The Practical Gardener - AndyR Original (Remastered)

[tonyc]

wow brilliant song andy , i hear shades of dave bowie in your voice , superb lyrics glad you found this one out great listen ...cheers tony cee

[Bluesberry]

This is brilliant....I am so glad this got bumped back...thanks to SteveM....good stuff......so superb...its my favorite AndyR song suddenly....a solo like that could feed a whole villiage...outstanding

[BerryPatch]

Second time I had to post this comment, let's hope it doesn't crash again

Flipping heck, this one really soars. So much contrast between the electric piano/acoustic parts and the full, open sounding verses. Everything's arranged and mixed perfectly, I'm especially in love with those backing harmonies in the mix (to die for!). Lovely song and a stunning vocal performance Andy.

[Geir]

oh my ......


this is just too good

we're not worthy !!!

[AndyR]

Aww cheers folks

I hadn't realised this one had done some more business - I must use the "New replies to your posts" more often.

That's cheered me up considerably. I'm struggling with the last bit of my first thing from the Studio One DAW.

The Practical Gardener IS one of my favourite productions. I've always loved the verse chords and the imagery, and what it grew into when I recorded it was quite an eye-opener... it made me realise that nearly all of my favourite but flawed acoustic ditties from the last XX years could perhaps have more legs than I thought, and would be too difficult to do.

There's something interesting here, though, Practical Gardener is one of the things I've been referring back to while working in the DAW. My mindset is "I should AT LEAST be able to match this from the BR1600" ... I know, I'm crazy!

Actually, a lot of the final production that makes this recording of The Practical Gardener so dramatic and sparkle like this didn't happen on the BR1600, I did a whole bunch of "post-mastering mastering" in Audacity.

BUT I discovered over the weekend that I was using an Audio Driver set to 48.0K to work on source material at 44.1K and render wav/mp3 at 44.1K to do this... And I was doing it on my living room hifi not in the studio!

That's not enough for me to go back and redo it, although I've just discovered I've still got the wav files that came off the BR1600 for this song, I Give In, and Silver Pillow, which were treated in the same way (in fact, the acoustic ones before that were the first time I did such a thing, the audio needed editing and the addition of volume changes improved the masters, and...)

Anyway, it doesn't completely f**k it up at all... but I've got bigger ears now, and I can hear now how you're all slightly in the "cheap-seats" with this version.

I've got three wav versions of The Practical Gardener:

• What came off the BR1600 - mastered on there. I came close to publishing that but, on my hifi it didn't sound as dramatic as I was hoping, and I knew it had more in there. The mp3 exported was particularly "lacklustre" (which I now believe to have been caused, at least in part, by the sample rate mismatch, I might try that again in a minute now I've fixed the mismatch).
• Adding the dynamics I felt were needed was going to be an utter pig on the BR. Seeing as it was all volume changes on the stereo mix, I decided to do it in Audacity. So this wav has the fade in you can hear on the published version. It has the tiny fades before the big entries so they sound even bigger. It has... blah, blah, I can't remember it all... There are some tricky little volume changes in the big middle section that were surprisingly effective... BUT this version is also COMPROMISED - in the same way Mrs R and I witnessed the other night on a new one - it lacks some of the flavour to the sound that the BR1600 file has. Part of it is "breath" on the vox, and over all clarity and warmth. And this is all, I believe, down to me using Audacity to render the audio changes using a driver running at a different sample rate. It seems to be playback is fine, but writing new audio (basically converting 48.0 to 44.1 on the fly) is not so groovy.
• The third version is what I exported from Audacity as mp3 and published. This has more limiting applied to Version2. I wondered whether it could take it, and it could. It's louder, and it had an acceptable level of "has this been limited?" But it's got the compromised vibe inherited from version 2...

What I might do is bring the original BR wav into Studio One's mastering suite - the volume edits would be easier to achieve than in Audacity (and infinitely easier to achieve than on the BR1600). But that's a lot of work that could be better spent on the new one.

However, the problem I'm having with the new one is lack of volume. I'm learning stuff right now, in mixing, stuff that I was doing by accident in the BR1600 because I was restricted in what I could do. That will give me more loudness and clarity than I have right at the moment, enough loudness to compete ok with other posters on alonetone. But the new one will still suffer from being followed on my playlist by Silver Pillow, I Give In, and then this. I might actually have to go back to Audacity and, reduce the volume by 2-3db on those and then update their versions on alonetone (I'm more tempted now that I've found I have the versions prior to the final limiting stages)

If that is what I have to do, I will be also be tempted to go through Studio One instead of Audacity.
But doing that will commit me to having to redo the volume edits in The Practical Gardener (I can't take the edited version, it's already compromised). So, who knows...

Anyways... many thanks