General Music Chat

Ive been real busy musically for the last few weeks. Ive been involved with recording a total of 35 songs for various things Im doing right now. One of my projects is my old club band Aint Yo Mama which is reformed and looking to start gigging again. We didnt have any current music recorded so we layed down 12 songs. These are covers for gigs, but they are sounding so good to me that I think when we complete them we may press up a CD called Aint Yo Mama Putin On The Hits.

I thought I would share them here and see what you guys think. There are 7 covers on my audio player the titles are self explanatory except for The Funk. This is a medley of Play That Funky Music, Superstitious, We Want The Funk, and Thank You For Lettin Me Be Myself that we always played live. The vocals on these songs are scratch vocals, Kevin will come back and redo them and we will also do a final mix. Keep in mind they are not mixed, just thrown down for reference.


If you are into weird ambient guitar noise, listen to The Funk and pay attention to what all is happening. What happens when 2 crazy guys hook a Les Paul into a couple of distortion pedals, a Whammy pedal, a EH Micro Synth Bass, Digitech Bass Synth Wah, Line 6 Digital Delay pedal, into a squalling guitar amp, well listen and find out. Also on the Funk we did a talk box, and we did a little vocal trickery here and there. I doubt we will leave all this in the song but we wanted to mix it and see how it holds up after a couple of days. Anyway on this song I would appreciate some input as to whether to leave the ambients in or take them out.

Thanks for your time, just go to my player and check some of this out.

Hey JW,

Yep, you guys are sounded tight man..Great gtr tone!!!..Yeah, that medley was freaky Hearin those tunes done like that after doing them for yrs, makes ya think what if?..... Can you imagine if you had the ability to change up those tunes like that back in 76. Dont know if Sly , Wild Cherry, and Stevie woulda approved though..NOW, at 16-17, I woulda DEFINETLY thought it an improvement over their versions.. Id say you boys are bout ready to go to press.

John

Good band good job Jw123

Make that CD man, you guys have all the right elements in place with the exception of some harmonies but that makes these songs your own done your way and sound without taking away the identity of the songs.
If I walk into a joint and hear a sounding band like yours I’d hang out and listen, you guys play tunes that I’ve played when I was gigging.

PS: We used to do madleys as well but used them only in dance halls to keep people dancing, madleys (we were told) do not work in every venue, I don't know if it would work on a CD, but I might be wrong on this one.

Keep that sound alive Jw.

I have two words for you:
Kick
ASS!
The vocals on your audio files are now alot better than they used to be.
And your mixing and mastering is superb. There's really no question that you know what it is your doing. You guys are some of the best on the site if you ask my opinion.

Love Superstitious, but I wanted to hear the banging bass more.. "gonna kick you in the ass" haha
Dig it, man. Tight.

Thanks for listening guys.

I felt pretty good about these songs. Other than The Funk there was really no mixing done. If you listen to the song Alive we all kind of fade out together on the end and it just works.

For the guitarist out there. Heres the lowdown on equipment.

Pinball Wizard, I plugged my Wahburn acoustic straight into the board and played live in the control room with the bassist. We layed down the basics, acoustic, bass, drums, vocals together live. It sounds like a 12 string but we doubled the track right and left with about 10ms of delay and got that sound. Anyone that knows me knows I never play acoustics, so I was sweating bullets recording this. Townsend is really awesome on guitar and that picking pattern is hard to maintain. I came back and layered some guitars here and there to fill it up.

The rest of the songs I wound up using my Mesa Subway Rocket. We miced it up in the closet with an SM 57. It is running into the board thru a tube preamp, which warmed it up some. For my basic track I played a Les Paul. We would lay down the guitar, bass, drums, and vocals live all at once. Then I doubled all the rythym guitar parts with a Strat thru the same amp. On Plush I spiked the amp with a Tube Screamer to get those harmonic overtones, the rest of the songs where just straight guitar straight into the amp with no effects. I came over for a couple of days and tryed recording my Mesa Triple Rectifier, then I tryed a Peavey 5150, then I tryed my Mesa Roadster. In the end the little amp just sounds better. So for all you guitarist out there for recording you might want to try some smaller amps for recording purposes. The Rocket is really not a real gainy amp compared to my larger amps but it just comes across when you record it. I am proud of the way those rythyms sound. I also felt good double tracking them cause most of them I did in one take.

The slide on the song Tush. This was my first time to really try to play slide and record it. Ive played this song for years and just played a regular solo on it and it always sounded weak to me. So I said Im going to play slide on this one. I played an Epiphone Sheraton, which is semi hollow bodied into a little Fender SS amp. We dimed the controls on the little amp and layed it on its back under the chair I was sitting in. If I wasnt playing it would just howl something awful. But using the different amp makes it stand out more. When we mix it will be brought out more. I think this was the second take and we just decided to leave it.

Most of the songs if you listen real close I added some little guitar noises to empasize changes in the music. Then we really layed the effects on Sat Night Special, listen for the synth sound in the middle break and the end. Then again on The Funk we just went nuts.

We tore down the studio the other day. Im hoping in a couple of weeks to get the guys back and try to get 5 or 6 more keepers. I need a solid 10-12 songs to put together a CD, then we have to hit the clubs to support it.

Thanks once again.

Just keep rockin

JW, I listened to every song, some a couple of times and I'm blown away. Great stuff man! The guitar work was excellent. Put me down as a big fan.

Mike, Thanks I appreciate you listening to a bunch of classic rock. I know from your sound samples that you kind of have an old soul anyway. So thanks, and if I keep building up these thick sounding songs I may need another guitarist to fill it out. You just never know.

Hmmm.. I didn't say it last time, but I just gotta ask. About STP's tune, did you intend to make the guitar tone a lil "softer" than the original? Cool either way.

FRIGGIN A BRO. Play list you have on you site looks like a roll call of George's favs (except Sat Nit Spec, Being a shootist I always thought that song sucked, dumbassed drunks should shoot themselves )
I love "Cold Gin" you guys should add "Deuce" or "100.000 Years".
May your band live long and prosper V .

Jw123 Awesome sound man, simply excellent work. To me it sounds as pro as it gets.

Thanks for listening, I appreciate it.