Sleeping With The Ghost - AndyR Original (Remixed)

[Hook]

I'm intrigued by the story also for this spectacular tune! I love everything about this tune, well done.
Rock On!

[AndyR]

Thanks folks, been a bit busy (recording loads - hold on to yer hats in a week or so!! I'm even involved in a full-on collab with someone, I never thought I was gonna do that - especially writing the song together from scratch before recording, I've been creating the demo from the parts all day, waiting for the other party's verse lyrics and guide vocals at the moment. And it's all taking a bit of time... I'm exhausted).

Anyway, for everyone asking what this one's about and where the story comes from:

Er... out of my head

I was exploring the break up of my first marriage, but I don't think I actually knew it was breaking up at the time.

It was about not being able to go with someone's offer because of guilt from the past and, if it goes far enough, how the guilt could carry you beyond the grave... Something like that anyway (I've had a few brandies - hope this makes sense!)

Some of the imagery came from two places - memories of a UK children's TV program when I was younger, and Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles - particularly the "Baskerville legend" itself.

[AndyR]

@ na_th_an, just listening to your "M.E.R. under the table", made me realise I forgot to answer your question (it was the brandy ).

I don't actually know how many vocals there are now. When I did the remix I used the stereo submixes that already existed - they did the job, so I didn't have to investigate the mono tracks (and there's lots of them).

I think it's something like:

"Ooo & mmm" Choir - 8 voices
"Wailing" Choir - 4 voices wailing, 4 voices oo-ing
"Main" Choir - 8, possibly 16, voices. Might be as much as three parts, and probably doubled in octaves.

The "Ooo & mmm" choir provides the gentle bvox throughout and then a hefty part of the "bed" of the main choir at the end. It still doesn't sing any lyrics under the main choir though. Because there are no hard consonents in the parts, I was able to use large amounts of delay to spread it all further.

The "wailing" choir is only on the instrumental. It was meant to be just one voice giving us some sort of ghost wailing somewhere off down the hall, up the stairs, wherever... but it didn't work. I was about to scrap it, disappointed, when I tried doubling it, messing with the EQ and reverb. That was better. And then I thought "ghosts don't just wail, they moan", so I added the counterpoint oo parts.

The big "main" choir came afterwards when I was getting over-enthusiastic with my new BR1600 (this was the first proper track I did with it). I thought I'd finished, but just dialed up another layer of 8 tracks and started winging it. I kept falling around laughing as I was hearing the results. By the time my wife came home it was in this state (choir a bit louder), I thought it was just an exuberant joke I'd been having with myself and I was so proud of it. But she said, no it's part of the track, keep it on there.

[na_th_an]

Wow! That's a MASSIVE vocal section! No wonder that it sounds that awesome. I've created multi-part vocals in the past and it's exhausting. Once I cheated, I recorded my 3 or 4 armonies and then used chorus and track duplication with small delays to "multiply" them. It doesn't work quite well, of course.

When I began recording multi-tracked music in the early 2000 (the summer of 2001 I believe to have created my first proper album in the good ol' Cool Edit 2000 - 4 tracks and LOTS of bouncing) I was listening to Queen quite a lot and I experimented with multi-tracked vocals. I overdid it, but some stuff was interesting. It's very old, but I think I may post an example later. It's a shame that back then storage was sparse and I didn't keep the individual tracks, not even the bounced 4 tracks. Back then I knew nothing about mixing and it was a matter of luck 90% of the time.

[AndyR]

Yep, Queen is where I come from too... Some other places, but for longer than I care to remember, I have periods of listening to just Queen. Can't do it at the moment though, I'm trying to "de-Freddie" a lead vocal I have to do...

[Farrell Jackson]

This is a great song and your vocal performances, both lead and backing, are excellent. I've not heard the original mix but this one does it for me.....nice writing, performance, and remix. It's very deserving of my 1000 post (whoo Hoo !). Well done Andy.

Farrell