How I got to Memphis

[DiscoDynamo]

I really struggled with this song. Tried to use "Amarillo by Morning" by George Strait as a reference but some raw musical elements are missing from this multitrack, IMHO, so I tried a few things to see how it would work out.   Also, sending vocal tracks with pre-loaded effects makes fixing intonation very problematic. If I had a choice, we would have received an unprocessed track so we could do our own effects but whatever - the price is right and the artist is a gem for letting us play with his song so this is an observation and not a complaint by any means.

If I were to give it some more time (because my ears are tired now):

1) I lose the vocals in a few places, they take over in a few places.  Would fix.

2) I might just re-track the bass line in addition to my other modifications.  Not happy with how it sits - I try not to mess with the bass levels too much once I set them because those changes can have unpredictable effects and the bass line is causing problems with the arrangement.

3) The snare caused me some strain and I'd probably tinker with the levels on the click and snare.


Otherwise, it kind of sounds like a country song now (I think). Let me know your thoughts.

[crissmichaels]

The unprocessed vocals are included (they should be labelled "dry"). The drums are EZDrummer (due to lack of budget). I'm open to hear how the bass could be done differently. The band I was in out in Texas used to cover this song and that's how I played it every time, so old habits are creeping in, I guess.

There's a lot of reverb used on the lead guitar, which makes it sound a little far away. Apart from that, it sounds good on my end.

[crissmichaels]

Also, I like the addition of strummed acoustic guitar on this. If my own recording setup wasn't as low budget as it is (my acoustic needs a new saddle and I don't have a good enough mic for recording an acoustic), it may have been added in the first place.

[DiscoDynamo]

Thanks for the feedback! Just trying to get better Tom T. Hall is a great artist and a tough act to follow on his own material.

I recorded the acoustic DI using my cheapo Cort guitar with two different takes for depth (and to cover my screwups) and then twisted up the audio with EQ to fake the quality and try to make it sound kind of 12-stringy. Might not be my best artist work so I had to do a LOT of processing It was an experiment that I kind of liked so I figured, let's keep it.

On the electric lead perspective, I wasn't sure how I wanted to deal that up. I actually thought about it more like a fiddle part and less like an electric guitar during the solos. I was going for that 'far away' sound - I automated in a fade in the wet/dry mix for the solo sections so it's a super easy fix to tighten it up. Maybe I went too far. The original has that slide guitar thing going on, I don't like it there, and I don't think I'd want a slide guitar thing in your version either.

As for bass - the George Strait song gives me an idea of how I think the bass tracked. What I wanted to hear was 100% lockup with the kick drum. I'm not a fan of having the bass playing when it's been a while since the last kick drum sound. In thinking about my commentary some more, I might walk that back the bit on bass and say that the kick is the issue and not the bass as much. There is some dynamic variability in the bass line that I fought with and lost - my issue might also be that I want an upright bass in the song. Now I'm being snobby.

Listening to it again, it's a bit bright but an easy fix, too. Since I know you're engaged, I'll give the song a bit more love and see what I can come up with.

[crissmichaels]

No, I like hearing feedback on my performances. I'll be honest, I used premade patterns for the drums, so that's my fault (they sounded more natural than what I could program).

As for the bass, when I did the original mix, I copied the track and high passed one while low passing the other (I made sure to leave some space between them. 350 for LP and 400-450 for HP). Then I could compress the snot out of the low-end track and add a little less compression to the high end track. Amp simulators helped with the tone on both.

[DiscoDynamo]

So I did some more work on this song.
Re-cut the bass line - broke some of my own rules but I decided I actually didn't like the complete lockup with the kick so yeah - that's what we've got now. 
Also, in line with your feedback I removed some of the verb on the electric guitar to stop it from being so distant-sounding.