General Music Chat

Ok, here's some of my weirder stuff. Older tunes. Soon as I get my studio back up and going I'll be putting out new better stuff...with a REAL drummer. Hey Howlin', on "Teachings" I midi'd my drum machine and keyboard and set it to run off of the keyboard clock. As long as I was pressing any of the keys, the drums continued. That's how I put the breaks in there, just quit playing the keys and the drums stop. Then as soon as I start the keys again, the drums start on the first note of the measure. Fun trick for playing live without a drummer. Alrighty then. Critics ready? (go easy, I've a frail ego )

RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!!

Well, just remember that you asked for it!

"Nevermore" - not at all bad. Lotsa good energy. At 1st I thought the guitar coming in at :40 was too loud, but later I thought not - perhaps it needs to fade in? I liked this one. Vocals could be better.

"Reality Check" - kinda '80's sounding at the start...vocals need to be redone, if this were to be a finished product. Very Floydish with the blues licks & vocal styles, but the keys' programs are way cheesier. It's too long without a breakup bridge, but I'd like it if it were shorter. You can only take a one-chord groove so far, & for me that's about 3 min max. This is over twice that!

"Teachings" - interesting how you break it up. You need better keyboard sounds.


You have good guitar chops, & good ideas, overall, here. I'm a lil under the weather today but it seems that there may have been some minor timing issues with the last one. If you update your keyboards, most of this is quite useable, even if the vocals aren't the bestest.

I liked NEVERMORE. If the whole album was like that, I'd buy it.

The rhythm section in Nevermore is really nice, but I don't think the leads and the vocals did it justice, imo.

Yeah, these were all experimental songs written and recorded spontaneously. The vocals are definitely my weak spot. They are more or less scratch vocals I put down just to get the idea across in case I find vocalists to match the songs. That's what I like about this forum...honest opinions from good musicians. All my friends say, "Oh that's great." but I think the same things ya'll do. I'm a guitarist, not a singer or a keyboardist. Thanks for the input and KEEP IT COMIN'! I can take it.

Nevermore: 4:16
Not enough vocal definition between chorus and verse. Kind of bleeds together.
Lead riffage is tasty, but lost in the mix.

Reality Check: 6:49
liked the L/R vox split it works well, the vox to left (response verse) seemed to having a hard time deciding wheter to speak or sing.
Nice guitar effects and panning.
I kept expecting this expolosion of Rock to occur. It did not.

Teachings:
Nice laid back "joe cool" style sound and guitar licks.
The break @ 2:16 seemed just a tad long.

Thanks for the music Jeff.

The production is so much better than what I've been pulling off that even realizing that what has been said prior about a few spots is true-I still think things overall really sound pretty damn good. I listened w/ phones, and I could hear every thing very clearly, and I thought nearly all the tones made good sense for how they seemed to my ear- to fit together.

I even liked your vocals, scratch or not-you sound like a southern Frank Zappa meets Roger Waters kinda! LOL And I mean that to be good-I love Zappa and Waters. Maybe better vocals *takes* are in order-but your voice is not at all hard on the ears! I didn't catch every lyric on a couple listens to be able to say much about them. I think your song structure/arranging is just fine; the tunes are balanced well, IMO.

Guitar player to guitar player-you use effects very well and got some good chops too. Sometimes it seemed a little effects heavy though...but then again-to get what you were going for, I imagine they are integral. I don't mean that as critisism really...it's a subjective thing that I would typically answer in this way, just from my own stylistic point of view-which is closer to bare bones, be that good or bad.... The tones in Reality Check are where I feel this the most...the guitartone sounds...cold...solid state? But you hear it how you hear it in your head and that may well have been what you wanted for your artistic vision. I don't mean to say that it was hard to listen to or anything...just not as emotive as it might have been otherwise...LOL For all I know everyone else was moved by it and I missed it. It sounds "true" to the style you are going after as a caveat....

I think Nevermore is your best tune here ....I like the song...especially the main verse and vocal melody w/ harmony (rough sure, but I like it...Neil Young fans can live w/ rough harmonies! LOL), and how it resolves...the tune to my ear is like Ozzy, Mettalica, and Beck Bogert and Appice all mushed into one. It's like tree rings from your listening past. Good movement and resolution, and I definitely like the guitar break.

I like the guitar work on Teachings too. The tone as well...it has to my ear "warmth" LOL..(whatever that means) Makes me think....Joe Satriani meets Leslie West...your best guitarwork is here, of the 3-IMO.

Well, that's my read on it, it doesn't mean too much, my opinion is no better then yours or anyone elses! But there it is at any rate...

Rat,
I got pretty much sucked into "Nevermore". (I'll check out the others later, but I wanted to comment on the first tune while it was fresh in my head)

Bottom line, Excellent! ,especially for a demo class recording.

I like the mumbling and grumblings in the vocal track.
I also found the tone of some of the lead guitar work interesting. Sorta like an old Meistro Fuzz tone, but even weirder. Very cool.

That tune ROCKS!
I see no reason why you shouldn't get a bitchin' band together, unless you're simply too far up in the Ozarks!

Later,
Howlin'

These songs were done in my living room with a Yamaha 8-track cassette recorder which I am getting ready to sell so I need to record them over to my HD 24. That'll give me 16 more tracks so I can redo parts without losing the original. Reality Check came about when I had picked up a cheesy little keyboard at a pawn shop and was playing around with the sequencer. That is the very beginning of the song. My brother was here and liked it so I started putting a song together for fun and he wrote the lyrics. I arranged his lyrics making his first verse repeat while the high vocals did the other verses in a response type deal. I had the keys midi'd with the drum machine to keep it all together, but took one keyboard off midi and did another sequence (kind of an east India sound to me) and let it be a little off time on purpose. We did the whole song in about an hour. Alcohol WAS involved.
"Nevermore" is one that I definitely want to redo parts and really work on.
"Teachings" came about from me trying to learn about midi and I found out how to midi the keys and drum machine. Then I got to add the guitar masterbation.

Ok, so I took off the two songs with the least favorable reviews (my own included) and put up three others. They're still some of my older stuff recorded just to give others an idea.
"See Ya Later" (at least my vocals don't suck on here).
"Fast Cars, Long Cigars" Written in the mid 80's. Lot of Molly Hatchet influence coming through.
"I Wanna Be Rich" My Rock n Roll Reggae tune. Playing around with a new pedal I had gotten.
Let's see what you think.

"See Ya Later" - good licks. Bad key sounds. Good guitar tones. A bit too long.

"Fast Cars..." - vocals aren't bad, man. Def southern rock. Not my genre of choice, but you do it well, & yeah, I actually heard it all.

"I Wanna Be Rich" - nice lil thing at the start. Timing prob's at 1:05 & 2:07, like you were unsure of where to come back in. The whole thing feels a bit awkward, & a touch disjointed, like you stuck two different songs together that almost work, ya know? Strange ending.

well ratsass nevermore sounds like a fill from a tool song, which isn't a bad thing, check out the song Part of Me by Tool on youtube, see ya later is like santana meets dire straits I guess if I had to describe it briefly the gf likes it and she's not a lost cause on music, fast cars long cigars..southern rock, its ok wouldn't really listen if that were the whole album but you're a nutcase who's all over the place and has played for decades so its cool, I wanna be Rich, I like the lyrics they aren't to sappy and its still a good pop sounding piece, I enjoyed the touch of pink floyd in it

I really enjoyed SEE YA LATER, I must admit though I caught my mind drifting off before the end. A tad too long perhaps? But then it's been a long day and my mind is tired.

FAST CARS LONG CIGARS was a bit too Molly for me.
No disrespect Jeff, but the same song with "your" tone / sound instead of theirs would prolly kick major bootae.
I do like the way you use the L / R panning on the "dueling guitar" parts.
Thats a neat trick. I want to incorporate that into my live show somehow.

I WANNA BE RICH just does not work for me at all.
If I had started my review with this song, it may have struck me favorably. There was something there I wanted to like.
Was so different from the other two though. Ya know what I mean?

Thanks for the music bro.

Alrighty then. Got rid of "Fast Cars" and "I Wanna Be Rich" and put 2 more on.
"Testing Two" was the second song I ever recorded, using a Yamaha 4-track cassette with no frills. A friend told me if he ever comes up with a video game, he wants to use that as the music.
"Redhouse" is the old blues standard, we recorded live at a welcome home party for the troups. Shows the way I play blues (more rocked up than usual). Sorry, it's a bit long, but we had a guest harmonica player and we jammed out a couple of solos each.

I always liked Red house. Testing Two freakin rocks. Once again I must say how much I like the walking pan effect on the lead licks!