[andy5544]

Song about the cool black bass player 
got the idea after watching Southpark.

http://soundcloud.com/compass-plane/black-man-plays-the-bass-andy

Lyrics ,


                  Black Guy Plays The Bass

white guy plays geetar

pulls his geetar face

drummer keeps the beat

and the black guy plays the bass

-----------------------------------
         chorus

hey mr bassman go low and go deep

and if you really care ,you gonna take my dare

hey mr bassman go low and go deep

and never come up for air

-----------------------------------

disco soul or rave music

or in hip hop in your face

pc geek plays keyboards

but the black guy.....always bass

-------------------------------------

white guys wear the flip flops

and play their games of chess

but the black guy sticks to bass

it's what he does the best.
----------------------------------
         chorus

[nooms]

terrific andy, lot of fun well sung great groove & fab funny lyric
like the chaotic start, not sure if its going to get together but it does..
you chaps remind me of flo & eddie, great vocal
well done guys

[The Chemist Tree]

Very silly song (which is always good). I felt the guitar intro was a little out of time (the second phase), but it might be just me.

Love the line about flip flops ;-)

[jim morrison]

Love it ! simples

[Dutchbeat]

wow, that is great

those James brown screams...and the funkly bass are great

don't know about the multiple vocals together...but for the rest, very very good

[ABeautifulVirus]

hahaaaa. awesome. like Primus meets War.  love the cowbell! ("more cowbell")!

[Kafla]

Hi Andy ,

Mental 

I know you like to write light heartened ditties but it should in no way cheapen how well recorded , played and written this is.

Always put a smile in my face and this is one of your best !

[Redster]

I love this track its proper good - good concept, excellent execution loads of FUN and definitely up my street in terms of FUNK! Totally my type of music! Love it!

But - and I hope you don't mind me being to critical here - and I am likely to be too critical here so thick skin and don't take it to heart - from a mix point of view its a right mess - sorry!

I suspect this is a sketch/scratch track, but hey you posted it so here's some production advice;

For example its such a shame that a song about a guy playing a bass guitar has a bass guitar in it that has NO BASS! I know its slap popped (which I absolutely love) but what the hell have you done to it? Its all mids, mids MIDS! ouch. It needs a tight bass end, a romping set of low range frequencies that pick up the rhythm and tone of the drums (are the drums a sample?) - its played perfectly but it sounds like you are playing a biscuit tin not a bass guitar - yikes!

The vocals need bit of work also - to many highs, accentuated by the excessive reverb. You need to get an EQ on there between 1k to 1.5k with a peak and chop those buggers out - at very least until they fall from the reverb trail as currently they are just cutting the rest of the instrumentation to shreads. Low pass filter the top most end to settle them down and turn them down just a notch. Reduce the reverb decay.

You need to make friends with your pan pots and chop some frequencies out of the vocal to make space for the guitars or vice versa to help move the guitar away from the vocals, or to bring the excellent solo out from the haze.

I don't know what or how you have recorded this but this really is totally up my street musically so if you like I'll be more than happy to mix this properly for you if you have clean threads? It needs it and it's such a good track that it really deserves to be done properly! PM me if you are interested.

Sorry for the extreme critique, I really love the track but the mix makes me sad

[James Nighthawk]

Rough of mix
Tight of funk
High of energy
Crazy ass junk

    

[Schavuitje]

Had me laughing all the way through. Very nice job guys
Loving that bass although you really do need to get some bass in it 
Funky as hell 

[Redster]

Andy was very kind after my extreme criticism to allow me to have the Stems!

I have done the following:

1. Reworked the drums to loose the samples and programmed them from scratch.
2. I could not save the biscuit bass (although I was almost there) so I re-recorded it.
3. Played a bit with the arrangement to bring in some stabs and accentuations and lost the fade out.
4. Remixed the vocals and the "Girls" - added some formant shifting on the girls to make them more girlish - tried to move them away from the main vocal.
5. The stems for the vocals seem to have been recorded with a really heavy reverb on input. Ouch. This really makes it hard to sit them into the track. I have tried to settle the vocals down, cut as much of the high frequencies as I can but just seem to loose the tone without correcting the issue. I have compressed them, gated the reverb trails off and even tried to remix the song to the vocal reverb. In this version I have almost reverted back to the originals as I have got lost.

This is completely messing with my head and I have got a bit lost in the mix. So I'm asking for help. This is not compressed, not mastered, nothing, just a scratch mix that I have been working on for 2 days and in the process lost faith in myself.

Without a complete re-record of the vocals where have I gone wrong? Is there anything I can do to rescue it?

I think maybe I need to zero everything and start again, but any advice would be nice at this stage. Or maybe even leave it alone for a week and come back to it fresh.

What a great song though I have had a whale of a time messing with it, but as I say seem to have got a bit lost.

Thanks for the chance Andy!

Here it is - turn it up and have a listen http://soundcloud.com/redredding/blackguyplaysthebass-2

If anyone's interested I used Open Source Drum Kit for the drum programming on this one - Its not bad at all http://realmusicmedia.net/osdrumkit/

[andy5544]

hey redster , i think you did brilliant ,
frustrating that Ron doesn't have time to re do the vocals . I must say though that i like the mix you sent me last night over this one you just posted , and Ron just said Wow !!! you can mix our stuff anytime 
Dont blow your brain up over it , unless you want to 
thanks Red , your a diamond .

[Redster]

I must say though that i like the mix you sent me last night over this one you just posted , and Ron just said Wow !!!

My God you are right! That'll teach me to not save incrementally. I'll update the link with the first one. Its better for sure (more Geeetar ) but I can still hear the vocal problem and have no idea how to deal with it... bah.

I had a better bass sound in the new take* but panicked and lost the rest of the track. I'm gonna leave it for a few days then zero everything and start from scratch. Onwards.

* split the bass out to two channels using a stereo imager, tapped off the two frequencies onto two mono channels, compressed the high and low frequencies separately, boosted the high and added some distortion to the high only to accentuate the slap-pop then combined them back into a mono channel - my god you gotta love Reason

[Boydie]

I absolutely loved the drums on the original recording and I can't believe RED has done such an awesome job of replicating the groove and live feel with programmed drums  

The bass is "night and day" different and is Funking excellent!

Can I see why RED is not happy with the mix though ...



I have listened to both versions closely and my initial reaction is no - the new version is tight as hell and definitely does have much more punch to it

However, there is something "authentic" sounding in the original in that it sounds very "old skool"

I think this is mainly down to the distant "reverb drenched" drums on the original track which gives the track an added dimension when the drums kick in

I also know that the original track was made up from different drum loops - which I can now hear - with each drum loop having different processing (reverb levels, EQ etc.)

In theory this shouldn't really work as there is no consistent "ambience" - i.e. it doesn't sound like a band performing in front of me

However, the patchwork of different "flavours" helps keep the interest and contrast in the original track

With the drums replaced with cleaner drums the reverb on the vocal really stands out so I think it is definitely the contrast of the reverb on the vocals against a "cleaner" background that is messing with your head - I agree that a re-record of the vocals with a cleaner sound would sit better in the track and solve all ills


However, I must say that I prefer the new version - it is tighter and "funkier"

[Redster]

After speaking to Ron it seems that there may be a slight chance we can switch the reverb off the vocals of the original take. \o/

I appreciate your words Boydie, and I totally understand what you mean about the drums - yep overall rhythmically they are better then I could have hoped (OSD is great and its FREEE!) but once again (like Breakdown) I have not given them the final velocity and automation pass that's needed to really change the degree of loudness between verse/chorus etc. I still think they much improve over the drum samples, but then I guess I would

I just got a bit lost trying to sort the vocals out - maybe I wont have to try.... There is HOPE