Well, the sailing season is winding down, so it's time to play. I've been kicking parts of this one around for about four months and finally finished the lyrics and cobbled a demo together for the boys in the band. Counting the drums, it's about 18 tracks and just about every one of them has a few things that need to be fixed, but it will give them a good idea of the concept - before we tear it all apart and start over. I wrote it on my acoustic six-string, which I'm kind of a hack with (all those yucky empty spaces between the strings...) In order to spice it up a couple of notches, I decided to see how close I could get to "that sound" in the privacy of my office, so any resemblance to a real rock and roll band is purely intentional. Just for grins on this mix of it, I also employed my "Virtual Gig" technology so that the guys could hear how cool we would sound while playing it. I'll probably get the usual gripe from our drummer -- "I'd have to have six arms and three legs to play that".....what a whiner..... Anyway, this is the latest one for the scrap heap:
Jim,
It neds a lot of clean-up before it goes on a CD. It's more likely to go on "Ship 5", which we've begun to work on. We're trying to record an album from all over the country by sending stuff back and forth over the web and over-dubbing parts. It won't be a live, "virtual-studio" type deal, but it may work. One of our guys has a studio and we send him wav files and he can mix them. It's kind of fun, but everything takes forever. The instrument parts are pretty easy to get down, but harmony vocals are a real bear when you can't see the other people, and the lag times in communicating ideas and comments are terrible. I'm in the process of pulling tracks out, one by one, checking, fixing or re-cutting them, making a click track and then we can put together a basic track. I'll have somebody who can actually fingerpick a six-string play the opening section, we'll do the harmony parts with real people and then we'll add whatever other stuff seems to fit.
Very well crafted song. I see what you mean about the cleanup needed, but even still, the song and performance comes through. I'd love to hear a cleaner, more produced version. The only two things I'd change if it was my tune (and I wish it WAS!) would be to drop the applause entirely (distracts and is not necessary) and to do the last chorus where the harmonies initially slightly 'lag' or echo the lead vocal, instead of tracking with it directly and either stay that way for the full chorus or come into sync midway or later to really 'bring it home'. I'm probably not expressing that last one very well, but I can 'hear' it in my head (along with all the other little voices, but that's another story!).
Feel free to send any scraps in my direction.
Tom
BTW, I don't get a McGuinn sense to this song, but I can envision maybe the early Eagles (Henley). Hey, whadoIknow.
so that the guys could hear how cool we would sound while playing it. I'll probably get the usual gripe from our drummer -- "I'd have to have six arms and three legs to play that".....what a whiner..... Anyway, this is the latest one for the scrap heap:
