"Step Right Up" a Hook original

[Hook]

Wrote this short tune yesterday and finished the lyric this morning. The tracks were recorded in my car, "guerrilla style"  with my ps-02. It's a 3 track with 10 virtual tracks per track so once you've recorded 3 tracks you have to bounce to clear up 2 tracks to record more, over & over, again, and again. It's a bit of a process and there's no undo feature!!! I plugged my uke in direct and used the zoom preset effects, vocals & drums are through the on board mic using vocal pre-sets (very few choices). The first drum sounds are my pockets, one with a bunch of change in it (hat) and a pack of mints in the other(snare). 2nd drum sound is back of uke.This tune is a total of 7 tracks
1 rhythm uke
1 lead uke (distortion)
1 lead vocal
1 psychedelic vocal
1 lap coins/mints drums
1 ukulussion
1 mono mix track of rhythm uke & 2 drum tracks

tracks imported to audacity for the mixdown/mastering

"Step Right Up"
written & performed by Hook
Rouge baritone ukulele

Step right up, try your luck
Show the world just what you got
Set the pace, blow the curve
Bob & swerve or you'll get hit a lot

Can you give as good as you get
Don't throw in the towel just yet

Step right up , life is luck
I need a chump you seem to be the right size
I can tell by your bling you can swing
Toss this ring and win your girl a prize

Put a smile on her face
Shoot a steady stream & you might win the race
Watch out a kid a kid & his dad
A dark horse  this might end up bad

Step right up, out of luck
Flash your grin, tune out the din of the sin
There's a small chance
That you just might win

[Redler]

It is the very first time I hear distored uke . It puts a nice flavour on this. Nice bunch of intruments and top class songwriting/performing as always! Psych voice is cool, too! Well done!

Kari

[FuzzFace]

Wow!  What a perfect little composition!  Very fresh-sounding.  Love the sound effects, and great vocals.

[64Guitars]

Hmmm.... This is the second Under2Fest entry in less than a week with a John Cage tribute at the end, bumping the file length to well over two minutes. Never noticed that in any other festival. Are people just dropping the levels at 1:59 during mastering to get their songs in the Under2Fest? If that's the case, it seems a shame to chop the end off a perfectly good song just to get it in the festival. Or is there another explanation for the silence? Just wondering.

[Hook]

Sorry about that 64, I trimmed the wave file and forgot to trim the mp3. My usual routine has been changed since I'm mixing songs off this recorder on audacity. It's funny, I was sure this tune ended at 2 min. & didn't think I would submit it for the festival but low and behold it ended at 1:59. The long length of silence was because the psych vocal track still was cycling almost inaudible but I just wanted to see how long it would go. I wanted the song to end abruptly and certainly wouldn't want to sacrifice the song for the fest , I was writing this for the fest but if it don't fit the criteria then its just a song! I trimmed the end and re-posted the tune, thanks for listening and the comments my friends!
Rock on!

[64Guitars]

Sorry about that 64, I trimmed the wave file and forgot to trim the mp3. My usual routine has been changed since I'm mixing songs off this recorder on audacity.

No problem. I always do my mixing in Audacity. One tip I can offer is that conversion to MP3 should always be the very last thing you do. Then the MP3 and the WAV file will be exactly the same in terms of editing and mixing. It also ensures that there's only one conversion to MP3. I don't know if the Zoom exports MP3 files, but I think some Micro BR users make the mistake of exporting an MP3 from their BR then importing it into Audacity for further editing and post-processing. That's a no-no. When you load an MP3 into Audacity, it converts it into its native format. Then when you export it, it gets re-encoded as an MP3. These unnecessary extra conversions from/to MP3 format degrade the sound quality because it's throwing away data each time. That's why it's important to make sure you only encode to MP3 once. So always work with WAV files in Audacity and make the MP3 conversion the very last thing you do. Never edit MP3 files directly if you can help it. The way I look at it, my objective in recording is to create a stereo WAV file master. I then have the option of making lower-quality copies of that master in MP3 format for posting. But the MP3 should never be thought of as the objective of recording. Perhaps a good analogy is film photography. If you want to get reprints of some of your photos, you don't take the prints in and ask for copies (you could, but the quality would be poor). Instead, you take the negatives in and have prints made from them. The negatives are your high-quality originals which you must keep in case you ever need reprints. In the same way, your WAV format stereo master is your high-quality finished recording from which you can later make lower-quality MP3 copies.

[Gnasty]

Oh yeah you talented son of a B!!!

This is kind of different from you. Love that panned right guitar
And those psychedelic delayed vocal effects.
Another hook classic!!!!!

[Gnasty]

I forgot to say your vocals are incredible and I
Forgot to because they never disappoint anyway.

[launched]

Dude, cool idea using the distorted uke! I also loved that weird vocal break.

Groovy tune!

Hmmm.... This is the second Under2Fest entry in less than a week with a John Cage tribute at the end, bumping the file length to well over two minutes. Never noticed that in any other festival. Are people just dropping the levels at 1:59 during mastering to get their songs in the Under2Fest? If that's the case, it seems a shame to chop the end off a perfectly good song just to get it in the festival. Or is there another explanation for the silence? Just wondering.

I'm the other culprit - My excuse is that I was using Tod's drum track which was over 2:00 long. I found a cool spot to stop, and then my mistake was that I silenced the remaining drumtrack instead of deleting it after a track mixdown using audacity. This kept the selection marker out there somewhere farther than 2:00. I didn't realize it until after I had uploaded the song, and I was just too put out to have to upload it again - Phone bandwidth at the time. The curse of Wilford Brimley...

Anyway, cool tune bro!

Mark

[tlsteel]

Very catchy and enjoyable tune. Well thought out and composed. Awesome!