How do You™ Get By?

[You™]

...And by You™, I mean me. The song is "Get By" and I'd appreciate feedback. Here's some free album cover art to go with it:



Get By
Lyrics and more

[Glooper]

You you are producing a lot of songs at the moment...


Dling now...

Ben

[Ixox]

First, great song...

Some feedbacks :

I love the rythm and all the sounds except one:
I don't like the systematic ping-pong right/left sound that starts around 0'22... Once you hear it you cannot concentrate on anything else....

The effects on the voice (and the voice itself) fits very well the global sound.
The voice could have been a bit louder.

I was expecting a quick end... instead of the current one that breaks the good rythm that growed in your head during the song.... Matter of taste...

Thanks for sharing.....

[Glooper]

Whooped - Redneck Loops

Good song, very you and very groovy... Maybe not my fav from you but still a great song ..
Is that sound in the background from the old atari pong game thing.. .. I actually quite like it

I agree the voice could be a bit louder..

I would also like to have heard more dynamics in the song, to create more interest.

Ben

[Ixox]

First, great song...

I meant "Firstly.... great song" Not "first great song"....
Hope that was clear....

[You™]

Don't worry Ixox, I know what you meant...

...And thanks, both of you for your somments! The pings are a cow bell sound off the drum machine with a bit of pitch bend. I understand that it may be a bit repetitive, but the pattern changes drastically after a few measures. I modified it throughout the track in real-time, but I was trying to get a bit tarncey with the loopiness.

I didn't want the vocals too out front, but I wonder if maybe sorting the mix density (the dynamics that Ben mentioned) would help that. I'm really having an awful time with the mixing these days. It's either too much dynamics with deadly +0db spikes or too compressed. Sometimes, I wish I could just concentrate on making sounds and not packaging them. It's like matting prints or framing paintings. I always hated that part of making art.

[willum]

Great track! I'll echo the others who suggested bringing those vocals forward a bit. Also, interesting sounds, nice arrangement and good spacious mix. Is that an electric guitar in there?

[snooky]

Cool tune..Hate the acustic sounding drums... using only the effected percussion would have been cool, imo...Nice vox and a good full sound.


thumbs up!

[You™]

Thanks. There is a guitar track played by my partner. This song started out quite different. When we recorded it last Saturday, it was more of a strummy guitar, piano and drums affair. But as I was fooling around with the arrangement late at night, I stumbled upon this (to me at least) interesting groove by using loops of a sustained guitar note and a heavily effected rework of the keyboard part (that becomes the regular repeating "whoomph" sound that starts the whole thing off). Then I added more!

The main drums are created from a "real" track I saved from a remix project combined with FL embellishing (Bigger BD and snare reinforcement). There is also some downsampled HH/shakers and the aforementioned cowbell/percussion track that also employs a few custom synth patches I made. I'm not very good with pure synthesis stuff. I tend to mix a lot of natural elements and play it live as much as possible. I'm trying to stake-out the "whole-grain organic electronica" genre.

[shamann]

Stragely, I liked the drums (or the whole percussion schmear) the best. Enjoyed this one, You.

[SecondSkin]

First, I love the feel of this track right from the start -- deep, dark and haunting -- the intro is perfect. I agree with the others on one thing -- the vocals need to come up a bit. Love the contrast of the "video game" sound with the rest of the track. The drumloop becomes a bit weary after a while, especially during the vocal sections -- I'd like to hear some short glitches or stops to accent certain lyrical phrases (like "making plans for bigger things") words.

Anyway, it sounds like a great start to a track that's not quite complete yet. I'd love to hear it with a chorus or b-section, which is odd becuase I don't usually care for V-C-V-C-B-C arrangement.

[You™]

Cheers shamann asn SecondSkin. I like the idea of breaking up the tracks and changing some of the parts around. I think I will do that when I get around to remixing this. I should at least try to sing the vocals better especially if they're going to get more prominent! I think I've got all the elements I need here - I just need to carve something nice out of it.

As far as the V-C-V... sequencing goes, I've said on other occasions that - in general - I'm trying to move away from that. But I still enjoy using the formula once in a while. Part of the way I approach composing and mixing is that each section of music and each instrument has equal importance to the whole song. There isn't always a top-down hierarchy. Instead, each element is a modular node which exchanges focus with the other nodes at different intervals. Sometimes there's a busy scrum of overlapping patterns and figures and sometimes there's a coordinated effort to restrain the din so that a certain idea will be more obvious. I think of music more in terms of pattern, symmetry and mood than some others. In this case, I have 8 verses. The last four are almost a mirror of the first four (I don't strive for perfect symmetry) separated by a lot of freeform hacked-percussion jamming. It's probably important that (at least some of) the lyric stand out more to reinforce that tension, but I am not sure if I can conjure a proper chorus for this song. I'll see what I can do though...

[SecondSkin]

I don't know that I'd expect a real chorus here -- just something else to break up the track -- a key change or something. I heard once that Massive Attack liked to combine elements of different tracks into one song, so they didn't have the A-B-A structure but still had alot of different parts to the track. Anyways, I always liked that kind of thing and this sounds like the kind of track you could do that with.

Mark

[mr.me]

I like the sounds in here, you've got it sounding big as hell too...cool you got some vox in it!

Nice mix, I like!

[One]

I enjoyed your track. I like your vocals and agree with the rest that they should be more up front.