it difficult to play at speed. If you slow it down and play it clean, its lush!

Phantasm777 - presume that you are in the US - so 5 hours behind the UK?? Sunday morning in the UK right now :-) The drum machine is there more to keep me in time, feel free to be as creative as you like. Oh, and if you want to play the bass for this as well - feel free to!

When I said to Mrs B that I'd recorded this song - her reaction was "Oh no, not THAT song!" :-), and then proceeded to rename it "Paddle faster, I hear yodelling". I can't win!

Probably remix today - its not quite there - even as a draft. Will work out how to upload the WAV's and send you the link.
B

[lg]

I always loved this song...
Sounds like you got a handle on it, and it is progressing fine.

LG

[bruno]

LG - Hocus Pocus is definitely a Marmite track - you either love it or hate it. I love it, the family hate it.

I loved the craziness of this band - it still sounds fresh today, after all these years to my ears!
B.

[SharksDontSleep]

Fantastic playing Bruno.
Thanks for the technical bit too, always good to know what instruments are being used & how.

Can't wait to hear the finished article

Let the yodeling begin!!

[bruno]

Let the yodeling begin!!

Good thing I didn't have a mouthful of tea, else I'd have sprayed the computer 

Not sure we've got any takers for yodelling (yet) - this may turn into a labour of love!!!

[Gnasty]

Hey great take on this!! I love this tune.

I`m thinking this is your first collab so you probably want to post it in collabs first and then get takers on it, that way it doesn`t flood the jukebox. Then post it in covers or originals, whatever it may be.

Another thing from a technical point, i wouldn`t master it till you have everyone`s tracks. It`s much better to mix and then master every track last. Just my advice to you   But you may already know this.

Hope it turns out more than you thought it would! It usually does!

[bruno]

Hey Gnasty. Thanks for the comments. Yeah absolutely - still finding my way around the board. I should have posted on the collab part. Apologies.

My plan is to use this track posted as pretty much the blueprint for the song. I would like to build the song up from the drums up - so none of these blueprint tracks will remain in the end state. I thought I'd create this track together first, so that phantasm777 knows the speed and structure of the song - all of that should stay the same. Once I have the drum track, I'll re-record it all using miked amps. Mastering it is just a habit of mine, take the point though if these tracks were being re-used, I wouldn't master - its is the very last thing in the production chain :-)

My thinking is that doing this way should work better musically, as I can drive off the drums and bass, which is in reality how a band functions. Whether this works in practice is to be seen - but we'll give it a shot. I must say I like recordings to sound natural, so need a bit of sway! Once that is all done, I'll mix and master - and hopefully should sound good.

I'll post some feedback to this site as well - kinda what worked, and what didn't once complete.  Never collaborated in this way before - so am finding what works best.

In the end - the track currently posted will be deleted and replaced with the end state track (that's my plan) - so should be space neutral (bar some disk fragmentation, which is always a pain). We should be exchanging WAV files via a file share or FTP site - so that shouldn't be an issue.

B.

[phantasm777]

bruno, is this the version i should be doing drums too, or are you still working on it?

wow man thats a short version, lets do the full one!