We tried this one before, and had to wait a few months for a drum track which has now been completed.
The singing has been redone to an extent, and a coda/fadeout was added at the end. I’d like to verify that this will translate pretty well, since I tend to want more of a classic rock sound than a modern sound, and I generally need to trust other ears. Anyway, let me know what you think.
1 Like
Starts great but then at around 0:26 with the the tom beating and a lot of dull (for lack of a better word) instruments it just feels like to much mush to me. then at 0:48 it gets better again. So i think I would suggest to strip that down a bit and remove or replace that tom thumping, maybe even strip back some other instruments and then build from there. I don’t like giving arrangement arrangement suggestions because what you and others may be hearing/feeling could be different so … .
wow Big sound. Great vibrato on that vocal. Power guitar at 1:05 too hot for one count. tee hee
In general, my right ear is hearing most of that power? Love the whoa’s. Great lead break lots of stank.
Just for my reference. I just played my last song that i made and had to turn it up to 36 to hear. I played yours at 16. Love the calm down outro. good stuff
I have the same approach; I can hear ways to adjust an arrangement that makes perfect sense to me, but I haven’t put the hours in on the writing, and don’t know the intent, so I try to comment in a general way. That’s not to say that a distracting element should be ignored, but that part has grown on me as I have listened to it more.
This song is about my father’s passing, which happened about a year ago. We tried to elicit a bit of the feeling of a Scottish funeral in a reverberant church in the beginning, and at the end the sound is kind of floating in the hills. It’s not written as a radio friendly piece since it’s more personal, but I understand your comment and appreciate it (Be thankful I didn’t play the bagpipes).
Also, thanks for your comments too, Paul. The guitar solo was pretty much spontaneous, and I think I got some shots in. It needs to stank if it’s gonna crank!
3 Likes
Damn, this is a well constructed song and production! That mellow fade out at the end is an awesome addition. I like the singing too.
I don’t recall what the other drums sounded like but this drum sound you got here is quite good. They sound fairly “big”. Before the lead vocal comes in at the beginning of the song, there are a few tom fills that I think could be brought up in volume a little bit, or maybe just whichever frequencies that would make the toms cut a bit more and make them heard slightly more in the mix, but I’m being nitpicky about that.
This is damn good !
Excellent stuff! Is that you on vocals? Very emotive and moving. I definitely sense a Highlands vibe. The scales and/or melody has that feeling about it.
Very tasty!
It’s a Long Way to Scotland (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll) 
When I looked at the ‘time’ left for the outro, I thought it was pretty long, but I noticed I didn’t lose interest before the end. An excellent sign!
1 Like
Wicked: “Damn, this is a well constructed song and production! That mellow fade out at the end is an awesome addition. I like the singing too. I don’t recall what the other drums sounded like but this drum sound you got here is quite good”.
Thanks very much. It took a number of months for Aaron (drummer) to find a studio open in Michigan to record his tracks. I think they came out great. Prior to that it was EZ Drummer 2, which is easy to make sound good, but impossible for me to edit to really make it fit. Aaron did a great job of playing to the song to make it stand out properly. On the toms, that’s still a little bit of a debate. I like the ambiance, but we may need to get more of the mallet and less of the rumble.
Stan: “Excellent stuff! Is that you on vocals? Very emotive and moving. I definitely sense a Highlands vibe. The scales and/or melody has that feeling about it”.
Yes, that’s me screaming in tune. The opening line came to me on theacoustic; I always love open strings playing against each other. It took off from there.
“Very tasty”!
Thanks again. I remember playing it about fifty times and getting nowhere, so I shifted gears and played that in one take. It’s always easier when you get out of your own way.
“It’s a Long Way to Scotland (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll) :wink”.
The other night my next door neighbor came banging on my door at 3 am asking me where the loud noises were coming from. I told him I didn’t hear anything. 20 minutes later the cops came and asked me about loud noises. I told them I didn’t hear anything. They apologized for banging on my door so late. I told him it was all right, I was up practicing the bagpipes anyway.
“That mellow fade out at the end is an awesome addition”.
“When I looked at the ‘time’ left for the outro, I thought it was pretty long, but I noticed I didn’t lose interest before the end. An excellent sign”!
Thank you both, kind of a spontaneous occurence where I figured out the melody on the whammy bar, and then came up with some complimentary harmonics to fit in with the toms.
3 Likes
Removing the Bobstacles? 
Yeah, the breakthrough usually requires letting go of a preconceived idea and allowing it to happen. If that makes sense.
Yeah, remove the Bobstacles and mic up the Bobettes for the background vocals.
I think it’s a fairly important point, though. Music isn’t a competition, you’re just trying to capture what you do best while you are doing it. When it comes out naturally it can be easy. When you force it, it becomes contrived and no amount of production and mixing sorcery gets you around it.
You really need to capture the emotional aspect more than anything else, and the harder you try, the worse it gets IMO.
2 Likes
Really great job on this Bob! Lots of emotion and great performances all around. I like the Scottish vibe intertwined throughout. Other than the obvious, like your guitar playing and the vocal performance, the BGV around 2:20 are just perfect. And the turn around or whatever you call at the end of your solo around 3:09 is super cool!
The Outro works really great too. Personally, I think that’s a perfect place to kind of “close the circle” on the Scottish funeral theme. Some nice Scottish bagpipes off in the distance could work really well…
This is a very nice homage to your Dad. And obviously very heartfelt. 
1 Like
Thanks very much, Mike. My Dad was a great man, so drawing inspiration was easy, and I had a lot of help putting this together.
1 Like