I've mixed together most of the guitar tracks (Babicz 6-string acoustic and Adamas 12-string acoustic) I recorded for Joe "Covenant" Lamb's song hilarious and horrifying holiday-ish song Ghoul Tide. You can find it in the form of a little instrumental ditty on Bandcamp. There are also some bits of Logic MIDI instruments I used as placeholders the little Christmas song quotes.
This song also features the Steinberger XQ-4 bass. The version I mixed for Bandcamp is my playing; my son Isaac also contributed a track, and Joe actually used a bit of both in the final song. You might be able to tell the bits apart because Isaac is used to playing an upright acoustic bass, and so plucks a lot more heavily (you can probably hear this even after volume leveling and compression are applied; I had to turn down the input levels for his parts because he was clipping the A/D converters!)
I'm finger-picking a 12-string on this track. It's a little rough! Also, apologies for my whistling nose. I haven't figured out how to record an acoustic guitar part into a mic without getting some breath noises. I guess I have to hold my breath when I'm sustaining a long note or chord and time my breaths with strums!
Showing posts with label Joe "Covenant" Lamb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe "Covenant" Lamb. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Common Lisp and Song Fu 6
I was fortunate enough to be able to record two original songs for the Masters of Song Fu competition, under my nom de (Ken) plume, Common Lisp.
For Round 1, the challenge was:
My entry was a sort of nerdcore science rap called Polly Loves the Rain. There it is, my first ever complete original song. Joe "Covenant" Lamb was kind enough to track the sung vocal part for me. I added some backing and harmony to his part. My vocal in the the original upload that appeared on the competition page was a little rough, but I managed to record a slightly smoother version and tweak the mix a bit.
There's a video here, based on that earlier mix.
I had a great time recording this song and am very grateful for all the people that told me they enjoyed it! The drums are all from Logic's library, pieced together into a MIDI track; the bass line is my Steinberger Synapse fretless; the keyboard part is again a MIDI track, pieced together using my DX-7 as a keyboard controller; the guitar parts use a Squier Super-Sonic. The microphone I used for this one is the Oktava ML-52 ribbon mic (mine is actually branded an Electro-Harmonix EH-R1).
For round 2, the challenge was:
Some challengers were very clever with the premise, writing songs that mocked the concept itself, poking fun at Ken, or implying rhymes. I wasn't nearly that clever -- instead I wanted to write an anthem inspired by a David Feldman gag; in one of his podcasts he made the joke "It's 2010, and I'm still writing 'Dick Cheney is a War Criminal' on my checks."
After his daughter Liz decided that the best thing she could do with her time was to contribute more overheated rhetoric -- attacking Justice Department lawyers for representing Guantanmo detainees, portraying them as sympathetic to Al Quaeda -- I wanted to try to bring the conversation back to what I thought it should really be about: the fact that the men who lied us into Iraq still walk free. I wanted it to be in the style of, kinda sort, The Clash. So here is War Criminal, my second original song. There are some things I might tweak, especially the drums, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out.
On that track, the drums are again all from Logic; the guitar parts are the Parker Fly; the bass part is, if I recall correctly, the Steinberger XP. For vocals, I used a newly arrived Oktava MK-219 condenser (I picked up two of these at a very low price on eBay; the plan is to have the Michael Joly electronics and capsule upgrades applied at some point, but I like the way they sound on my voice). Everything is direct into the Apogee.
Unfortunately, I had to drop out for Round 3. The round 3 competition involved writing a song that featured a recipe. I was sketching out a few ideas involving water, barley, yeast, and hops, in the style of a Celtic reel, but I developed some kind of bronchial infection. I couldn't sing, had a fever, and was just too washed out to work on the song. I saw my doctor, and confirmed that I didn't have anything dangerous (it wasn't pneumonia), but still, what with our somewhat stressful home life (4 kids and a lot of chaos), I lost a number of work days, and it took me over a month to completely recover. By that time Song Fu 6 was long-done. At some point I'd like to try to complete my round 3 song.
Overall I was very happy to have finally gotten a chance to compete, as I had been considering it for several previous Song Fu competitions but hadn't quite worked up my courage yet. I really enjoyed my interactions with the other competitors. I'm disappointed that I had to drop out. The future of Song Fu remains slightly unclear after several prominent rounds fell apart due to masters who bailed out. That's a shame, but even if it isn't Song Fu under the same name and management, there will be more of this kind of thing -- the idea is too much fun to die. I am looking forward to a future excuse to write and record songs!
For Round 1, the challenge was:
Write a song that is about (or at least has key to the central narrative) RAIN (the meteorological phenomena). At some point (or throughout) the song, you must utilize an instrument (or vocals) that represent the rain...
My entry was a sort of nerdcore science rap called Polly Loves the Rain. There it is, my first ever complete original song. Joe "Covenant" Lamb was kind enough to track the sung vocal part for me. I added some backing and harmony to his part. My vocal in the the original upload that appeared on the competition page was a little rough, but I managed to record a slightly smoother version and tweak the mix a bit.
There's a video here, based on that earlier mix.
I had a great time recording this song and am very grateful for all the people that told me they enjoyed it! The drums are all from Logic's library, pieced together into a MIDI track; the bass line is my Steinberger Synapse fretless; the keyboard part is again a MIDI track, pieced together using my DX-7 as a keyboard controller; the guitar parts use a Squier Super-Sonic. The microphone I used for this one is the Oktava ML-52 ribbon mic (mine is actually branded an Electro-Harmonix EH-R1).
For round 2, the challenge was:
Write a song that does not rhyme.
CLARIFICATION: Your song can be in any style, but must not contain any rhymes of 2 dissimilar words within a traditional verse structure. Exact repetition of a phrase or word is permitted...
Some challengers were very clever with the premise, writing songs that mocked the concept itself, poking fun at Ken, or implying rhymes. I wasn't nearly that clever -- instead I wanted to write an anthem inspired by a David Feldman gag; in one of his podcasts he made the joke "It's 2010, and I'm still writing 'Dick Cheney is a War Criminal' on my checks."
After his daughter Liz decided that the best thing she could do with her time was to contribute more overheated rhetoric -- attacking Justice Department lawyers for representing Guantanmo detainees, portraying them as sympathetic to Al Quaeda -- I wanted to try to bring the conversation back to what I thought it should really be about: the fact that the men who lied us into Iraq still walk free. I wanted it to be in the style of, kinda sort, The Clash. So here is War Criminal, my second original song. There are some things I might tweak, especially the drums, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out.
On that track, the drums are again all from Logic; the guitar parts are the Parker Fly; the bass part is, if I recall correctly, the Steinberger XP. For vocals, I used a newly arrived Oktava MK-219 condenser (I picked up two of these at a very low price on eBay; the plan is to have the Michael Joly electronics and capsule upgrades applied at some point, but I like the way they sound on my voice). Everything is direct into the Apogee.
Unfortunately, I had to drop out for Round 3. The round 3 competition involved writing a song that featured a recipe. I was sketching out a few ideas involving water, barley, yeast, and hops, in the style of a Celtic reel, but I developed some kind of bronchial infection. I couldn't sing, had a fever, and was just too washed out to work on the song. I saw my doctor, and confirmed that I didn't have anything dangerous (it wasn't pneumonia), but still, what with our somewhat stressful home life (4 kids and a lot of chaos), I lost a number of work days, and it took me over a month to completely recover. By that time Song Fu 6 was long-done. At some point I'd like to try to complete my round 3 song.
Overall I was very happy to have finally gotten a chance to compete, as I had been considering it for several previous Song Fu competitions but hadn't quite worked up my courage yet. I really enjoyed my interactions with the other competitors. I'm disappointed that I had to drop out. The future of Song Fu remains slightly unclear after several prominent rounds fell apart due to masters who bailed out. That's a shame, but even if it isn't Song Fu under the same name and management, there will be more of this kind of thing -- the idea is too much fun to die. I am looking forward to a future excuse to write and record songs!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Song Fu 6, Round 1
My entry is here. I guess maybe you'd call it nerdcore -- I'm a big fan of MC Frontalot -- but it is also inspired, perhaps, by They Might Be Giants songs about science. Given that I'm mostly a guitarist, my first impulse was to grab my guitar, but I decided I wanted to try something different, and so didn't compose on the guitar at all, but started with the lyric and percussion, then added a melody for the choruses in Apple Logic.
I started off with a different lyric and completely different song, which sounded like a mournful, slow early Peter Gabriel track. I decided partway into that one that it wasn't really doing it for me, and fortunately this lyric popped into my head as fast as I could write it down. It got a rewrite, but there isn't a lot of time in Song Fu for rewrites, especially after I had abandoned one concept already -- you've got to freeze your ideas in the form of real tracks quite quickly.
Joe "Covenant" Lamb was kind enough to sing a vocal track for me, which I then mixed with my vocals.
Given the realities of life with a day job and small children, I only really had one afternoon to record vocals, although I was able to get a few hours in the evenings earlier in the week to work on the lyrics, MIDI instruments, and bass and guitar parts. It just so happens I've had a sore throat for a couple of weeks now, but I did the best I could, given that I was rapidly running out of time.
Despite all this, I'm quite pleased with it -- it came out better than I was expecting. I was concerned that I would just freeze up solid and draw a blank, given that I've never recorded an original song before (aside from some instrumental improvisations), and I don't really know a lot about writing melodies and accompaniment parts.
There's a video to go with it.
I'm playing the Steinberger Synapse 5-string fretless bass and the Squier Super-Sonic on this track. It's more-or-less in the key of G. If you're a guitarist, you may be wondering what I'm playing in that "rain" harmonic riff. It's a little cheat. For that riff, the Super-sonic is tuned to an open E7 chord. Then, I have a capo on the 3rd fret to make it an open G7. The harmonics are then all octave harmonics at the 15th fret. To make this sound right, you have to tune the guitar very carefully after the capo is applied.
I started off with a different lyric and completely different song, which sounded like a mournful, slow early Peter Gabriel track. I decided partway into that one that it wasn't really doing it for me, and fortunately this lyric popped into my head as fast as I could write it down. It got a rewrite, but there isn't a lot of time in Song Fu for rewrites, especially after I had abandoned one concept already -- you've got to freeze your ideas in the form of real tracks quite quickly.
Joe "Covenant" Lamb was kind enough to sing a vocal track for me, which I then mixed with my vocals.
Given the realities of life with a day job and small children, I only really had one afternoon to record vocals, although I was able to get a few hours in the evenings earlier in the week to work on the lyrics, MIDI instruments, and bass and guitar parts. It just so happens I've had a sore throat for a couple of weeks now, but I did the best I could, given that I was rapidly running out of time.
Despite all this, I'm quite pleased with it -- it came out better than I was expecting. I was concerned that I would just freeze up solid and draw a blank, given that I've never recorded an original song before (aside from some instrumental improvisations), and I don't really know a lot about writing melodies and accompaniment parts.
There's a video to go with it.
I'm playing the Steinberger Synapse 5-string fretless bass and the Squier Super-Sonic on this track. It's more-or-less in the key of G. If you're a guitarist, you may be wondering what I'm playing in that "rain" harmonic riff. It's a little cheat. For that riff, the Super-sonic is tuned to an open E7 chord. Then, I have a capo on the 3rd fret to make it an open G7. The harmonics are then all octave harmonics at the 15th fret. To make this sound right, you have to tune the guitar very carefully after the capo is applied.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Ukuleles Aren't Cool
Or so Joe "Covenant" Lamb says. But yet... wait... Joe! What's that on your Song Fu #5 round 1 entry? Could it be... your friend Paul playing 3 tracks of ukulele? And a few more tracks of 12-string guitar?
The uke is an Applause model, Ovation's lower-end brand, made in Korea. I have it strung up with Aquila "Nylgut" strings that work great, although like all nylon strings they stretch, and stretch, and stretch, and so have to be constantly re-tuned. It's a tenor-sized instrument. They are tuned the same as a soprano, but with a longer scale, which means higher string tension, but also wider fret spacing. That's a bit plus for me since I'm so used to playing guitar; I have a hard time playing on the tiny fret spacing on my soprano uke. But the real feature I like best about this uke is that you can plug it in -- it has a built-in piezo pickup and EQ. So I was able to record both the 12-string and the uke direct.
The back story -- I collaborated with Joe on the Mandelbrot Set's version of Skullcrusher Mountain. He lives in Dundee, Scotland, which makes it a little tricky to organize a jam session, but I've been trying to find a way to collaborate with him on one of these songs for a while now; usually I've been unavailable in time, since the Song Fu entries always have a short deadline.
On Saturday I chatted with Joe online briefly about this track -- he was having trouble getting a harmonizing guitar part that really worked well. He sent me a track with his vocal plus drums. After the kids were asleep I hauled out my tenor uke and came up with a track to go along with the song's melody, and then a couple more tracks to harmonize with it. The song really called for a mandolin. I don't have one of those, but after this experience I might consider getting one.
Recording this was complicated a bit by the fact that Joe's vocal seemed to be in Eb; I'm not quite sure how that came about. So I had to play the uke melody and harmony parts in Eb. It also just never seemed 100% in tune with Joe's backing guitar, so I was messing around with tweaking it by a few cents, and wasted some time with that. It was getting pretty late, so I very quickly bashed out some accompaniment chords on the 12-string guitar too, again playing in Eb with a bunch of barres that didn't sound very good, partly because my hands aren't really strong enough to do good barres on the 12-string, at least not after all the playing I did on Friday night.
Anyhow, we got everyone up and out, took the kids to dim sum for lunch, and then were planning to go up to Saginaw to visit Grace's mother. I left everyone napping in the car and came in to see if there was anything else I could help Joe with, since I think today was his deadline. He asked me to re-record the 12-string, so I spent about an hour getting something better recorded on the 12-string. Ten minutes of that was retuning it to Eb. Fortunately the Adamas has extremely stable tuning so I was able to retune it and quickly lay down several tracks without worrying that it was going out of tune while I played. I recorded chords for the choruses, then a sort of harmony line, and then realizing I was very short on time, one more track of little scraps of harmony, in the hopes that Joe would be able to find something usable. I uploaded those, shot Joe a quick note, and we headed out.
We got back late, and I saw via Facebook that Joe had posted his song, and really made my guitar parts sound great. I think he used both the original and new 12-string chords, judiciously edited and doubled. I'm pretty sure he used at least some of almost every one of the seven tracks I sent him -- maybe even every track. He did some editing that is so tight I'm not even sure exactly what he did. Even some of the bits and incomplete phrases that I left on that track of "extra scraps" made it in there. It gets doubled and then doubled again and pretty wild, but it all somehow works together, with only some minor timing flaws. With more time I could have done retakes or time-aligned the attacks, but given the material he had to work with, I'm very impressed with the way he put it all together!
It helps that the song is so funny that I nearly wet myself when I first heard it. I hope you will listen to it, and more importantly, as soon as voting is open, vote for Joe!
See the Song Fu page round 5 page here. Check back to see when voting is open.
The uke is an Applause model, Ovation's lower-end brand, made in Korea. I have it strung up with Aquila "Nylgut" strings that work great, although like all nylon strings they stretch, and stretch, and stretch, and so have to be constantly re-tuned. It's a tenor-sized instrument. They are tuned the same as a soprano, but with a longer scale, which means higher string tension, but also wider fret spacing. That's a bit plus for me since I'm so used to playing guitar; I have a hard time playing on the tiny fret spacing on my soprano uke. But the real feature I like best about this uke is that you can plug it in -- it has a built-in piezo pickup and EQ. So I was able to record both the 12-string and the uke direct.
The back story -- I collaborated with Joe on the Mandelbrot Set's version of Skullcrusher Mountain. He lives in Dundee, Scotland, which makes it a little tricky to organize a jam session, but I've been trying to find a way to collaborate with him on one of these songs for a while now; usually I've been unavailable in time, since the Song Fu entries always have a short deadline.
On Saturday I chatted with Joe online briefly about this track -- he was having trouble getting a harmonizing guitar part that really worked well. He sent me a track with his vocal plus drums. After the kids were asleep I hauled out my tenor uke and came up with a track to go along with the song's melody, and then a couple more tracks to harmonize with it. The song really called for a mandolin. I don't have one of those, but after this experience I might consider getting one.
Recording this was complicated a bit by the fact that Joe's vocal seemed to be in Eb; I'm not quite sure how that came about. So I had to play the uke melody and harmony parts in Eb. It also just never seemed 100% in tune with Joe's backing guitar, so I was messing around with tweaking it by a few cents, and wasted some time with that. It was getting pretty late, so I very quickly bashed out some accompaniment chords on the 12-string guitar too, again playing in Eb with a bunch of barres that didn't sound very good, partly because my hands aren't really strong enough to do good barres on the 12-string, at least not after all the playing I did on Friday night.
Anyhow, we got everyone up and out, took the kids to dim sum for lunch, and then were planning to go up to Saginaw to visit Grace's mother. I left everyone napping in the car and came in to see if there was anything else I could help Joe with, since I think today was his deadline. He asked me to re-record the 12-string, so I spent about an hour getting something better recorded on the 12-string. Ten minutes of that was retuning it to Eb. Fortunately the Adamas has extremely stable tuning so I was able to retune it and quickly lay down several tracks without worrying that it was going out of tune while I played. I recorded chords for the choruses, then a sort of harmony line, and then realizing I was very short on time, one more track of little scraps of harmony, in the hopes that Joe would be able to find something usable. I uploaded those, shot Joe a quick note, and we headed out.
We got back late, and I saw via Facebook that Joe had posted his song, and really made my guitar parts sound great. I think he used both the original and new 12-string chords, judiciously edited and doubled. I'm pretty sure he used at least some of almost every one of the seven tracks I sent him -- maybe even every track. He did some editing that is so tight I'm not even sure exactly what he did. Even some of the bits and incomplete phrases that I left on that track of "extra scraps" made it in there. It gets doubled and then doubled again and pretty wild, but it all somehow works together, with only some minor timing flaws. With more time I could have done retakes or time-aligned the attacks, but given the material he had to work with, I'm very impressed with the way he put it all together!
It helps that the song is so funny that I nearly wet myself when I first heard it. I hope you will listen to it, and more importantly, as soon as voting is open, vote for Joe!
See the Song Fu page round 5 page here. Check back to see when voting is open.
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