Bash Demo #2 "You're Not Real" Nov demo challenge

ok here we go again. Continuing to try to get my groove on singing while sitting in bed with my cheapo headset.

as per----> Anyone up for a November songwriting challenge?

This was a drum/gtr track from maybe 2-4 weeks ago? Wrote the lyrics yesterday and came up with basic scratch vocal melodies using guitar.

Today I laid down the vocals, added bass (so ya’ll wont complain again), and “mixed” it lol.

Its mainly a vocal demo…there are no solos or guitar overdubs so the intro and bridge and solo section are just one bare guitar track.

Bash away, keeping in mind this is a demo…IOW bash the song moreso than the mix (and sloppy bass lol)

You’re Not Real

Mix #2, pulled up the vocal harmonies some (not enough now that I listen lol)

1 Like

Wow, now that’s a challenging vocal melody you’ve set for yourself - Impressive range!

Some observations:

  • The verse rhythms are promising - If I could hear a more solid bass part that really locks in with the guitar riff, you could could potentially have a great groove happening there. As it is, it sounds a little disconnected.

  • The pre-chorus has a nice build to it - I like it as is.

  • The chorus guitar is too busy, IMO - it detracts from the vocal part, rather than complementing it.

  • The chorus vocals are begging for harmonies and a secondary guitar part to expand the production.

Good start - could be very nice if you ever take it any further.

1 Like

I gave it a quick listen on my laptop but I’ll come back later to give you a more in depth analysis.

I like where you’re going with this one !!!
I really like when you use your vocal vibrato. I don’t think I’ve heard you do that before. It works well in this song.

I’ll be back for more!

1 Like

I don’t read the posts of others for the first round. don’t want to be tainted. Good sound Intro too long for me???vox late too? Vocal sounds sorta Styxish. wow, what a range. Great guitar tracks. Like to hear something a little different guitar wise when you do those I see you’s. seems like it is held back a bit there? How many nad twists to get those crazy high notes??? Gawd:) Me likes

sincerely

Paul

1 Like

All valid points. I dont think the guitar and drums are all that locked in at certain points…then I added bass on top of it so I doubt all 3 ever really match. I just threw down some quickie bass to give some warmth to the bottom end

The verse rhythm guitar even has errors in it…maybe ya’ll cant catch it if u dont know what to listen for but I do lol. Its supposed to be a riff using the flat 2nd and then when it descends its the regular 2nd…but you can hear where I kept screwing up and hitting the regular 2nd instead of the flat 2nd. It was anything BUT locked in

there ARE “harmonies” there lol. I got em mixed too low. I was worried the lead vx wouldnt stand out enough

What do you think about the way it went from the 1st chorus right back into the 2nd verse and then it was just a 1/2 verse then right back into the prechorus? That was all prearranged when I laid out the drum track. It almost feels a bit too abrupt though. If anything ill probably chop off the 1st intro and maybe extend the 2nd verse or at least add a little 4 bar “release” after the first chorus b4 the vx comes back in

yeah, that vocal was way different than anything ive done before. The high note there is not THAT high. Its an e5. Ive done up to sustained F#5s on songs before. But ive never really hit that really “squealy” note like that. it made it sound higher than it really was

I did learn a lot about my voice from that song. That squealy high note is very “closed”…its the total opposite from a David Lee Roth type of belty sound. I also want to do some of the DLR type stuff so I know I have to work on the opposite technique

here is a great example of that really closed down squealy high note with vibrato. This is more like a G5 though. I wasnt thinking of this song but it does sort of have the same climbing chorus

“when will you ever learn, the true depths of my work?. The future is my concern. You know art is my chuuuuuuuuuuuurch” lol

yeah, the intro and also the bridge and solo sections are still bare. The first intro might get chopped off, who knows. Otherwise u have to use your imagination and think of a bunch of Freddy Mercury type overdubs lol

1 Like

haha, thanks. Decent for only studying singing for <2 years

The chorus has the 4 climbing lines.

I see you
I hear you
I cant feel you
Youre not real

if you listen closely you see that the 3rd line was the hardest. it just happens to sit in one of those “in between” spots

That being said, it was all thrown together pretty quickly. The Koss SB40 headset is convenient but I dont think its anyones idea of hi quality. NO POP FILTER lol. You really gotta get the mic in the right spot or every P and T or even I will make a huge pop.

Hey nice start some very good ideas in the different sections. They need tightened up some, but very promising song. The chorus chords as coldroom said needs rewritten, but that how songs develop tho so re write that chours.

I would add this to the list to finish working out the melodies, GT, drums and bass part .
Nice job!! Has that Randy Rhodes ,John Sykes thing going on a little.

1 Like

Mix #2, pulled up the vocal harmonies some (not enough now that I listen lol)

thanks.

yeah, most of my stuff is pretty busy. Pretty sure that comes from me starting with a drum track only and then 95% of the stuff I have ever recorded has been guitar ONLY on top of the drums. So the tendency is to really fill up the parts and make them interesting on their own. The downside being that then when u start overdubbing it gets pretty busy sounding

one of the hardest things is to lay down a simple part. it just seems so silly but then it works when u start overdubbing

Ah, but that going to change as you start to become a writer and not a player. That’s the thing don’t get attached to any part change is what push the song sometimes. That goes along with taking sections out also. Also don’t t worries about icing the cake get the structure and sections and main parts honed in first then add the extras

1 Like

yeah, thats pretty much the path im on. Its so funny because im like every other guitar player. i want to do all the solos blah blah. But now I hardly actually lay solos down because the songs just dont get to that point lol

I have a long way to go as far as hearing stuff in my head. Right now im as surprised as anyone as to how stuff will come out lol

1 Like

Yep, it’s what the part does for the song not what it does for the player is the hard thing to learn but once you learn that it’s all good. The other thing is structure melodies and lyrics and reworking them till you can’t see straight.lol just keep pushing along.

1 Like

uggh. yeah, thats going to be a challenge lol. I lose interest SO quickly

Love this chorus… has such a cool hook to it and the climbing vocal works really well with it structurally and conceptually…
Would love to hear this ‘crafted and sculpted’ production-wise. Some cool vocal tones coming through, the challenge for a killer take would be to reduce the sliding up to the notes and either hit them direct or as-good-as. You’ve clearly go the chops to do that.
Yep this is a keeper… Now, what are you going to do next I wonder??? :sunglasses:

1 Like

for whatever reasons ive been depressed for the last week or so…and on and off for my whole life lol.

Musically, if I would have known id be this good, I would have been overjoyed. I can actually start from dead scratch and write songs and play and sing all the parts etc etc. Thats a long way from trying to learn barre chords etc

That being said, the depressing part is…it seems that no matter what I do it just simply wont be good enough. its like ALMOST THERE, but not quite. “Not quite” and “almost” may as well be a million miles away

Right now its the singing in particular thats killing me. I can sing so good on other people songs and mimicking others etc. I can sing great at work. But that and singing ORIGINAL stuff is totally unrelated

My songs sound nothing like what I want my music to sound like. I have another song pretty much done that I sang yesterday. It sounds very much like “me” and similar to other stuff ive done in a sense. Adventurous, interesting…but it doesnt sound hard or heavy enough lol. Its hard to explain.

Singing is by far the absolute hardest freaking thing. It pisses me off and I despise my voice…even though im a decent singer lol. For whatever reasons I turn into a different person when its time to sing. All of a sudden I cant find “it” and I just sound like me. Its like ive lamented before though…lets say I want to sing like David Lee Roth. I can set out to write a song for that voice type, but that means the WHOLE SONG has to be that style and that good. So far im not up to the task. Its definitely mental too. Its so hard to fight thru to want to go thru a proper warmup and find that voice. It really is sort of an athletic thing and its hard to do it on top of a full time job schedule.

Im definitely a tortured soul lol. I feel I keep getting “better” and im getting “closer” but I simply can NOT put it all together. I was miles away. Then just feet away. Now maybe just inches away. But “away” is still “away” lol. A miss is as good as a million miles

cest la vie. Im going to post my other song after a while. it needs some guitar solos but im too down to do them lol. Song is a bit scattered sounding. it’ll probably be up in a few hours

Peace, JJ

I hear you J J, I truly do…
I resonate with a heap of stuff that you are saying.
The singing voice is not like an instrument, it is ‘you’ and as such, has a lot more variables.
I suspect you are overthinking this stuff sometimes. Plus it’s important not to set yourself standards that are unrealistic. Be kind to yourself and hear the positives okay??? :sunglasses:
You’re making such great sounds and diving in where others fear to tread. It’s really hard to ‘cold-write’ a song… I know!!! Good on you! It’s a great challenge, really hard and you are getting great results so don’t be down on yourself okay??

And now, I’m gritting my teeth as I struggle to throw something fresh together for me to post…

1 Like

I’m not going to bash the mix or the individual instruments, although at times it feels like some of the instruments aren’t working together in synchronicity. That’s just an arrangement issue that can be fixed later. What you want here is advice and opinions on your songwriting.

I like the direction you’re going with this song. It’s not a bad song IMO. At first I didn’t think the verse and pre-chorus were very good but I after listening to it more I think it’s fairly decent. It might have been the vocal performance in the verse and the way it interacted with the guitars that threw me off at first, but I think I see where you’re coming from now. You’re just in pre-production mode here. If you decide to fix things and do a fully polished production this would be a song that is worthy. I can’t say exactly how worthy it is right now because it takes time to allow a song to either “grow” on you or “die”…I think I would be able to tell you how good I think the song is at a later date , after comparing it with your other songs and getting to know your material better.

I really like when you sing the high note “You’re not real”, with the vibrato inflection. In fact I like all the vocal vibrato you do throughout the song.

I’m looking forward to hearing your next tunes, because I love comparing an artists own songs against one another…I like to have songs “compete” with one another…It tells me which songs are keepers and which ones are the duds. BUT…every song has value, whether it’s a hit or a miss.

1 Like

yeah, im fascinated by that too. I probably got about 20 songs if u r interested lol. That being said, I dont feel that any of them are the definitive “me”. Im trying to do hard rock and my eventual goal is maybe a cross between vanHalen and soundgarden or just good modern sounding hard rock.

the vocal part is sort of one hang up right now. mainly that I havent been singing for 2 full years yet and I consciously have kept my voice clean so far, just trying to learn to sing etc. Of course a clean voice is a little weird with heavy rock so there ya go lol. I am now wanting to start bringing in the distorted vocals. But of course everything else has to match etc

So far nothing I have done has been close to being heavy enough

1 Like