bats brew

hey kevin! thanks for the comments.... i'll finish it for sure, but i have to attempt at least 2 other arrangement changes before i know if i'm done or not

thanks wookiee... will do, i'm working on two other new ones at the same time..

well, it could be like ABACAB LOL (genesis joke) me, i like the spacey stuff as is. but you'd reach a bigger audience if you could wrap it into a nice package and put a bow on it.

i love all these synth sounds... i mean, it's like an exercise in how many cool and vintagy synth tones you can craft... i'd love to hear some of these sounds crafted into a proper song style, with drums and arrangements for other instruments and voice.... are you doing anything like that with these way cool sounds?

thanks jack! i've got it finished in my sights, but there will be one major arrangement change... and the funny thing is, i have a 'radio edit' arrangement in mind, which brings the song down to only 3 minutes long. even tho i can't find any radio to play it on. LOL

hey paul, thanks for listening! the drums are so fun to work with... writing the parts, vs choosing the drum kit pieces, is really two different scenarios, the choosing of kits is really run.. the writing is more a case of finding the base groove, then arranging it with fills and other similar grooves.. i typically spend a couple of hours puttin g the basic groove together, then i will edit them all as i record the parts, so they start to jive more together... so, really, not that long, once you've got the hang. this is superior drummer 3.0 i'm working in, and the expansion pack is Rooms of Hansa.

hi kurt! thanks for listening man, appreciate it.... it's the superior drummer 3.0, and the 'rooms of hansa' is the kit/rooms i'm using. very easy to build it up, you just have to spend the time it takes to demo all pieces of kit, then select the ones that work best with the room and room mics. superior is a huge step up from most other programs, imho. i dig it. there are several distinct rooms and sets of kits for the rooms in the hansa SDX, and i'm trying to build a 'signature' kit for each room.

https://soundcloud.com/bats-brew/hear-the-call-demo ok, this is a guitar riff song. kinda fun, i wrote it before i heard the lyric. so, i guess the song is general reporting, lyric wise. i'm still playing with the arrangement of this, it's all kinda thrown together... will probably re-record all the vocals, maybe write a bit more depending on arrangement changes. so, looking for lyric ideas to add, arrangement changes, or stick a fork in it. also, i really like this drum kit, this one is the first one that i've built from scratch with the toontrack program... what do you folk think?

i thought everybody had time now! heheh

THANKS SO MUCH, kevin... Neon was pretty inspired, albeit i was pretty pissed off!! LOL the whole album is pretty dialed in, actually, if you like one, you are likely to like most of them.

hi steveC! yea, kinda dreamy, like the weird covid state of mind we've all been in for so long... you liked that solo eh?! yea, i like that one too, i find it's so easy to just wail across something like this, but much harder to find a certain group of notes, or choice of vibe, that stands out more, so that's kinda what i'm doing with my solo approach these days... i've got tons of older material with rippin' guitar solos, now i'm trying to focus on more melody and vibe... but i WILL play some stupid fast rippin silly psh!t again, real soon!! hehehh

hi wookiee! yes, pf is def a heavy influence, tho i don't put it out there very often (maybe space/heaven) i have remixed this entire album now, since i put this up at bandcamp, to include all new drum kits that i got after i had finished the album, so i'll be updating all the files on the bandcamp site soon...... thanks so much for listening!

howdy ho amicus! glad you dig my stuff, you know, as it comes off 'slick' or polished, i have to say, there is nothing special about the way i track or mix. it's pretty straight up, without any tricks... guitars were straight out of the Iridium to interface, and usually just panned and eq'd a bit... bass, the same, maybe with some compression and limiting thrown on during mix, drums were the tricky thing to write, but they are straight out of superior drummer with my own spin on eq and leveling. so i'm glad i'm hitting the mark with what i want to be good sounding recordings, i never aspired to be a mixer... i'm a musician. but, to get my stuff down, i've had to learn to mix. and here i am! heheh thanks so much for the kind words

hey mark! thanks for the kind words.... yea, that rapid, anything but insignificant!

very kind of you paul, thanks!

hey ruraL! thanks for the kudos on the guitar tones, again, this was the BIG experiment using nothing but the Strymon Iridium for all the guitar tones. everything was direct, and i'm good to go with it now! the drums are definitely the PUSH for the vibe of what's happening... it was almost a military approach to the whole thing! they take it pretty seriously there at the gauley, because people die there all the time. the 'incident' on "Insignificant", a class 5 rapid, never would have happened, if the 2 couples that was with us (there were four other people, all of who lied about having experience in the tougher white water rivers) had not given up paddling through this tough section.. the guide explained it very clearly to us, before the approach, that we had to 'pull' as hard as we could through this one scary hyrdraulic, and when we got there, the other couples froze... it was only my wife, me and the guide pulling, the raft literally collapsed, and one side dipped down into that hyrdraulic, and pulled wifey and guide right out!! it was intense...

you're welcome!

hey jack! thanks so much for checking this one out..... drums are superior drummer 3, drum kit is from the Hansa collection, a custom kit in a marble room. processing for drums is done within superior drummer, typically, an eq on each channel, a compressor here and there, some overhead processing (comp, eq) and the sub bus processing via more compression and eq, sometimes i use a tape player plugin, for some saturation, all this comes into the session as a stereo input, and that is put thru a waves SSL G series mastering compressor for final level control, and usually a pultec emulation for boosting 100 hz and maybe some at 8k.

last shot at this before i take it down

actually, doing this to a princess is mostly mad

that bowcaster kicks @ss.

HI LYNN! for me, it was a great and terrible experience. and we are experienced white water folk, but the people that we were with, were not. and they were the cause. either way, we dealt with it, and my lady did not even lose her paddle, and swam a class 5 rapid in repose. LOL

life is for the brave, wookiee! heheh. hey, thanks for listening

https://soundcloud.com/bats-brew/insignificant from the new Bats Brew album "Elemental", available here: batsbrew.bandcamp.com "Insignificant" is actually the name of a class V rapid on the Gauley river in west Virginia, where my lady and I did a whitewater rafting trip many years back… we had an incident in the raft which caused it to collapse in the middle of a very tricky spot, the raft folded, and we lost my lady and the guide. I was able to pull the guide back in, but my lady got pulled down deep in a hydraulic, and spit out 20 yards down river… we chased after her in the raft, and this song is the interpretation of that moment in time. Scary, and exhilarating. my lady is fine.

Thanks folks, for listening and supporting, I need it! To make more...