I See Through You - AndyR Original

[Flash Harry]

Splendid! Bravo!

[AndyR]

Thanks folks

Haylie - you would not believe how much I fussed over this one .

The piano, guitars, and bass parts are well over a month or two old. They are all pretty much 2nd or 3rd takes, and I've been obsessing over a) the guitars were too dirty and b) the piano and bass don't really play together too well in places.

But I knew there was something about them, which could take weeks again to recreate. So, instead, I worked on the drums and, eventually, the vocals to cover up the discrepancies. Right near the end I was still dreading having to redo the piano or bass. But the final vocal covered the worst bit, so I went with them (I figured out what the problem was, the piano and bass were played to DIFFERENT vocal performances with a click, not the final drums, so I was on a bit of a sticky wicket... I couldn't sing a decent vocal to re-record them to! So it was always going to be a compromise...)

Probably keeping those original parts (because I was scared of redoing them!) has worked in the track's favour.

But the vocal - complete nightmare to get right! Took about 3 weeks, recording 3 or 4 takes every day or so. I deleted a load the other day and then ended up with 8 new single-takes. I used "take 2" with one phrase from "take 6" because there was a nasty "dry mouth noise" on take 2's otherwise tasty version.

The problem was, I couldn't get straight in my head how the thing should be performed. If I could have done the vocal and piano live together, vocal would have been what I wanted. But I would also be presenting "creaky piano stool" and "andrew stomping on the pedal" noises.

By the way - what do you guys mean by a real piano?

If you mean acoustic, no, it's not. It's a Yamaha, er, P-60 (I think). About 5 or 6 years ago it was Yamaha's "student" stage piano. Feels a lot like the "real" pianos I've touched (although I'm a guitarist, remember). Not a lot of choices on board: two grand pianos, two electrics, two harpsichords, two organs I don't use, and one or maybe two string settings.

This was the brighter of the two grands, with all the on-board reverb switched off, straight into the BR. No compression, no EQ. I just added a reverb that was more under my control than the piano's.

What I did do, though, was use the BR's Mastering stuff separately on the three stereo sub-mixes of piano, mixed guitars, and bass before mixing with the drums and vocal. Using the multi-band compressor on them at that stage enabled me to smooth out the mix/performance more (it was all very "spikey" when mixed otherwise), but without losing too much "lightness". Then when I mastered the final mix I was able to be a lot more gentle, AND I was able to add dynamics during the mastering without it sounding obvious or squashing the loud bits. (I used to do this all the time on the old MBR, but it's more time consuming to do on the BR1600 because you can't use the Mastering algorithm on one stereo pair while listening to another)

I mixed it on the wednesday evening, wasn't too convinced, but Mrs R liked it. I did the final master of the 2nd of wednesday's mixes on the thursday evening, still wasn't convinced.... I checked it out Friday evening on various headphones and speakers, and decided it was probably "it". But I still left it til early Saturday for a final check before getting it off the box, converting to mp3 and posting.

It wasn't until I heard it on alonetone (before anyone else had listened to it) that I realised it was possibly better than I thought it was. I was relieved to finish, but a bit disapppointed - I really was posting it in a spirit of "oh f**k it, can't win em all" ... I was convinced that the vocal wasn't as good as I should have been able to do, and the whole thing had ended up as a bit of a plodder...

(The song originally started as a medium tempo country-rock thing on guitar, I got stuck on lyrics, so I took the pad and pen up to the piano. I was playing it at this speed for sorting out lyrics, Rachel heard it from her room and said "do it like that". Doing at this speed, the requirement for a chorus disappeared and the song was finished!)

... I'm already twiddling on the candidates for the "next one", trying to figure out how to avoid the fussing/obsessing phase (or at least reduce it somewhat! ).

[The Gobi Desert Canoe Club]

Magnificent. Roscoe

[Jarle]

Wow. This is fabulous. The piano sounds great and your singing is outstanding. So full of life and emotion. I love it. This deserves a





JOA

[Gritter]

Epic song...diggin' the drama - makes me think of Queen and Guns 'n Roses but your killer vocal makes this all your own.

[Hilary]

... I'm already twiddling on the candidates for the "next one", trying to figure out how to avoid the fussing/obsessing phase (or at least reduce it somewhat! ).

Andy you are so talented you really don't need to worry - I challenge you to do the next one live, one take - come on now you know you secretly want to xx

[64Guitars]

Excellent song. I love the piano. It's the right instrument for this song. Brilliant vocals, as always. The drums sound great too. Not sure if they're a kit that you actually played, loops and samples that you selected and sequenced, or a drum machine that you programmed. But, however you did it, I'm sure that the drums were made for the song, as opposed to some preset patterns from a drum machine or a simple repeating loop. Well done.

[Tangled Wires]

Back for more of this stunner, it has been going around in my head all day

Loved reading the story of how it all evolved too.

[AndyR]

Drums are the BR1600's onboard stuff.

I start with one of the preset patterns that seems to fit the vibe. There usually seems to be one or two candidates at least. When choosing between them, I'm most interested in the hi-hat patterns, I want to fiddle with the preset's hi-hat as little as possible, so I choose the one that seems to have most promise.

I then copy that pattern and set up a song that uses it exclusively.

That's the click track that I record to.

At some point I bite the bullet and start "doing" the drums.

What this usually involves (and did in this case) is taking various copies of the original pattern and tweaking it. Adding fills, cymbals, or changing the dynamics. On certain bars it also means removing kick or snare beats, or moving them sometimes.

When most of the "main groove" areas are sorted with their additional cymbals, we're almost there. In this case, I'd also created a couple of patterns with one Crash/kick or one Ride/kick at the front of the bar as well (copying the slight delay on the first beat that the original preset has).

After that, there's usually one or two places that "stick out". In this case it was hi-hat. One of them had "too much" activity (the hh pattern from the preset), the other had "too little" (none!). The patterns covering those bars had to be fiddled with for ages until it sounded close enough to a drummer doing what I wanted (with me not knowing what it was I wanted until I heard it!!).

So, yes, the drums were created for the song, BUT they were all based on the feel of the drummer from the original preset I used (without checking, I think that preset, copied but unadulterated, probably appears in bars 3-4 of the second verse).

[Bluesberry]

Son of a gun man..............a worthy addition, a huge concept, a fantastic ......... I'm at a loss for words, so I will just listen.  Very well done Andy.  My only critisism is the lack of big ass guitar solo at the end would have really done it for me......but thats just me............I will never get tired of big asses of guitar solos to end songs such as this......I am thinking of the GnR feeling I guess.  Well done man.