One man music production.....Let's hear the MUSIC!

[dbbubba]

Two things that I always do is realize my own limitations and they are playing drums and singing.
My wife is a wonderful vocalist with a degree in vocal performance from The University of North Texas and several of my good friends have been great drummers.
Because of this I have always been ablw to get great vocals and great drums tracks to finish off my creations.

First I'll give you a few examples of what building a piece in MIDI and then having real players put the icing on the cake.

TARKUS
This an condensed versionj of an Emerson, Lake and Palmer piece from the early '70s that we used to play in a band.
I did this in 1987.
Now, I am no where close to being a keyboard player that ever play Tarkus in one pass, but with MIDI and A LOT of patience I can do this version.
The drums were an old friend who inspired me to play this stuff in the first place.
He was bit out of practice, but I coerced him into over-dubbing real drums for me one night after a few beers.
Even rusty and about twelve years after we last played the piece together he pulled this off.
It is also played a bit under tempo from the ELP recorded version.

This is me playing/sequencing MIDI and real time keyboards tracked to 2" with the MIDI drums replaced.
The patches are a highly modified Roland Organ patch on a JX10P played through a Leslie 142 and the analog synth patches are an Oberheim Matrix 6.
I would bet that the sequencing software was Passport Designs Mastertracks Pro.

[MrJulius]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

Here's my latest. Each new song is so far beyond the one before it, on all fronts, that I seldom would put forward anything other than the most recent.

WMA: http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Tmp...Life-Final.wma

MP3: http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Tmp...Life-Final.mp3

The WMA will likely be better quality if your platform supports it.

I'm digging your tracks. Good stuff. You don't have a daughter named Erica do you?

[dbbubba]

Another example of all me with a decent drummer and my wife's vocals on top.

THE LETTER
This started as a MIDI creation because I figured out how to play it on KYBDs.
I then dumped it to 2" analog and because my studio partner was drummer and we were paying this in a band I had him track drums over it.
For some crazy reason he played it as a shuffle beat.
The original version and the MIDI version were played straight.

Because he played the cut as a shuffle I had to adjust everything by playing GTRs and bass as a shuffle.
Because the KYBDS are mostly pads they were able to stay as they were tracked in MIDI.

This sat around on a 2" analog tape for a few months until one night my wife was at the studio and I asked her to put a vocal on this.
She did this in one take and OWNED the thing (she can do that.)

At some point I re-rtracked the bass and added two clean rhythm GTRs that are panned hard L and R.
The distorted GTRs are from the original version as is the solo GTR.
I have always liked the solo in the middle although I stumbled a bit on one line.
I just couldn't erase this version of the solo.

This is a mix I pulled as an ITB experiment a few months back.

[DeathMonkey]

OK, let's try this again with direct links. I hope. These are all roughs in various stages, but will give you an idea of what I do as far as This Soil Is Diseased goes. Most of the other stuff is pretty yelly, although this album is more melodic than the last one. And it's about astronauts!

I Will Float: http://www.netmusicians.org/files/97...version%29.mp3

The Captain's Tale: http://www.netmusicians.org/files/18...%20Mix%201.mp3

Prince of the Black: http://www.netmusicians.org/files/18...20BlackVox.mp3

Final Flight: http://www.netmusicians.org/files/23...ight%201.2.mp3

[dbbubba]

Another radical over-dubbing experiment I always like to do was to overdub EVERY instrument IN ONE PASS using ONLY ONE TAKE per track.
My initial idea was to pick a finite period of time and create a full ten to twelve cut RECORD.
My idea was writing and tracking EVERYTHING in two days BY MYSELF WITH ALL FIRST TAKES.
I never had the time to do the full ten to twelve pieces, but I did do two this way.

This is ACT NATURALLY.

I picked this one night when a band canceled out on a session.
I grabbed a boom box and found the first radio station I could and recorded and learned the fist complete song that came up.
It was C&W (this is Texas) and it was Buck Owens.

This is all me in one pass per instrument.
I started with a drum machine playing a rock pattern and played the first GTR pass.
I added bass, drums (kick/snare/hat and one cymbal set up behind the console in the control room) ACSTC.
I boldly set up a U87 and sang the thing and then added a second "harmony" vocal.
I did a quick mix and then went nuts with the Japanese VO and the backwards black gospel singers.
BTW... that is real tape flanging added to the multi-track.

Few people have the balls to do this and be proud of it!

[dbbubba]

Going all the way with writing a piece using MIDI sequencing and then replacing all of the MIDI.

This is two nice examples edited together.
Me and my old friend Milo Deering did these back in the late '90s.

The first is a fully OD'd orchestra piece with full orchestral brass, woodwinds and percussion.
Everything started out as MIDI instruments and was replayed by real players.
This was all cut in separate sessions (strings / brass / woodwinds and then perc.) and recorded to a SONY 3324 DASH digital multi-track deck.
If you added up the track count it would probably be about sixty or so tracks.
Thios was mixed analog on a Neve 8128 to a WaveFrame 1000 DAW for editing.

The second half is a cut me and Milo did in the Carl Statlling/Warner Bros. Cartoons style.
This was done on Opcode's Studio Vision Pro with MIDI and only eight tracks of audio.
This is Milo on fiddle, me on GTRs and a session woodwind player.

[ianbryn11]

Originally Posted by u b k

Out of curiosity, am I the only one who won't click links in signatures or click away to outside sites to find a song someone wants me to listen to?

Maybe it's my aversion to the A.D.D.-inducing world of hyperlinks, but on a thread where people are sharing the music, I'd love to have a simple, direct link I can click on *right here* that downloads the file or fires up a player... all without leaving the thread.

Otherwise, I get lost on a rollercoaster of tangents and other websites and lose my focus, and 15 minutes later I see the tab with this thread and I go "oh yeah, I was checking out new music."

Am I alone in this regard?


Gregory Scott - ubk

Im with you... How did you load your songs in such a nice manner?

Sounded awesome by the way....

[ianbryn11]

Dropbox..... Cool thing....


Some acoustic stuff...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3750776/Trus...%20Mix%201.mp3

Some electronic stuff....

I tried writing a concept album about an outer space adventure a little more than a year ago.. Got 9-11 songs in, but haven't really been able to finish it.... I wanted to have it tell a story, a la "joes Garage" ... every time i tried to do it it turned cheesy...... Not that a song about robot love isnt super cheesy... Maybee ill finish it one day.....

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3750776/Robot%20Love.mp3


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3750776/She%...er%20space.mp3

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by MrJulius

I'm digging your tracks. Good stuff. You don't have a daughter named Erica do you?

Thanks! If I do, I must have been REALLY drunk at the time :-)

[days]

Originally Posted by Shaft

Man, days. i've been really digging Light Gets In. Really nice work. Beautiful.

Did you play strings on that or are they virtual?

Wow, thanks for the kind words.

The strings are virtual. I used the East West Symphonic Orchestra library.

[days]

Originally Posted by ektia

Hey, days, I just PM'd you to let you know that I'm impressed by the songs, especially the diversity (not often I hear feedback resolve into an orchestral passage or a gritty hip-hop loop segue into a ballad). I ended up downloading the album last night, and have been listening to it throughout the morning. Nice job.

I also enjoyed the River District (Nolet) song a lot, as did a friend of mine I just played it for.

Thanks, ektia. And I agree with you about the song posted by Nolet. I liked that one, too. There has been a lot of good stuff posted on this thread. I'm surprised that no one ever thought to start a thread like this before. Hats off to the OP.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by DeathMonkey

OK, let's try this again with direct links. I hope. These are all roughs in various stages, but will give you an idea of what I do as far as This Soil Is Diseased goes. Most of the other stuff is pretty yelly, although this album is more melodic than the last one. And it's about astronauts!

I listened to I Will Float. I like that. I thought it was going to be a Satriani'esque instrumental for a minute there, then it goes in a kind of ethereal synthy direction. It's a nice full mix with a lot going on but it doesn't get messy. It's trancey in a good way and really builds up well to a pretty huge level.

[djt4400]

[QUOTE=ryst;4930417]This thread is specifically about the music. I don't want any of the samples listened in the one man production thread to get lost within the discussion. The discussion is cool. But I'd like everyone who is a one man wrecking crew to post some of your music that you did all on your own with no other members from writing, producing, performing, and engineering.

So let's have it! I'd love to hear what you guys have done!

I guess I'll start. My EP is almost finished. Here is the first track from it. All done by me

That's a nice little ditty bro!!!

[Dean Roddey]

So I'll post another one. This is at the other end of 'my career', being my first ever actual song from a couple years ago. I'd done some small test pieces before that but not an actual song. The vocal is rough since my first ever attempt at singing, and it was done all with amp sims and DI'd stuff unlike now where I'm doing all real guitars and such. And the bridge is stupid and should have just been left out. But there's something I like about it. I'll go back and redo it at some point. It's probably best played loud.

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/Tmp...reAreSigns.mp3

And, I mean, give it up for the use of the word 'tumescent' in a song :-)

[Shaft]

Originally Posted by days

Wow, thanks for the kind words.

The strings are virtual. I used the East West Symphonic Orchestra library.

Well, I'm inspired. Some of my favorite listening as of late. Lyrically strong and literate too.

Guess i'll have to start looking into a DAW. I really love strings used smartly and sparingly. Just analog to an MX-80 right now. Need to develop a hybrid of some sort.

Keep doing what you're doing.

[Dean Roddey]

And one other. It's not a complete song, and it's an instrumental. It's another early one for me. But, if you can ignore the cheap MIDI nature of the 'horns', it's really pretty cool. I'd love to hear it done by a real soul band and with some vocals. It's called Hot Buttered Rocks and is my rocked up version of a Stax type "Hot Buttered Soul" tune. There's something about that's really cool, particularly in the choruses.

www.charmedquark.com/Web2/TmpAudio/HotButteredRocks_bcgm.mp3

[ianbryn11]

this thread is better than the radio.... Just sayin....

[Louis Bernstone]

Stroke, by me and my DAW.

[ryst]

Wow. I'm pleasantly surprised that this thread is still going strong. Tons of great contributions. I'm at the last stages of tracking my new EP and this thread has been inspiring to say the least. Thanks guys!

[FFTT]

I don't even want to think how much it would have cost me in a professional studio
to learn my way around self recording.

I had no other way to show other musicians what the song was all about.

Be they rough drafts, full demos or final release, hats off to everyone here for taking the bull by the horns and trying to document YOUR music.

My ears can't take the punishment of what it takes to do a song justice these days.
I end up recording rough drafts on my acoustic and there they sit.

I'm at the point where I really do need help from better ears.

[Nolet]

This thread is getting crowded quickly!

So far I've listened to...
Mark Kaufman - cool stuff, good songwriting.
u b k - I had forgotten how much hiss tape makes! But it's not distracting at all. Nice guitar playing. I suck at guitar...
Sky - I dig the humor. God the producer was funny.
Days - very moody and cool. Would love more singing, sooner in the songs.
FFTT - That Crissy song is actually really catchy underneath the mud!

I've listened to more stuff, but some of it is so far out of my comfort zone it would be pointless to comment.

Ok...rock on...thumbsup

[FFTT]

" In Therapy" was insanely difficult for a technophobe like me.

I wrote it thinking more like Jethro Tull with way better vocals and an imaginary
Martin Barre lead.

That old Sears gut string came out pretty good for a home recording.

Tascam 488 mastered on my pioneer home casette

[Unclenny]

Just catching up again this morning.....listening to 'I Will Float' as I get things going in the office.

Yo, Brent........Cowboy Up! Almost fell Asleep At The Wheel listening to that one.

I'm just about done with my latest effort.....maybe post it up first right here later today.

Who else thinks that all of these tunes together would make a pretty amazingly diverse playlist?

[RTR]

Here is one done back in the Digi 001 days, I did everything except I had a girl sing it for me..I wrote if for this movie that was looking for songs, it was about a women that kills men basicly...go easy..it was a long time ago!!!!

Song is called: Call Me Love

Link: SoundClick artist: Struggling Artist - A rock, pop, Alternative rock, blues and, whatever it comes out as artists, Im a new artist but have

[dbbubba]

OK, one that should be in most people's "comfort zone."
Hint: I get bored quickly in the "comfort zone."

This a piece of production music cut with Kieth Carlock OD's on drums.
This was before he was Sting's drummer.

It is the nature of production music cuts that they are more thematic than stand-alone pieces, but they do force you to learn to write and play in a lot of music styles.
This was a :60 that I had to extend into a :90 in a short period of time, so it is a bit repetitive.

[Admiral James T.]

Call me too lazy to place mp3's here, but you can have a losten to my songs on my myspace site. On all the songs I did everything.
Admiral James T. on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos
Happy new year.

[dbbubba]

All me with Dan Wojchieowski on drums.

Probably the best B3 playing I had ever tracked, but I was inspired because I was playing a SUPER nice organ.
I had also had a master of the instrument (Tommy Young) show me some drawbar settings.
It was one of his B3s.

BTW... I used to crank out about sixteen of these production muisc cuts per month back in the '90s, so it makes you get really efficient at the writing, tracking and mixing game.

[olivialand]

What a great way to spend the morning - listening to all of these songs. I've been clicking on links and files all morning long, and here's my Top 5:

1. jono3, "Drifter's Demo." (That chord change when you sing the word "drifters" - perfect!)
2. days, "True." (A lovely shimmery song.)
3. Peacock 2, "Swing." (Spare, beautiful.)
4. Nolet, "Government Man." (Melodic, catchy.)
4. days, "Stonethrower." (Achingly sad.)

Honorable mention to: The dman and theblue1.

A lot of really great stuff. Keep it coming.

[FeatheredSerpent]

Ok, here's one more!

This is a guy I have a reciprocal agreement with, he is writing the music, playing and recording all instruments/vocals, so definitely a one-man band there.

It's kind of cheating though because I'm doing the mixing and self 'mastering', but I think it's still fair game :0)

There are some rough edges but hey, I'm new, and his recordings are not always pristine, but I like it so far.
This isn't even close to being his best material either, I've got lots of other good stuff on the way to work on

The song is called 'Not Over'.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=21533

ps this is only a static mix and with no timing or tuning editing so it's straight up, and not finished, be gentle

[andrebrito]

Spinous

and I have an upcoming CD of more "one man music" made by ... me ;-)