Upper Hand - Judders

[ptalbot]

Ha! No, I don't disagree entirely at all, and thanks for taking the time to comment

I never expected it to be a favourite, as I changed the feel quite a bit. I was just experimenting, trying to get it to sound more jazzy and realistic. The drums are distant so that the bass drum merely accentuates the beat, and the snare accentuates the backbeat, as I felt it was the bass which actually had the meaningful rhythmic information. If you listen to the drums isolated, they are kinda hard to groove to, kinda spiky and jarring in places, but they make more sense once the bass is added, because the bass is driving the rhythm.

It all started when I first opened the project (before I'd read your song FAQ), I found myself a bit distracted because I knew it was Trillian (though that upright sounds fine) and NI Session Horns (the unison bends in particular make them sound very "midi"). The Rhodes sound was not very convincing, and weirdly I had no idea it was SD custom & Vintage, even though I've used that a lot (sounds like you maybe had limited layers and scant, if any, bleed?). The velocity programming of the drums sounded very "midi" too - especially the hard cymbal crashes sound really out of place to my ears.

So then I thought it would be fun to play around with the instruments, seeing as you were kind enough to include the midi. That's when I saw that the programmed parts would need a lot of work. The keyboard parts were all blocks-on-grid single velocity jobs, and I didn't check the chords for playability (I'm not a pianist), but they looked... odd.

I knew I couldn't get a better upright sound (I don't have a bass VI), so that stayed in. The horns stayed because I don't have a decent trombone instrument and separating the parts would have taken longer than I was willing to spend on this, also they sound okay if pushed back. I decided to change the piano part to how one would be played - with the sustain pedal rather than perfectly held keys without any gap between chords, also adding velocity programming so that it became more strident and bright as the song went on.

But, in the end, you are completely right: the keyboard parts are not written in a realistic manner, so they do not support the kind of tinkering I was putting them through. If my experiment were to work, I would need to rewrite both piano and Rhodes/Wurli so that they actually resemble what a keys player would do.

I realise this may come across as a bit passive-aggressive, but that's not my intention. I'm not trying to defend my mix, as there's definitely a lot to criticise about it. I'm just being honest about why and how I ended up where I did with it.

I was halfway through learning the bass part to Reason to Leave, but I think I'll concentrate on playing my own music instead! :p

PS. Roots SDX can be better for poppy sounds than Custom & Vintage! You just have to select the right kit pieces and mic's, and keep the velocity high

In any case it sounds like you had fun with it, which is a good thing!

I'm no keyboard player myself, which is why I always thought of them as pads. Actually I've used the Cubase chord track to build this part, and I've used the blend of rhodes+piano to get something interesting out of it, but it's really not something that I've intended to feature. Using a pedal or having the chords the way they are in the midi made no difference because the natural sustain was doing it's job in my blend.

I disagree about your comments on the drums, the midi is coming mostly from midi libraries which are played by real drummers and that I've just rearranged to go with the song. As to the limited layers, I usually use the max in SD. But it's true that I usually don't export to audio, I'm using SD directly, sometimes with multi-out, but most times using the build-in mixer and effects, and perhaps a separate output for kick and snare when it's needed.
So to be able to provide audio tracks of all the mixes, I've used the build-in SD bounce option, and it's not easy to tell what kind of export to use and how it's exporting the bleed, and whether or not it's using the mixer or not, so it's possible that the bleed was not exported correctly... In any case, you are right that the bass is driving the groove, but I think it best work when combined with the acoustics and drums as they are.

I get now that you were experimenting, and that's totally cool. My previous comment was coming from the fact that I thought your chosen sounds were less effective than the original ones, which is why I was wondering about them...

PS: Thanks for the tips about the Roots SDX, I'll keep that in mind. That being said, I find the Custom & Vintage a lot more versatile and more adapted to what I'm looking for more often than not.