Great Expectations by Oldrottenhead

[Oldrottenhead]

Wowowwow - it is what it is

... and that's utterly FAB

I see what you've done, I understand how you did it, I even recognise some of those creative steps... but I just couldn't manage the bit that lets you go "hey that works, I'll go with it like that".

Maybe I'm too rooted in my basic "song and arrangement in my head before recording" approach. But even when I use the recording machine during the songwriting, and I use some of the techniques you describe (I'm doing it right now, the machine is next to the keyboard I'm typing on, the song started as a "Robin Trower" guitar riff last weekend, I caught it on the machine, sang some stuff, copied and pasted more sections, inserted chunks, wrote the final lyrics, cried about it. Then I switched to recording "She's Dead" from scratch, sorted that out. Then after work each day I cam back to this band thing, practised different parts, wrote new hooks, switched across different instruments, etc, etc, just jamming along, recording some if it was cute, new, and I didn't want to forget it... and now its's "enough of that" - I think I know what needs playing "for real" throughout ... and I'm getting up the energy to do the bass part. In this thing I'm actually making some arrangement decisions/choices I wouldn't usually contemplate, I'm quite excited to see what happens, but I still have to play it all again, none of the parts are keepers - they have mistakes in or don't have the right tonality for what's in my head, or too many notes, or whatever... at least the bluddy drums are finished, though!!! )

... even when I take that sort of approach, which I'm guessing you recognise some or most of, I'm still rooted in the "how would the Andrew Russe Band play it?".

I'm taking a break, listening to Great Expectations on repeat... as a creator, not as listener... and I'm thinking, if this had been mine, I'd be thinking "it's not finished"... each time it goes round I hear some new bit that I'd want to fix if I'd played it, because I wouldn't be able to see the arrangement "pattern" or "template" that it "properly" fits into... basically, I'd think it was distracting from the song, that's my one rule of thumb, everything I do on recording/arranging comes down to: "does it help the song", I apply it to everything (including my vocal! when I was in a band, the other dudes didn't seem to grasp that I applied the same "but it don't bluddy fit the song!!!!" to my vocal...) anyways...

But when I switch back to "listener" mode on this, none of it matters... it's complete, nothing distracts or subtracts, it all adds, the whole is perfect and there's nothing I want changed... Don't bother wrapping it, I'll take it now...

Somehow you always manage to stick a song onto something in such a way that means it takes no sh!t from the backing band LOL
And you do it with out damaging the backing band!

Woah... I don't know how you do it... AWE 

EDIT: I see Ferryman's been doing the same as me

you need to read "shakey" an official biography of Neil Young.