The challenge 07/06/2010 Vote Please

Renesongs

At the mere mention of the word key signature let alone 3/4 has put our less advanced competitors into psycho-neurotic shock. I think it also might of been aided by Bob's assertion that 6/8 is not the same as 3/4 if you count it in 3 sets of 2's This week all our competitors are from the A group so you only get 1 vote each. I haven't listened to Alan's entry yet but I bet it involves some sort of poly-rhythm

[quote author=BMU link=action=profile;u=1644 date=1276094445] Nice classy waltz at 200 bpm. And by waltz I obviously mean thrash metal. With some (not too much) shredding because I know X-rated Bob loves shredding so much.
http://www.box.net/embed/sblazunrp8pbdxy.swf This challenge reminded me of the 3/4 opening track on In Flames' excellent debut album, song called Moonshield. The opening faux-acoustic piece is a tribute to that, the rest is mine. [/quote]

[quote author=X-rated Bob link=action=profile;u=411 date=1276443195] Here's my entry. http://www.box.net/shared/llay3jnxof. It's called "The Slider's Waltz". About 60% done on the Morgan, the rest on the Smoothtalker. Category A please. [/quote]

[quote author=Warren link=action=profile;u=2258 date=1276452933] My entry for the week. The comp this week gave me a chance to get going with a song I've been wanting to do for my little girl who just turned 5. :) This will eventually grow into a full length song, but this is the basic idea condensed into a minute. Filename is A-Warren_Fairy_of_Greenstone.mp3 http://www.box.net/shared/0e3gcabl3g [/quote]

[quote author=Alan Ratcliffe link=action=profile;u=10 date=1276528351] http://ratcliffe.co.za/music/a_alan_three-four.mp3 OR http://www.box.net/shared/03lt5jqja3 Very quick and very dirty recording... Rhythm is 12-string electric. Lead is the StraTele played with an E-bow (normal for eight bars then harmonic mode until end). Serious processing on E-bow part (more later...). [/quote]

[quote author=doc-phil link=action=profile;u=323 date=1276584426] I know I've missed the deadline for submissions for the 3/4 challenge, but I will send you my entry anyway and you can decide what to do with it. I only saw the challenge thread yesterday so I assumed I had until next week. This track is something I recorded a while back... but it combined 3/4 riffs with some standard 4/4 ones. I just cut out the 4/4. I was a bit confused about what was mentioned about the 3/4 vs 6/8 thing, so I'm not sure if I've fallen into that trap! But here it is... one minute of pure metalcore. 2 guitars, 1 drums, 1 bass. http://www.box.net/shared/1ifjphjgqx [/quote]

(old forum) Poll Results: 3/4

BMU (A): 5
X-rated Bob (A): 5
Warren (A): 4
Alan Ratcliffe (A): 8
Doc-Phil (A): 3

guitarboy2828

Oh my word.. How diverse can we get.. Man oh man.. Each of these tracks are awesome in their own way..

BMU, man, I wish i had skill like you! That shredding was so insanely awesome!

Bob, that was sooo awesome, very chilled and melodic, LOVED the mood of this track! I really think you need to bring out an album, because I could listen to this stuff all day, seriously!

Warren, dude, that's a beautiful song, very keen to hear a completed version of it. Great vocal track in there! ?

Alan's entry made me feel like i was in a sci-fi movie.. It rocked! Love the completely different vibe on this track, so "un guitar-like" which is cool..

soo, i still duno who i'm voting for.. haha.. But great job guys, really cool entries! ?

Squonk

Good stuff

I thought Warren's was going to be this huge Prog Rock thing "Fairy of Greenstone" ?,
What a good song, you must finish this. Really enjoy the acoustic chord progression, the soloing has great tone and fills in the spaces well. And you can sing 8)

Alan's turned out to be Prog Rock , Magna Carta vs Greenslade vs Barclay James Harvest, with even bits of Wishbone Ash, and I think the 12 string electric reminds me of Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks from Genesis during the good days before Phil Collins turned them into the 'White" Earth Wind and Fire. The E-bow sounds so good. Excellent piece ?

BMU Excellent thrash stuff, I need some lessons on how to do this. Brilliant. Programming the drums can't be easy?

Bob Folky Blues down in the Delta, Looking for Robert Johnson at the Crossroads? The Morgan and smoothtalker sound good! good stuff

AlanRatcliffe

Wow! Pretty much across the board. I'm going to have to listen to them all a few times before I comment or vote.

@Squonk. You got the idea - now you mention it, it is early prog influenced. I started out playing ELP's Lucky Man to get in the 3/4 mood and that must have influenced me more than I knew. The E-Bow part is probably my slant on Emerson's wild portmentos. :-[

@Guitarboy - "Unguitarlike"... that works for me! I shall henceforth be known as "the unguitar player" (or maybe "The guitar unplayer").

@Rene - No polyrhythms - I purposely wanted to keep this simple, as there's been some great simple stuff in the comps recently (anyway, I tried a six note per beat arpeggio, but would have to practice it before laying it down and didn't have time). I agree with Bob actually - 6/8 can be counted as two bars of 3/4, but they feel different. BTW - I always liked Dweezil's approach of using 1/1 for everything, but it makes counting difficult (and you end up with many more bars than I care to remember).

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote:
Bob Folky Blues down in the Delta, Looking for Robert Johnson at the Crossroads? The Morgan and smoothtalker sound good! good stuff

For once I didn't get accused of prog rock ?

Hardly blues, I thought. It's a very obvious waltz, but I suppose when you resort to acoustic slide somebody's going to draw a delta comparison. Most of the slide isn't pentatonic.

The melody slide parts were actually recorded in standard tuning. That was the easiest for me in the end. And I played lap steel! (at least for the first 36 bars). That Jerry Douglas guy better start looking over his shoulder!

I'm not that happy with the track (though I am happy with the idea behind it), but I'll try not to lie awake and worry about whilst I'm on holiday.

Bob-Dubery

guitarboy2828 wrote: Bob, that was sooo awesome, very chilled and melodic, LOVED the mood of this track! I really think you need to bring out an album, because I could listen to this stuff all day, seriously!

Thanks for those kind words.

Squonk

X-rated Bob wrote:
Squonk wrote:
Bob Folky Blues down in the Delta, Looking for Robert Johnson at the Crossroads? The Morgan and smoothtalker sound good! good stuff
For once I didn't get accused of prog rock ?

Hardly blues, I thought. It's a very obvious waltz, but I suppose when you resort to acoustic slide somebody's going to draw a delta comparison. Most of the slide isn't pentatonic.

The melody slide parts were actually recorded in standard tuning. That was the easiest for me in the end. And I played lap steel! (at least for the first 36 bars). That Jerry Douglas guy better start looking over his shoulder!

I'm not that happy with the track (though I am happy with the idea behind it), but I'll try not to lie awake and worry about whilst I'm on holiday.

Bob, I think I left out the words Waltz in the Delta, but I think your slide playing, even though not pentatonic is played with that same emotion of a blues player. I thought it was very good almost a contrast with the waltz having a happy feel and then the slide adding a melancholic edge to the piece. Be happy with Idea, you are free to enjoy the Holiday ?

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote: Bob, I think I left out the words Waltz in the Delta, but I think your slide playing, even though not pentatonic is played with that same emotion of a blues player. I thought it was very good almost a contrast with the waltz having a happy feel and then the slide adding a melancholic edge to the piece. Be happy with Idea, you are free to enjoy the Holiday ?

Well I like juxtaposition (I promise I'll go on holiday soon). Interesting things can happen if you, say, put a jolly tune next to a dark lyric. I tend to incline towards the melancholic, so maybe I am a blues man at heart.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it does seem to me that waltzes are generally up beat mood wise, so mabye a melancholy waltz is a novelty in some small way. Well, the waltz (not 3/4, waltzes are a specific subset of 3/4) is a dance tune.

Warren

Geez, I'm in tough company on this one ?

I actually feel bad voting for just one contribution. I think this is one of those times when it's not really fair to pick one piece out of such a great set of contributions. Very tough decision.

My crits:

@BMU
That is really excellent. I'm not a thrash / shred fan myself, but I have big respect for people who can play in that style (I simply don't have that level of technical proficiency). I know how tough those gallops are to get right...the fact that you sent that in so quickly after the comp started shows what an accomplished player you must be! Technical stuff aside, I actually like the track on its own merits too: fast and powerful, very cool.

@Bob
I heard a real country / western vibe in there. I could picture Clint Eastwood riding into town on a rusty, snorting mustang ? Acoustic slide is a great style, and one which I've never tried. I like the way the Smoothtalker changes things up. I also like your use of repeated melodic ideas, like the slide melody at the beginning and end. It gives the piece structure, and creates themes which the listener can remember.

@Alan
Dirty recording eh? ? This is probably my favourite (still not really sure ?). I love the sound of that e-bow: it's haunting stuff, and it sounds like you can create some really beautiful, long-sustaining harmonies with it. I'd heard of them but I didn't know that what they sounded like...I must look into getting my hands on one to play around with. The combination of the electric 12-string underneath is great too, although perhaps it could have been a bit more lush and strummy? ? That chord progression in the beginning...starts off sounding a little like HotRS, I thought?

Overall, wonderful contributions guys!

Warren

Squonk wrote: I thought Warren's was going to be this huge Prog Rock thing "Fairy of Greenstone" ?,
What a good song, you must finish this. Really enjoy the acoustic chord progression, the soloing has great tone and fills in the spaces well. And you can sing 8)

Sorry ? I'm not THAT ambitious. Not yet. My knowledge of prog is actually very limited and I should probably educate myself at some point.

Thanks for the feedback, and I will definitely finish it up in the next couple weeks.

Although the end result sounds pretty simple, I had to try out a bunch of quite new ideas (for me):

- The chord progression is a I-vi-ii-V in C based around seventh chords, so it looks something like:

CMaj7 / / | / / / | Am7 / / | / / / | D7 / / | / / / | G13 / / | G7+5 / /

Rinse and repeat. That chord progression is something I've just learned about (apparently big in the 50s) but it seemed to fit this track nicely. The G13 and G7+5 are new fingerings for me so took quite a while to get right. I was also a bit pressed for time so I did away with a change to a strummed pattern when the lead guitar plays that repeating lick near the end. I'll likely change that back for the final version.

- I don't have a bass guitar, so I used my neck PuP on my LP and a sub-octave effect to get a nice deep bass sound. I used to use a MIDI bass sound, but I never really liked it. This method sounds a lot better to me, and it lets me do a little more with the bass line. I'll be using this idea a lot more in future (or I'll buy a bass guitar).

- The lead guitar was quite a challenge. I wanted the notes to really augment the vocals and not get in the way, and achieving this is a lot tougher than it sounds. Every time I tried something it just sounded like there was too much going on. I'm fairly happy with the end result now, but it took quite some time to find what I was looking for. I added a flanger and rolled off the volume on the neck PuP of my Tanglewood semi-acoustic to try and hit a shimmery, fluid sort of tone.

- Vocals: singing harmonies with yourself is a bit tricky ? I do lead and harmony vocals in different songs with my band, but I usually have my keyboardist to guide me on note choice. Here I was on my own, but I found that dropping the volume of the lead vocal track made it much easier to record the harmony part, and then I simply raised the lead volume back up for mix-down time. I'm not a fan of my own voice, but it's not like I can swap my larynx out for P90s so I have to just gooi.

Renesongs

I have added another competitor Doc-Phil who submitted late and will pay the penalty through no early votes.
@ Alan 12/8 to you sir. Reminds me of another jazz intellectual who felt one could obtain interesting time effect by shifting the accent in common time such as 4/4/ viz. 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 . The intellectual was Dave Brubeck and the song Take 5 (written by Paul Desmond). ?

AlanRatcliffe

Renesongs wrote: @ Alan 12/8 to you sir.

Right back at you with a 7/16 sir (being a Zappa fan I presume you practice that one regularly?). Subdivide that! Ever read his musings on dissonant timing? 23/25 etc.?

Reminds me of another jazz intellectual who felt one could obtain interesting time effect by shifting the accent in common time such as 4/4/ viz. 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 .

Yeah - I love that. Then he adds insult to injury by doing it well. Humph! Which further reminds me of the time I (a foolish young porcine pelt pounder) tried working through the Rod Morgenstein (Dixie Dregs) book Odd Time. There was much wailing and gnashing of drumsticks, let me tell you...

guitarboy2828

Doc-Phil, great entry!! I enjoyed that bit of metal. Tightly played. ?

doc-phil

guitarboy2828 wrote: Doc-Phil, great entry!! I enjoyed that bit of metal. Tightly played. ?

Shot guitarboy ?

I can't seem to access BMU's entry... the webpage won't load. I'll withhold my vote until I've had a chance to listen to everyone's entry. The rest of the entries are superb, I don't know how such professional sounding clips can be created in so short a time.

BMU

@doc-phil - Nice metal there dude, well played.

My link works for me... maybe try this alternative path, exact same file.
http://www.box.net/shared/jb8ho2y1px

@guitarboy - thanks, glad you liked the shredding. I felt like I didn't do much with it, just repeated the same thing twice but now actually I like it too lol! Time pressure is a good thing sometimes...

I do regret not bringing the lead guitar up in the mix just a tad. Time pressure is also a bad thing sometimes HAHA.

@squonk - thanks. The drum sequencing is the easy part, when it gets to that stage I breathe a sigh of relief: phew, hard part's over!

@Warren - yep you've got it. The rhythm guitars are the hard part, for me anyway. Rhythm parts have to be doubled, the precision required is pretty demanding. I had time on my hands btw, that piece took a good number of hours to put together.

On the other entries, the standout one for me is Alan's, it really sounds excellent, love the sci-fi sound (e-bow eh? Might have to look into that).

Wizard

This is the hardest one yet to vote on

doc-phil

BMU wrote: My link works for me... maybe try this alternative path, exact same file.
http://www.box.net/shared/jb8ho2y1px

Ok that link works for me. That is a top-dizzle piece.. really enjoyed it! I particularly like the double bass on the drums, the same goes for the other tracks you've posted on GFSA. What do you use for drums and how do you eq them?

AlanRatcliffe

BMU wrote: On the other entries, the standout one for me is Alan's, it really sounds excellent, love the sci-fi sound (e-bow eh? Might have to look into that).

Thanks! The E-bow is quite different to work with. By itself it gives a long sustained note with a bit of a distorted characteristic. Puts out a heck of a lot of output too, so it tends to overdrive amps easily. Here is the ebow clip with nothing added, DI'd with no amp or FX - just guitar and E-Bow straight into the PC.

A big part of the "sci-fi" sound was the effects I used - the clean echo has a filter and I am sweeping the cutoff frequency with an LFO, which gives it a very synthy analog filter sweep. Given a bit more time I would have probably auto panned the sweep using the same LFO.

Chain is as follows (hope it displays OK):

Guitar - Split - Fuzz - Speaker (Orange) - Mix - Limiter - Reverb
| |
Delay1 - Pitch Shifter - Filter - Comp - Delay2
| |
LFO

Delay one is set to delay the time of the whole second chain (predelay) by an eighth note, while delay two provides the actual echo. Pitch shifter adds a bit of octave up to extend the frequency range so the filter has more to work with. Compressor tames the radical level changes of the filter sweep. Fuzz distorts the main guitar tone while the speaker smooths the edges off a little. Limiter stops any peaks from clipping the track and reverb adds body and space.

Warren

Thanks for the detail Alan ?

Most interesting part of the challenges for me is to learn about all the techniques behind each clip.

BMU

doc-phil wrote: Ok that link works for me. That is a top-dizzle piece.. really enjoyed it! I particularly like the double bass on the drums, the same goes for the other tracks you've posted on GFSA. What do you use for drums and how do you eq them?

Thanks. Drums, ha. It's just the standard rock kit that comes built into Cubase. After sequencing them in one track (for convenience) I cut and paste the bass drum into its own separate track and give it a wide range boost of 2-3 dB centering at about 4000 Hz. (I.e. adding the "click")

I should EQ the cymbals and snare in separate tracks too in that way, but I'm more interested in making the music itself than fiddling with production, that's a minimum effort compromise that sounds ok.

@Alan - wow. There have been simpler Ph.Ds written in electronics I'm sure HAHA, very cool stuff. I'm just a guitar -> amp guy, I don't even own a wah!