Abilene by Cuthbert and 64Guitars

[64Guitars]

written by Bob Gibson, Lester Brown and John D. Loudermilk

From Wikipedia: "Abilene is a song written by Bob Gibson, Lester Brown and John D. Loudermilk, and recorded by American country music artist George Hamilton IV. The song reached number one on the U.S. country music chart for four weeks, and peaked at number 15 on the pop music charts. George Hamilton IV performed "Abilene" in the 1963 movie Hootenanny Hoot."

Cuthbert: All vocals and acoustic guitars (a Guild D25 and a Wishnevsky; both recorded with the Micro BR's internal microphone).
Candy & Cathy: Backing vocals. *
64Guitars: Bass (Gibson EB-0), drums, and lead guitar solo. The drums are the free "BrushKit" soundfont SFZ samples by Jeff Glatt at Bandshed. I entered the drum note data manually in a MIDI track in Ardour. For the guitar solo I used my Godin xtSA electric using the piezo bridge pickup and the BR-864's Acoustic Processor effect. I wanted to emulate a 12-string acoustic guitar, so I made a copy of my guitar solo track and dropped it by an octave, then I nudged it slightly backward on the timeline to simulate the lower string being plucked slightly before the adjacent high string.

* Candy & Cathy are actually Cuthbert's voice raised an octave with Adobe Audition's Stretch and Pitch effect. If you only double the pitch, it will sound like Munchkins or The Chipmunks. To make it sound more natural, you have to also adjust the formant, which Audition does quite well. If anyone's interested in using this technique to achieve female-sounding backing vocals, there's a free VST called RoVee which does a fairly good job. And some DAWs (Audition and Ardour, for example) have built-in pitch-shift and formant effects, so check your DAW's manual.

[Blooby]

I felt like I was on a raft, floating down a lazy river. Love the vibe here.

Blooby

[guitarron]

Great job Cuthbert and 64guitars!
Love background singers and vocals. Very natural sounding.
Smooth and pleasant guitars.

[chapperz66]

Brilliant cover chaps. Huge respect for the attention to detail on the "12 string" timing. Sounds very authentic.

[Mike_S]

Oooh, lovely work gentleman. That was such a mellow chilled journey. Everything was done to perfection (listening in headphones), guitars and bass are pristine and all those vocals just melt you. Wonderful.

Mike

[Groundy]

WOW... what a cracker, great vox and guitar, So-Pro... Well done guys.

[StephenM]

I enjoyed reading about your various process techniques.  There are some tasty treats in here...
the whole song is just very laid back and pleasant to hear.  I haven't heard much of either of your music but Cuthberts vocals could almost be a double of some of Warp's sounds...I have heard alot of his because he posts quite often.
nicely done gents!

[Redler]

The title didn't say anything to me, but when listened to it, it was very familiar...

Great job on a brilliant country song, guys! Nice harmonies and the rhythm guitar sounds fine!

Enjoyable solo guitar performance and the drum arrangement works fine, too. More songs, please!

I've heard of Evan Dando's country cover songs and this could fit to him, too.

[Geir]

WOW indeed.

So pro sounding and yeah very relaxing : )

Everything sounds great, but I must say the backing vocals and the fake 12-string impressed me .... a lot.

Great playing and singing as well

Well done !

More please !!!!!!!

[Ferryman_1957]

Great to hear some music from you 64G, ably supported by Cuthbert. Love what you did here, you've got a great sound going and Cuthbert's chipmunks are very effective. Thanks for sharing the explanation of how you did this as well, very interesting and it all worked!

Brilliant, a really enjoyable fest entry, and a great collab from two people without whom the site would be nothing.