It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 3:28 pm




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 16 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2
 Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI) 
Author Message
Multiple Donor
Multiple Donor
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am
Posts: 2884
Location: Detroit, MI
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
Jayesskerr wrote:
I personally find that creating an instrumental "backdrop" for me to sing over is usually a lot less successful than if I simply strum a chord and sing some stuff and then literally build a sort of "campfire song" from a very humble beginning. Even for instrumental stuff, if it's something that I can incorporate my voice to begin with, it will usually sound a lot better.

I guess that any chance I can get to internalize it, the better.
Looking forward to this one getting finished!


Exactly that! It's a lot easier to build a song around a vocal line than the other way around. But I don't ever start with a vocal idea and then build accompaniment around it. I do start with melodies, but they always come from the instrument I'm noodling on. I'm always trying to add vocals last.

I've never once started with vocals and a couple of chords, and then built out the rest of the song. It's always: start with a hook or a riff or a cool chord progression and arepeggiation. Then sing over it and around it. Then, maybe, go back to the accompaniment and alter it to better suit the resultant vocals.

I'm hoping having an easy way to record even practice vocals in the car will accelerate a lot of work I've been needing to put into doing vocals. I'll share soon! (My goal is by New Year's to finish this song.)

Thanks, Scott!

https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/snowday-enceladus

_________________
Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Sat Dec 23, 2017 2:18 pm
Profile My Photo Gallery
Multiple Donor
Multiple Donor
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am
Posts: 2884
Location: Detroit, MI
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/snowday-enceladus


So the Shure MV88 stereo mic for lightning devices came yesterday and I've been testing it around every room and closet and bathroom in the house. I've tried the Gettysburg address and then sang a line from the new song, "Snow Day in Hell" in each location and then compared the sound waves with the headphones on.

Image

The results:
Worst place in the house: the basement studio, where 99% of everything is recorded via a direct line into the board. I used various vocal baffle boxes that I bought and covered it all with blankets and coats but I could not muffle out the dull roar of the basement heater's pink noise (pink noise is white noise + bass). I actually built a "vocal booth" this summer in a corner of the basement, using moving-van blankets and foam with the pointy bumps to muffle things. It gets really hot in there really quick, however. It needs some sort of ventilation. And still didn't sound that good, considering the time and effort put into it this summer.

2nd worst place in the house: the master bathroom, where I've set up my "real" vocal mics on stands before. The reverb that the empty bathroom provides actually sounded better in theory than in practice. In practice, it was a really shitty reverb sound that I couldn't EQ away. I want as dry and clean a sound as possible, and the bathroom sucked for the first part.

Best place in the house was my wife's walk-in closet, that was full of clothes and boxes of stuff from Japan. It was basically a giant box of sound dampeners, except there's a thin outside wall and you can hear the neighbor's dogs bark outside, at the most random times.

As I suspected--and hoped--the car in the garage was the best place to record vocals: warm it up (it's -7 F here with the wind chill!), and then shut the garage door, turn off the climate control, and let 'er rip into the mic, using my ipad mini with headphones, and the Shure lightning mic in my iphone 8+. Absolutely quiet, with lots of sound dampening materials in the car upholstery and cloth seats of our Ford Fusion. Clean and dry as a bone.

Vocals melodies are completely written and now it's just a matter of finishing the lyrics and then recording the vocals. The Shure records at 24 bits, 48 Hz, and sounds way better than I thought a mic that plugs into a phone would sound.

I'm sure even the basement "noisy" tracks would sound okay in a mix, but that background-noise shit bugs the heck out of me, even though I'm just a mad scientist in his basement lab rocking it out. With a noisy family! (Is there any other kind?) God forbid I should have a guest vocalist come into the studio. "Come on out to the car and let's do vocals!"
**********************************
The SONG and its DEEP Meaning

"Snow Day in Hell" is about a guy who meets a girl, only the girl doesn't like the guy, jokes that he has a snowball's chance in hell with her. He hangs out with her anyway because at least that's a CHANCE!, wins her over with his superior awesomeness (probably his humor--certainly not his/my abs!), and she wants to take him home with her. In a sexual way. :twisted:

He sees that he has more than a snowball's chance in hell--Hell has frozen over, she wants him, and it looks like it's a Snow Day in Hell.

[Sings bridge...]
Hey baby, I'm not your savior
But maybe, I am your flavor
Come over here and luv me
If you really want me

[...]
She wants to come home with me--well!
Sometimes it's a
Snow Day in Hell


Now that's the kind of masterful writing a Master's in English will get you! Especially slant-rhyming savior ("savya") and flavor (Flavah") together--it helps if you sing it with a British accent. :D (I'm such a hack!)

I had a whole bit about storming the gates of Hell and looking for someone to follow my Glorious Leadership into Battle, freezing the whole place down with...FREEDOM!! or some shite. Suddenly I'm Milton or Virgil or Lucifer, or fighting Lucifer, or now I'm Spawn and ripping off the Bible and Todd McFarlane.

I decided that no one wants to hear about mythical battles with demons and angels--or rather, that shit is cool but it made this song go over into Prog Rock or Death Metal (the vocals, anyway) when it wanted to be about trying to get laid. I went with the universal human struggle of trying to get laid, rather than Plumbing the Dark Depths of the Tentacle God in His Swamps of Shuggeroth. It could have gone either way.

But there's 3-4 verses to write of this Boys Meets Girl crap:

She says: No way; no sale!
You know: A Snow Day in Hell

She's hot but I've got
A shot--not a lot


[Moves happen or something. To be Mused and continued]

She's going home with me--well
Sometimes it's A Snow Day in Hell


Ok, that's enough lyrical punishment.

--On a mythic quest for the "Clean and Dry" vocals, in the "City of Cthulhu and his spawn that built the great green stone city of R'lyeh on the great sunken continent of Mu, before it was destroyed by Ythogtha." Or a scene at the pool hall. Either way.

--Sir Hack-a-Lot

_________________
Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Wed Dec 27, 2017 8:17 pm
Profile My Photo Gallery
Elite Contributor
Elite Contributor

Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:42 pm
Posts: 2530
Location: Jersey
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
The Prog Rock/Metal lyrical ideas are overated/boring. Got alot more chance selling a song (no matter what the musical content) about getting laid

_________________
Peace, Marty
"The present day composer refuses to die" -Edgard Varese


Thu Dec 28, 2017 5:29 pm
Profile My Photo Gallery
Elite Contributor
Elite Contributor
User avatar

Joined: Sun May 18, 2014 9:43 am
Posts: 4039
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
AnDroiD wrote:
The Prog Rock/Metal lyrical ideas are overated/boring. Got alot more chance selling a song (no matter what the musical content) about getting laid


Lol Getting laid in a spaceship perhaps haha

_________________
GUITAR RULES
https://www.facebook.com/scottsguitarstuffMy FB Page


Thu Dec 28, 2017 6:11 pm
Profile
Multiple Donor
Multiple Donor
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am
Posts: 2884
Location: Detroit, MI
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
Jayesskerr wrote:
AnDroiD wrote:
The Prog Rock/Metal lyrical ideas are overated/boring. Got alot more chance selling a song (no matter what the musical content) about getting laid


Lol Getting laid in a spaceship perhaps haha
Getting laid in a spaceship...with hot alien superheroes!

[Insert babe/beefcake picture from Guardians of the Galaxy. Maybe Rocket in a bikini. Or Groot... :shock: ]

Okay, that's not where this was going but if there's anyway I can corner the market on Superhero Rock, I definitely want to get in on that!

But you guys are right and thanks for the comments: I'll have more of an audience for the universal struggle of Hooking Up, versus Musings on the Dark Lord. I've deliberately kept myself to working with simple, repeatable tracks, and a hooky chorus, and (hopefully) sing-along vocals. Not my poppiest attempt by any means, but I am holding back on the Prog Monster just a wee bit. There's not even a solo (yet)!

I am a sucker for lyrics that tell a story. I was a storyteller writer long before I was ever a musician (well, I was a better writer than a musician for a long time, anyway!) I'm also a sucker for a clever turn of phrase, which is a feature of country music (the "good" stuff, anyway). Tell a story, use memorable, vivid, catchy language.

But that's also about 47% of my problem with doing vocals. I hate to leave it at the "Baby, Baby, Maybe, Maybe" stage, although I'm not afraid to have those exact rhyming word in my chorus! :o I usually overthink lyrics, and then get performance anxiety with the vocals.

That's exactly why I'm oversharing on the creative process. It forces me to get going on projects and see them to completion. It also gives people some sense of buy-in, and I've gotten critical, excellent suggestions occasionally that have caused me to radically revamp something. And I love talking about the creative process, especially when I'm at work and can't work on the music but can talk about it!

Thanks, guys! I'll have tracks this weekend, right after I get Scott my collab tracks. I've got plenty to work on and procrastinate on, and something will get done this weekend! :mrgreen:

_________________
Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:16 am
Profile My Photo Gallery
Multiple Donor
Multiple Donor
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am
Posts: 2884
Location: Detroit, MI
Post Re: Snow Day (NS/Stick & MIDI)
paigan0 wrote:
Now that's the kind of masterful writing a Master's in English will get you! Especially slant-rhyming savior ("savya") and flavor (Flavah") together--it helps if you sing it with a British accent. :D (I'm such a hack!)

[...]
--Sir Hack-a-Lot

By the way, I used to think it was obvious that I'm being self-deprecating and I'm making fun of my hacky attempts to write lyrics, and it's especially humorous in light of the fact that I have a Master's in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Composition. I only point that out because I find it hilarious that I have so many problems with what should be the easiest part of the music for me. And writing Army technical manuals and love songs have not-surprisingly nothing in common except most of the same 26 letters of the language. (Although so do German and French. But maybe that makes my point, too.) If I'm so smart, why ain't I smart enough to write a hit song?

After discovering that Bill the Hitman totally thought I was serious when I called myself a "bass god" for finally being able to play a (simple) lick on my Railboard, I realized that some people really do encounter these people who are so arrogant about themselves that they believe their own hype. And who don't recognize self-deprecation in others. Or the attempts to psyche themselves up with self-cheering.

I am the most humble and non-arrogant person I know! I'd challenge anyone to be more humble than me! :geek: (This is more snark and sarcasm. And seriously, how would I ever out-humble the great Jayesskerr, who is the Humblest (and Hard Working-est) Man in Show Business!)

I'd appreciate that you not crush me by telling me that I suck and my Sticking sucks and go back to where you sucking came from with your suck-ass suckitude, but I'm really just trying to make tunes, and love sharing the process. Hopefully, y'all pick up on that I'm not an arrogant asshole jerk, at least until you get to the Forum and can disagree with me politically. :ugeek:

_________________
Steve Sink, Laser Fractals
Rosewood 10-string, #5989, M4s
Sapphire Railboard, #6763, MR
Wenge-on-Wenge NS/Stick, #170130, Bass 4ths
http://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-RDlN ... Ez0hN49_Qg


Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:37 am
Profile My Photo Gallery
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 16 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 33 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron

board3 Portal - based on phpBB3 Portal Powered by phpBB © phpBB Group. Designed by Vjacheslav Trushkin for Free Forums/DivisionCore.
Heavily modified by Stickist.com. Stickist.com is an authorized Chapman Stick® site. The Chapman Stick® and NS/Stick™ and their marks are federally registered trademarks exclusively licensed to Stick Enterprises, Inc., and are used on Stickist.com and NSstickist.com with SEI's permission.
Click here for more information.