The Songwriter Forum - songwriting reviews, tips and chat
Songwriter Forum => Feedback on Finished songs => Topic started by: Boydie on July 22, 2012, 10:14:41 AM
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Here is a new one that has taken on a bit of a life of its own!
I recorded the bare bones of this after watching the Download festival on Sky the other night (Slayer, Anthrax, Slash etc.) - you may spot the heavier influence ;D
I then started liking the riff so expanded it into a song...
...then a friend (he is on Soundcloud as RedRedding and has some great stuff on there) offered to re-programme the drums from scratch and mix it for me - so I bit his arm off!
This then put me under a little pressure to write a melody/lyric to turn my noodlings into a "proper song"
I think RED has done an awesome job on the drums/mix/production
We did talk about shortening and "taming" the guitar solo but in the end decided to keep - I have been really disciplined with my guitar playing on my previous tracks so wanted at least one unashamed "rockout" 8)
I would also like to introduce "Mrs Boydie" - who is playing "Hannah" ;)
Enjoy and let me know what ya fink!
http://soundcloud.com/boydiemusic/breakdown
Thanks
Boydie
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wow - I love rock music and I love this!! Great little story with a nice twist in and a really 'driving' beat and melody - your chum makes those drums really work for me. Great stuff. This I will take myself another listen. BTB
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cant fault this
really good rockin track
like the breakdown hook and the excellent change part
you had me looking for my phone at the start though..
can imagine an excellent you tube vid as well with all the sparks coming off of it..
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This is absolutely not my type of music but even I can tell that this is first rate stuff. It's original and is played and produced to the highest standard. Great vocals and a good strong story. I can't fault it; very impressive in all departments.
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Wahey that's a cool riff on the sections where Mrs Boydie does a great job of the phone voice.
Thoroughly enjoyed that.
It was absolutely that riff and phone voice bit that sold it too me :)
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I like the phone ringing at the beginning ;)
But it`s a good rock song...can`t say theres to much wrong...
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Yessss.... rocking and rolling to this one. ;D... Loved the 'industrial' feel to the rhythm, and thought it worked really well with the telephone bits. Some great guitar work there Boydie (Hendrix must be turning in his grave ;D).....The telephone thing works a treat....Mrs. Boydie sounded just like one of my daughters on the phone.....Great stuff...loved it....Thanks :)
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fabulous work, Boydie!!!
drums are great, well it is all great, it has an extremely commercial hard rock sound all over, with everything on it and in it
and the guitar solo is ace :o :o
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Very nice indeed mate. The phone beeps at the start need to be quieter.... I'm just off to peel my tweeter diaphragms off of the wallpaper....
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not my scene this like, reminds me of eighties rock but good stuff anyhow its out there for people to enjoy!
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Glad to see you persevered with this one! The chorus is great Boydie. Great hook in there "Heading for a breakdown"
Generally this is great. My main nit pit is that the female spoken point is a little "cheesy" in its format. I would have lo-fi'ed it up closer to a telephone sound. You have put some filtering on the but it doesnt mimic a telephone close enough. And the line isn't acted quite well enough to really convinced me of "crazy bitch on the line" ;D ;D :D
I think a punchy acoustic guitar in the chorus would add a missing element to the mix, its a little cold when I want it to be warm and hugging come the chorus, while maintaining the dirty rock edge.
Ace guitar playing and love the off kilter guitar riffs in the verses, really contrasts the choruses whilst fitting nicely as it progresses :)
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Liking this Boydie mate, the 'Heading For A Break Down' hook is class, sticks in your head which is always good thing for a song. Vocal fits the song well, great guitar solo, overall just a proper good rocker of a tune! Nice one.
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Hiya Boydie,
Wow your wife sounds really young ;)
I think the musicianship on this is excellent, its not my sort of thing really but good work
Flossie
x
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mrs boydie is a star! she sounds as small as me!
great song but if i was playing that solo id have stuck it right in peoples ears not had it fighting for attention it needs more treble or something
you do a great rock vocal boydie
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Very professional, rockin tune. It makes me jealous the level of production, but I feel honored to hear it. It's not my first choice of music, but I can't deny how awesome this is! Nice job, Boydie.
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Hey, its Red here, I may have slightly assisted the man Boydie on this track. Good lord that man can write songs (and sing - and play guitar - the B@stard)!
As for the guitar solo, its worth noting that we have not made an EQ pass on any of this track yet, which is encouraging ;) But yes it could do with being a bit more pronounced.
The only thing I have done tonally so far is ducked the bass guitar under the kick using a side chain compressor and trimmed the rest of the tracks to make space using hi and low pass filters. The rest of the "depth" uses various degrees of reverb send.
The drums need a bit of work, the song in general lacks dynamics between the verse and chorus - maybe I made it pound too much from the start. ;) plus the crash cymbals towards the end of the song are all messed up.
That said, overall I think we are both pretty pleased with where it is at the moment. I have a drummer friend who has insinuated that he will come and play on this to get rid of the drum computer, so this is not the last you have heard of Breakdown....
Frankly both our ears are bleeding from working on this, so its time to go to something a little more chilled...
"Songs are never complete, only abandoned."
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Thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated
This is certainly not my usual type of music but it was great fun!
I certainly understand the comments about the phone ringing - regardless of how many times I heard it I still automatically look for a phone during the intro - and I don't even have any phones that ring like that!!!!
@estreet - sorry about the tweeters :-[ (the ringing did make me jump out of my skin once when I left the volume up and my headphones on!!!)
@JamesNighthawk - I hear what you are saying here and I agree. The answerphone concept only came up at the last minute. I suggested a "telephone" type effect for the first few lines, RED then took the idea and ran with it putting the answerphone message in, MRS BOYDIE then recorded this message and came up with the idea of putting a return message over the other breaks. I think it all came together nicely but agree it could all have been a bit "tighter" had we originally had the concept and written the song to fit - an idea for another day...
@(Revovle)around
Very professional, rockin tune. It makes me jealous the level of production
It has been a bit of a humbling experience for me too - I thought I had the production pretty good but RED completely transformed the track. All recording was done in SONAR, with Guitar Rig providing all guitar tones. RED mixed and tweaked everything in REASON so it is all "home" stuff
This experience has been such a learning curve for me and it has hammered home to me that it is all about learning the skills (and training your ears) to mix and get a good production
I feel that I am on the foot hills of a very steep learning curve but one I definitely want to conquer (and if JAMES NIGHTHAWK and RED can give me a push along that way that would be great!!)
This song has been “abandoned” for now and I am looking forward to working on a few more chilled out numbers I have in the pipeline…
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Sounds great ,drums are brilliant ,wish i could program drums ???
guitar solo is on fire , all in all great ;D
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Thanks!
wish i could program drums
I used Reasons drum computer for this. I just programmed a basic pattern first that followed the bass guitar. Pasted the pattern to a midi track then edited it as the song went along.
Make sure you keep in mind that drummers only have two arms - i.e. you cant hit a hat, snare and cymbal at the same time. As for fills, just take it as it comes, program the fills as you see fit then apply the above rule to humanise them. Use reference tracks for inspiration.
The most important thing is velocity. Vary it - a lot - in particular on the hats, the kick and the snares. I have not done this enough yet on this track that's why the dynamics are a bit shot, but I didn't want to spend too much time on it after luring my drummer mate to come and actually play on it (more to follow)...
After the basic pattern and fills were programmed and the velocities tweaked I went back in and replaced all the drum samples with one-shot samples that sounded about right to fit with the tone of the song, pitched the individual drums so they sounded like a tuned kit and made another couple of passes to make sure the two-arm rule was obeyed.
Finally I added the crashes and a few little hi-hat inflections.
They still sound like a drum computer to me though... ;)
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Got me looking around the house for a phone then lol, smashing rock song, i can't tell weather it's recorded in a studio or not ??
Ah yeah read the previous post now, thats well impressive production.
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Damn Boydie. Had me reaching for the phone. ;D Caught! ;)
Lovely production. Great tune. Had me nodding the head, though I don't have the hair any more.
The Mrs Boydie part really mixed in well.
A great rocker. ;D
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this is a gem. like Mudhoney meets Sonic Youth meets Garbage/Shirley Manson. friggin' great track. something i would buy and listen to.
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Thanks ABeautifulVirus the Garbage shout is quite a compliment as this was essentially programmed and mixed electronically :) Cheers.
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Ah - really refreshing to hear this. Love the verse guitar riff/pick and transition to chorus - the contrast works really well. I think the phone works well too although potentially you could loose one of them as it doesnt take much to get the message (nice pun eh?)
Guitar solo is stunningly well played but does get a bit lost in potentially too many notes and a little hard to hear what's going on (might be a touch quiet too but I'm on not great headphones just now). The bits of the solo where you pick up a melody are really nice and they shine through.
Drums fit perfectly - sharp and full of energy.
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Very well done! Especially the guitars and Hannah. Though I haven't listened to this type of music much since the 90s, this is definitely pro level stuff.
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A classic bit of rock n roll, this is! Love the dirty slightly industrial guitar riff. Great choice of guitar tones and fantastic drum programming (welcome aboard Red)
Agree that Hannah could do with a bit of roughing up ;)
My only criticism of this track is that the vocal melody doesn't sound like it belongs to the guitar riff (verse only). That guitar riff is infectious and quite alt-rock (sort of Alice in Chains?) but the vocal melody is very ZZ top/ classic rock. Nowt wrong with classic rock - just seems to go against the grain a little?
Of course, only my opinion. And if you don't upset someone you're doing it wrong as far as I'm concerned.
And that guitar solo is ON FIRE!
Go Boydie!
Great track. Fantastic sound. Brilliant performance. Regards to Mrs Boydie :)
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Another style from boydie and another winner ;D
Love the change into the chorus
Love your wife's voice , solo, drums - maybe the bass could come up more
Brilliant mate :D
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Love this. The chords in the verse are great, and the solo is insane.
Only problem I have with this track is it's 2:30 in the morning, and ringing phones confuse me at this time of day. :P
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Great track with lots of energy. Interesting contrast from the verse patterns to the uplifting 'yeah what do you make of me now' part and then the spoke word section. Cool, I enjoyed this!
Thanks for sharing
Paul