That’s a great song Bob! One to be proud of for sure! It’s got a great groove. Guitar is killer and the piano at the end it the cherry on top. Love it!
1 Like
Great shuffle rhythm, guitar work and writing too!
Thank you. We had some free recording time at a studio in Detroit from a very good friend of mine. If I remember correctly, we played four sets at a club 90 minutes away, packed up our stuff at about 1am and drove to the studio. We came stumbling out at about 7am with 3 songs recorded. The band was recorded all together, then the vocals and solos. We had to get out of there before the paying clients showed up and clean up our mess. That’s why I’m usually leery about spending too much time recording. A time limit is a good motivator.
3 Likes
Awesome Bob - Great song and story!.. so you weren’t the vocalist on this? Very cool guitar tones btw - LP > Marshall?
LP through a Marshall bass head. I may have done the solo on my Butler head, which was a hand built Plexi/Twin 50 watt head. It’s a long story, but a wonderful gentleman named Max Butler built it for me. Look him up when you have time. In any event, while it was being built, I’d go over to his basement and play it, and tell him I wanted more bite in a specific range, and he’d pop in a resistor on the fly and nail it. I should have never sold it. 25 years later I went on Harmony Central and found a guy talking about an amp he had, and my name was written on the inside of the cabinet by Max. It was #004. I paid about $450 to have it built. A couple of them sold for 2 or 3 grand down the line. Max Butler of Eaton Rapids, MI. He’s left us, unfortunately, but there are still Butlers floating around.
1 Like
I’m pretty sure you would sound amazing playing through a Pignose amp… but great tones nonetheless.
I looked Max up and found this website:
http://www.maxbutleramps.com/about/
He sounds like a amazing guy to have known!
…so what’s the story with the vocals? That doesn’t sound like you singing… surely having two great vocalists and one also being an incredible guitarist is an embarrassment of riches for one band?!
BTW, the recording is super tight - a testament to your roadwork at the time, no doubt.
At the time, we had a lead singer who was also a serviceable guitar player who could fill in the blanks for me on solos. It took me a long time to get comfortable singing and playing, so I would do a couple of Free and Bad Company songs, and one or two songs per set. Our drummer could also sing anything, and we could do Zep tunes as a 3 piece or with keyboards where needed. Billy, who added the honkytonk piano on Mean Girl, was the keyboard player.
So, we basically had 3 guys who could sing and cover almost anything. Rick, the lead singer here, was a great guy. He unfortunately had some issues, and we moved on after a few years. For a club band, we had a load of musicianship but never made it over the hump.
Yup, definitely and embarrassment of riches!
Sadly, a very familiar story… or not… sometimes fame & fortune can be worse than obscurity.
1 Like
My goal was always to be a guitarist and songwriter who could tour regionally and make a reasonable living playing about 200 nights a year. We played 5 to 7 nights a week at clubs, and then moved to the next. We could sneak in a set of originals and play 3 sets of Zep, Allman Bros., Jeff Beck, a little Santana, and a variety of songs to sell drinks. That much playing puts you on autopilot, but the microwave burritos at 2am are not good for you, among other things.
3 Likes
I’m thankful often that I gave up the music dream young and didn’t live that life. I’d never have been able to hack it, I’m sure…
1 Like
You either felt like you had to do it, or you didn’t. I gave myself a time limit, and when it was time to start a family, it became less of a priority. I always wanted to be a musician, but I would only sacrifice a certain percentage of a reasonable life. When I was about 30, I knew I had hard choices to make.
2 Likes
I guess that’s a topic for a new thread. When did you face the reality that a career in music was too difficult to keep pursuing based on your other options?
6 Likes
Make it so!
1 Like
@Chordwainer @ColdRoomStudio
I say this with all due respect. Many of us continue our dreams by trying to show others how to get where they’re trying to go using our accumulated skills to help others to realize their own goals, or get a glimpse of reality from our perspective.
All in all, for most of us, a career in music is a dream that is extremely difficult to fulfill. It takes talent, originality, but more than anything, perseverance to accomplish. If you have the desire go for it, but it is a one in a thousand shot that requires every ounce of your energy.
4 Likes
Completely agree. When you’re 18 you just can’t judge for yourself how much talent you have or are able to develop. I played in several bands that never got very far (ususally too short lived) and gigged a lot as a lone singer songwriter. I also played in in a professional band for about 6 months when I was 23 or 24. I was still in University at the time and did’nt get much studying done. I also found out that the limitations of my voice (can’t reach the higher registers) really do matter. And my lack of perseverance also started to become obvious: my professional friends all practiced for many hours a day - I just made music when I felt like it and practiced mainly to learn lyrics. Love of music and even musicality alone are not enough.
But… love of music and musicality are enough to give you a life time of enjoyment, a feeling of being connected to something all without all the hassle, uncertainty, lack of money, constant traveling in very much less than ideal circumstances, the lure of addictions etc. So maybe, just maybe it’s the better option?
2 Likes
Very interesting thread, lot of things to read and listen to!
It lets me think about one thing I had weeks ago: while listening to some old recordings done without knowledge, the result has very special tone (“crappy” some would say or “roomy”) that every one would fix in a way.
But what if you want to “emulate” this sound with only “in-the-box” tools?
How would you do?
Another thing in the same range is the very characteristic sound of some Vulpeck live recording of their rehearsal, it sounds “real” (in a way that re-recording has another tone and feeling).
But “faking” that tone, that sound, that feeling looks to me near to impossible.
My first thought was to add an heavy room reverb with dry level reduced, but it really sounds different and far from this…
Any idea on this?
Thanks for reading this random comment from me!
I really don’t think you can fake a live recording. For a start live has no click track (unless you play with some sort of sequencer or drummachine of course), and the tempo is usually all over the place. Rick Beato has an interesting rant on this subject. The golden days of rock music sounded so good because they often recorded a live band or at least a partially live band, and their tempo varied with intro/ verse /chorus/ breaks/ solo etc. He shows you with a Led Zep recording if I remember right.
You can maybe solve this in your studio by using tempo mapping (you can in Reaper anyway) so you can keep your (slightly vaiable) click track based on the first instrument you record. (in my case probably an acoustic guitar and lead vox together through one mic). I know it’s possible, but I haven’t tried it yet. Another thing that was a recent eye opener for me is that I need to check the actual latency of my system and adjust the latency compensation. Until recently I didn’t know you can do this. The point is that I often spend a lot of editing time aligning tracks. I was often sure I did a reasonably tight performance, but listening back I needed to adjust the timing. You can make it sound tight that way but not ‘in the pocket’… They are not the same. But I am quite sure that timing is everything: the band needs to be tight, but that does not mean everyone is playing exactly on the beat, and the band needs to be loose in terms of the song as a whole. Speeding up slightly for the chorus adds excitement (if the band is able to feel the change coming and do it together), and slowing down for the verse (along with a lower level) gives room for attention to the lyrics.
Just out of curiosity: I wonder if there is something similar to concepts like ‘in the pocket’ and variable tempo’s in classical music? If so, there’s bound to be theories about it too ;). I’ve always hated classic music notation because it gives you some idea of the length of the note but it is hardly clear where it sits in the beat. I guess that’s why they need a conductor to determine the tempo and the beat 
.
But anyway, long answer to say that I doubt that reverb is going to make it sound more live. The key thing is how musicians in a band play together as if they were one. No way you can simulate that, even if you are an amazing multi-instrumentalist (which I most certainly am not!).
The magic is in the moment.
Oh I really need to find a new band to play in… even if only as a second rate drummer…
Some classical ensembles work without a conductor but they are usually smaller. Classical scores often have lots of tempo changes written in by the composer but the conductor or musicians decide where the beat goes based on the same thing you describe, “timing is everything.” So all groups (classical too) get judged on how well they do that, and of course everyone has their own opinion, so . . . .
Usually it works best for all groups when you have one person in charge, eg try telling Keith Richards where the pocket is. Unless you’re Chuck Berry of course.
1 Like
I’m sure you’re referring to that famous documentary where Keith Richards tries his utmost to make Chuck Berry play with a really good band for the first time in his life. It’s very funny…
1 Like
I think it’s a mistake when people think that a career in music should be the end goal and that anything else isn’t “making it.” I think most of us get to the point where we realize there’s more to music than just making it a career. The people I’m most envious of aren’t the ones who make music for a living, but the ones who have other jobs and continue making music. To me, that’s far more interesting.
2 Likes