ORIGINAL SONG: Easy and Malcom and Ace and Will (psr740)

I did this on a psr740. Two tracks. Played it in auto-accompany mode, recorded on track 1, then sang vocal on track 2.

CLONK HERE on "EASY AND MALCOM AND ACE AND WILL":
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/billordukethesongwritermusic.htm

Song about four old cats I used to like to sit back and watch them operate / navigate / fornicate. Well, dream on, they did.

Sad to say, Ace died recently and I don't think he ever got to hear it. I told him about it and he beamed but unless a buddy of mine let him hear it from the cd I gave him, Ace never did. Easy has and Malcom has, Will, I gotta track him down. The bar banned him for dirty dancing. Not kidding. Man, they've given me some smiles.

Well, I like it a lot. I like story songs.
Good sound!
DonM

Thanks, Don. If you come back in here, disregarding the song itself, just the sound... on a CD for sale to the public, would you consider that sound adequate? Or anyone else, chime in. Thanks!

Hi Bill,

I think all your songs on that site are well done. EASY AND MALCOM AND ACE AND WILL is a great song. Overall I think the sound would be fine on a CD but I would need to hear it played on a better system than my computer. On the computer the sound seemed a little over driven as if some clipping was occuring. The other songs didn't come across that way.

I'll download the MP3 at home and play it through a larger sound system and let you know how it sounds.

Best Wishes


------------------
Heather- Leesburg, FL PR54

Okay, try to remember to post back, I'd like to know what you think about that one. I spent more time and expertise on this song versus the other ones. The other ones are just scratch demo's.

Bill, the sound is great, but as was mentioned, may be a little too hot. My system is a pretty good one, and I did experience a little clipping or near-clipping.
In the old days, a little overdrive resulting in sometimes-pleasing tape saturation. Digital clipping can be downright painful. Yours isn't to that point, but I would try reducing the signal somewhere along the line.
Other than that, I would buy one. I'd buy one anyway.
If I had any money.
DonM

Don, what do you mean by...

too hot
clipping

What does this mean exactly?

How do you prevent this in the recording process?

EDIT: By the way, do you happen to mean the whole sound is clipping out? This is an MP3 you are hearing... does that factor in? I mean, unless you mean something about the actual sound on my CD... which you obviously haven't heard.

[This message has been edited by SemiLiveMusic (edited 01-10-2005).]

Somewhere along the line, the recording level may have been a little too high. There should be some lights, or gauges that you can monitor when inputting the sounds.
As I said, it is not bad, but to my old ears seems almost to the point of overload, which causes "clipping" or distortion.
Don

I had put this in my post, which you probably didn't see before you replied...

EDIT: By the way, do you happen to mean the whole sound is clipping out? This is an MP3 you are hearing... does that factor in? I mean, unless you mean something about the actual sound on my CD... which you obviously haven't heard.

I'll have to go back and listen again. Converting to MP3 probably isn't affecting it.
What compression ratio did you use when converting to MP3?
I have to run some errands but will get back later today.
Don

I don't know what the compression was because a friend was doing it. He knows what he's doing, I was impressed. He also had a pretty sophisticated home studio. A small fortune involved.

Reason I asked about the quality is because it sounded pretty good to me for us doing it locally.

Point being, if it sounds pretty good, it would give me an idea of what to do next. If it's pretty close to being acceptable for an indie recording, I could go this route (except we'd take far more time and do more tracks) for doing a CD. If it stinks, I'll have to do what I want to do anyway, which is go to Nashville. I have a producer friend up there. It would cost a few grand. I am positive he would give me the quality I want because I know the work he does and the quality of musicians he uses but a few grand is like a million right now.

Bill, I listened again. The Easy song sound very good. I checked and it is encoded at 128, which should be high enough. I still hear just a hint of distortion in a few places. Nothing bad. It is not there on the other songs and they are all much lower volume.
If nobody else hears it, maybe it's just me.
It can't be much of a problem anyway. Maybe just got the levels a little hot when transferring to the computer?
DonM

Hey Don and Bill,

Just wanted to let you know that I can hear something goin' on too.  It sounds like clicking to me and sure enough, you can see it in the waveform.  I opened the mp3 with SoundForge and did a screen print at 10.63 seconds into the song.



17.5 seconds into the song when you sing "joints", it does it again with the same looking anomalies and continues on throughout the song, whenever the signal levels get high. Didn't see any clipping so I wonder if it's a digital atifact from a compressor or gate or something.(?)

Now don't get me wrong, the song sounds great.  You've got a true-blue, bona-fide, country voice son!  That's probably why we heard the noise in the first place, we enjoyed the song so much, we cranked it!



-mike

[This message has been edited by msutliff (edited 01-10-2005).]

Okay, thanks for that info. I assume this is something that could be taken care of if done with care? We didn't spend much time on this. It was done as a "rough demo" type thing. If it were to be done for a production cd, much more care would be taken.

Don, what I'd like to do is let you listen to the actual CD and see what you think. I will contact you and come by sometime.

P.S. If anyone has any comment about this song, the actual song itself, please comment. Good or bad. Reason why is because I wrote this song as just a fun thing to do for a guy's birthday. (Easy) I'll be darn, it seems some people are liking it based on hits to the mp3. I'm surprised. I just keep writing them, you never know when people will like something. You think it's goofy and they like it. I dunno... I might have to take this one a bit more serious.

Mike, how did you draw those red arrows on there?

I'm not Mike, but I'd guess MSPaint.
DonM

Hey Semi,



Photoshop...I cut & paste the screen shot into Photoshop (it's still a bitmap), adjust the image size way down, use the pen drawing tool to add whatever, then save it as a .gif so as to reduce the file size considerably for posting on the web.

Did you ever come up with any ideas on what the clicking noise might be? Just curious.....

-mike