The Practical Gardener - AndyR Original (Remastered)

[AndyR]

Many thanks folks

I was wondering who would spot what.

Elsewhere, someone has spotted the Jethro Tull influence. Definitely, at the time this was written, there was lots of exploring Ian Anderson's playing and songwriting, and there is some chord progression similarity by coincidence (see below).

I was also going a bit "medieval" and 16th Century ... Elizabeth's Room and Sleeping with the Ghost were written shortly after this. Actually, if you're interested, I'm collecting the 1994 songs into a playlist, in the order in which they were written, on alonetone Missing Pieces - Songs written in 1994. I was quite surprised seeing the progression when I put them in order like this - but you won't get the full effect yet because of the missing songs. 9 are done so far, I'm expecting to record another 5, hopefully this year, but some of them might be rather hard to achieve... (I've been putting them off since I joined songcrafters!)

Btw - you can find all the available ones, individually, if you know what you're looking for, in my jukebox here on songcrafters too, but I'm not aware of a way to link them together like this.

NEways...

It's very interesting folks saying Pink Floyd. YES! But I didn't know until the other day...

When Mrs R and I had heard me play this (just acoustic and vocals in the living room), I explained where I'd taken the chord/bass progression from originally, I'd loved these chords since the early 80s, I'd kept playing them in rehearsals hoping bands would go "let's cover that for a laugh!"... but they never did.

However, I wasn't worried when I nicked the chords for this song in 1994, and I'm even less worried now... I explained how I'd since found similar progressions in Let It Grow (Eric Clapton), We Used To Know (Jethro Tull and therefore Hotel California), etc, etc... and then I went "OH SHIT!!! It's in something else that was possibly a LOT more relevant to me in 1994" ... She went "what?" so I put The Wall on... she had NO IDEA what it was (wha?!?!) until Another brick Part 1 came up later - and then she went "that's a lot like that We don't need no education song... did they copy it?" ( hehe), but she did kinda hear the chords I was talking about... it's the intro to In The Flesh... that I'd also played a lot but never put 2 and 2 together...

And then I thought - did Pink Floyd nick it off The Damned too?!?!?! LOL  (Just checked... I don't think so, they were both recorded in 1979, and released November 1979).

Anyway, listening to The Wall (still my favourite album for when I'm down and need cheering up!) probably had some affect on how I decided to arrange this.

This one's middle 8 was "broken", I couldn't remember how to play the chords rhythmically (songs from back then are handwritten with the chords written in pencil) ... I do remember it was VERY Jethro Tull and involved a change of rhythm/tempo. Also I didn't like a lot of the words of the middle 8 - it was all a bit fey. So I distilled what was there down to what we have here, the "hue and cry" ... "still today" section. The chord progression is roughly the same, and "The hue and cry was heard for miles" has kept its original tune but otherwise, it's just keeping the original spirit of the thing: opening lament, frantic interlude telling us what it was like when "the thief got away", and then the closing lament.

Once the recording started getting big on me, that's when the guitar solo stuff occurred, and yeah, I guess we were already locked into "Dave Gilmour" territory. I wasn't thinking that at the time, I was just worried about how to get through it, how to fill the thing with noise rising to an abrupt dead stop, with the vocalist somehow making sense at the same time. But listening now, yeah.

The bass... haha... it's the guide bass. It was done with the same "fuzztone" bank on my basspod as Me Too was. It seemed almost good enough, but it did cause problems during mixing in the closing lament because when I originally played it I thought we were going to get frantic again... (the guitar solo was to be another section at the end, massive fade out thing, but we decided it was better to end "oh well, I'll slit my wrists then, or not... woteva"). So there's some "interesting" picking on the bass that I had to hide.

The bass was played with a plectrum, that always seems to add a little something. And it is strongly backed up with some bottom end keyboards - both the electric piano and, in the middle section and closing lament, a big throaty organ. Those are probably giving most of the "body" of the bass part, leaving the bass free to give us the attack and grindy bit (which I had to disguise in the closing section).

Mixing and production, this thing went through a LOT of experiments. I now know how to use a limiter effectively before/during mixing. And various other tricks, all aimed at removing ALL transients from everything before mixing. This new knowledge got used again on When I try To Be Me, which was recorded afterwards, and I had to remix that several times to calm it down!

I sat on the mastered mix for The Practical Gardener for a week or two because it just didn't feel quite as mind-blowing as we thought it did at first. Then, one afternoon, waiting for her to come home, I ended up doing what a modern day mastering engineer apparently invariably has to do nowadays - put some life back into it with the volume control (because the mix itself is already loud and fat when he/she gets it, and some of the dynamics might have gone or not be as striking as they could have been).

I did it in audacity on a copy of the final mastered version, just cutting and boosting volume. I added the fade in, roughly matched the intro guitar at the end of it to the acoustics in the backing, made sure the opening chord/vocal was MUCH BIGGER but tailing away quickly so I could get the crescendo through to the end of the first lament. That all worked so well, I did similar to the closing lament (that actually involved lowering stuff). Then I then lowered the links a bit, and finally I went into the middle section putting mini crescendos up to the peaks I wanted... I had played/planned it all like that, but I was a bit conservative when mixing, so they weren't as pronounced as they could have been. I realised that this one actually wants that.

Finally, having saved it, I hard limited the whole mix and re-amplified it to zero. Because all the transients in the submixes had been cleaned before the main mix, this meant this last limit didn't really lose me any parts or make it sound squashed like it does usually... instead, all it did was remove the transients caused in the mix and enhanced by my original mastering (eg vocal has some energy but not a spike, but combined with a guitar mix, equally clean of spikes, suddenly there's a massive transient spike when the two are mixed). The effect was a) the track finally got up to the volume I wanted, b) sounding much bigger, and c) suddenly I could hear all the guitars and vocal in the middle section, separated as intended... bonus!

When Mrs R got home, I played the original to her and then this. She was flabbergasted at what artistic effect musical use of the volume control can have...

[Ferryman]

Blimey, you should write a book on writing, recording and producing music..... Seriously, could you pm me some of the lessons you learned about limiting if you get time?

I just listened again on my new monitors. They're not fully burned in yet but it sounds even better than last time!

[AndyR]

Blimey, you should write a book on writing, recording and producing music..... Seriously, could you pm me some of the lessons you learned about limiting if you get time?

I just listened again on my new monitors. They're not fully burned in yet but it sounds even better than last time!

The quickest way is to share where I got them from...

Have you come across this guy on youtube?

Produce Like a Pro

His name's Warren Huart. He's an English musician/producer based in LA.

I subscribed several years ago because he had an in-depth demo/review of the Yamaha THR100-HD amp (which is what I use, don't remember whether I already owned it by then - but he would have sold it to me!).

He's really enthusiastic and keen that anyone can learn. I fancy he might rub some folks up the wrong way, but I quite like his delivery/personality - he's sat in his own studio, it feels like he'd make sure you had a cup of tea etc etc and would let you fiddle with the knobs and faders on his kit.


Anyway, didn't watch him too often back then - he generates too much content for me to keep up with!

Then a few weeks back, he posted this:
How to get LOUD MIXES!
... just when I wanted to know

From there, I wanted to know "what on earth is parallel compression?"
And he posted this a few days later:
Secret Digital Mixing Trick for Analog Sound - Parallel Compression
(having cleaned the unwanted transients, you're highlighting the performance's transients and bringing them back in using a copy of the track and heavy compression - a technique I sometimes use on vocals is a variation on this... it's also called New York Compression... but this guy demos it and actually makes it happen in front of you).

I had to translate his DAW work to the BR1600 (although, he's almost convinced me to switch, and it would be much quicker that way), but flip!! Much of this was used on Practical Gardener... Mrs R had said "you're putting loads more effort into this one, is it special?" so I showed her the videos and explained what the techniques were - she started getting interested too.
For example, I've been terrified of over compressing or limiting the lead vocal... no more! That's the first thing I do once I've got the take. Then I can add parallel compression to bring out the juicy bits.

I'm not going to do this, but I am tempted to go back to Edith Finally Gets It and remix... that could get seriously WOAH!! if you did this to it.

I've spotted other videos I need to watch:
How to clean up a Muddy Mix
8 Tips for Amazing Low End

Sounds like the sort of thing a chap needs to know, eh?

Check out the descriptions in the videos - he describes everything, links everything.

Just noticed, he also has an "academy" you can join via his own website.

[Flash Harry]

Boom - Absolutely.

[cuthbert]

Holy mackerel, that is one dynamic song! Really enjoyed that (the bass sounds ginormous). I intend to subscribe to Produce Like a Pro - many thanks for sharing the link.

[TPB]

Well I listened at work on my crappy computer speakers and thought it was good so tonight I put it on the studio monitors and wow what a production needed better speakers to catch all the parts
Bravo
Tim

[Ferryman]

Thanks Andy, I have watched a few of the Warren Huart videos so will definitely check out more.

Keep up the good work in the cupboard!

[thetworegs]

Just WOW!! ?

[Mike_S]

Excellent song Andy, it really blows the doors off in places and along with those brooding quieter parts this is really pretty proggy stuff. Well worth investigating... and I dig that lead playing.

Mike

[AndyR]

I was just rereading this, and I realised I never said which song by The Damned I was referencing!

It was "I Just Can't Be Happy Today". Not the riff, but the chords under the title hook:

Em, B/F#, G, A9

It's what the medieval lament part of this is written over.

I love that chord progression. In fact, I've probably used it in all sorts of places in various keys over the years, as I've discovered many others have...

But I first heard it in the hands of The Damned.
I hated punk originally, still don't hold it in any reverence at all.
But The Damned, WHAT a band. (They're prog-rockers really LOL )