Strontium Nitrate [instrumental rock]

[tonedef71]

“Strontium Nitrate: Igniting brilliance with a flair of red flare.”

https://soundcloud.com/tonedef71/strontium-nitrate

[enroe]

Great rock song. The guitar groove together with the organ on
the right is very well done. The vocals, which only start in the
middle, depart from the genre, as they sound completely
different than "expected". Right at the end, the guitar switches
to eighth notes, and you think that a new song is about to begin.

Overall: Excellent guitar work, beautiful organ, but still room for
improvement!

[wagtunes]

Well, I like it so far. But it's not finished. The outro sounds like it's going into the main part of the song. Well, where the main part should be. This is more a prog rock overture. Complete songs are genuinely much longer.

I like what you have. It just doesn't sound finished to me and leaves me unsatisfied at the end.

[seismic1]

I enjoyed it. It's got a '70s Van Der Graaf Generator vibe. I could imagine Peter Hamill performing vocals on this.

Good work

[tonedef71]

Thank you all for listening and for providing your candid feedback!

[zerocrossing]

The bass is not in tune with the other instruments.

[tonedef71]

The bass is not in tune with the other instruments.

Thank you for the feedback. When you say not in tune with the others, do you mean it sounds out of key, or do you mean it is not on the same page with the rest of the instruments (e.g. it sounds like it is playing to the beat of a different drummer; it draws too much of the focus; etc.), or something else entirely?

[zerocrossing]

The bass is not in tune with the other instruments.

Thank you for the feedback. When you say not in tune with the others, do you mean it sounds out of key, or do you mean it is not on the same page with the rest of the instruments (e.g. it sounds like it is playing to the beat of a different drummer; it draws too much of the focus; etc.), or something else entirely?

The pitch seems off to me. Could be the intonation is off.

[tonedef71]

The pitch seems off to me. Could be the intonation is off.

Your critical listening skills surpass mine.

Are you hearing a slight beating or smearing effect, when the bass guitar plays two successive notes an octave apart, or when it is mirroring the guitars (one of which is a 9-string)?

[zerocrossing]

The pitch seems off to me. Could be the intonation is off.

Your critical listening skills surpass mine.

Are you hearing a slight beating or smearing effect, when the bass guitar plays two successive notes an octave apart, or when it is mirroring the guitars (one of which is a 9-string)?

It just seems like the low notes on the bass are off.

[tonedef71]

It just seems like the low notes on the bass are off.

Would you share with me a particular timestamp within the track where you hear it happening clearly?

[zerocrossing]

It just seems like the low notes on the bass are off.

Would you share with me a particular timestamp within the track where you hear it happening clearly?

It seems like the entire bass track. If you don't hear it, just disregard me. I don't really have the time to correct your track, but feel free to grab a note and put a free tuner app like MTuner after it and loop a chunk to see if it's off. Or if you own something like Melodyne have it listen to the track and then you can see how far off each note is.

[Benedict]

I think I understand what Mr Crossing is feeling. The bass is there but it does not feel like it anchors the piece as well as one might hope. That can be deliberate, like where one might choose the three or four over the root note of that harmonic position (chord). It is an acceptable note, but not as reassuring as the Root on major timings eg G when in G Min playing that G Chord on the 1 Beat.

I also agree that the vocals/lyrics just don't fit here. The piece reaches a point where it can go somewhere then abandons.

I do wonder if this is all human work or AI has meddled in this a time or three (as well as that cover art that primes us to assume AI).

[tonedef71]

Thank you for the feedback.

I think I understand what Mr Crossing is feeling. The bass is there but it does not feel like it anchors the piece as well as one might hope. That can be deliberate, like where one might choose the three or four over the root note of that harmonic position (chord). It is an acceptable note, but not as reassuring as the Root on major timings eg G when in G Min playing that G Chord on the 1 Beat.

I had interpreted Mr. Crossing's feedback as meaning that the bass guitar sounded like it had a possible tuning problem. There are folks gifted with perfect pitch as well as long-time audio engineers who have developed a really good ear for hearing such problems in pitch, even within a mix. At some point in the future, I plan to incorporate the mystical sound of a fretless bass, and I can only imagine how that could possibly sound off at times.

Now what you describe regarding deliberate selection of alternative notes is indeed happening within the bass line, except at those moments when the guitar, bass, and organ come together as a texture playing in unison. The bottom range of this down-tuned bass guitar could not always hit the exact note I preferred, so I creatively(?) substituted alternative chord notes or extended the original simple chords (for a counter motif), such that the root note of the chord did not always play on the accented beats. The bassline does also fall in line, such as during the aforementioned textural moments. A listener may hear missed opportunities for the bass guitar to anchor the tonality and simply lock in with the drums, and that is a valid criticism.

I also agree that the vocals/lyrics just don't fit here. The piece reaches a point where it can go somewhere then abandons.

Thank you for the feedback. Truth be told, this track began with those lyrics. After rendering those lyrics to vocals, I arrived at something that sounded to me like a quirky bridge/middle-eight. For the rest of the track, I riffed around in the bridge's key and came up with two basic ideas, which I further developed into the A and B sections. I varied the ideas slightly with respect to each melodic instrument and added fills and such to help the transitions flow better. The intro and outro sections were derived from the bridge section, and I used them like bookends, or perhaps "the bread to sandwich the meat in between".

Some of my artistic choices on this track may have fallen flat on their faces. Such is art, and I do appreciate the critical feedback. Honing one's craft is a learning process.

I do wonder if this is all human work or AI has meddled in this a time or three (as well as that cover art that primes us to assume AI).

The concept and the music are all my own, odd as they may be (Strontium Nitrate?! Brilliant! ). However, the rendered vocals and the artwork are most definitely A.I. generated contributions: Waves Illugen and ChatGPT/DALL-E, respectively. I also leveraged the tools in Toontrack EZ drummer to come up with the initial drum parts, something I have been doing since I purchased a license for EZ Drummer.

Since the very beginning, I have leveraged computer software to aid in the music creation process as an assistant and collaborator. While I have, as of late, prompted generative A.I. to render vocals and generate artwork for me (tasks for which the quick slop it generates is still superior to what I can produce myself), I draw the line at delegating all of the music creation process to the whimsy of a generative A.I. prompt; I have no desire to surrender full control of my art.

For the good of the planetary ecosystem, I may consider refraining from using generative A.I. altogether.

[Ciderwell]

I too thought the bass was slightly off, but deliberately, so as to give a grungyness to the song. Maybe because the bass is the only instrument without reverb that makes it the dominant sound and more noticed by a discerning ear. I'm sure if it were tuned into a conventional mode it was cease to be effective.
I liked it.