bats brew

last time i went whale watching, i was at the mall.' ba-da-boom! THANKS FOLKS, I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK.

i always find it's better to go for the sound in your head, rather than emulating another era/style. if you like 70's prog, just use your ears and break down your favorite recordings, as to what was done then. things were a lot simpler in the 70's, because there just were not as many choices. i use plugins that emulate older equipment, using K-18 as a basis for gain structuring. dry drums (except for sections that need bigness, think, pink floyd TIME, and the drum intro...), and favor more mono drums, with hard panning for overheads and toms. smoother sounding guitars, that don't have a lot of high end crunch, and MUCH less gain, more room sounds than actual reverbs or delays. analog style delays for solos, etc. all analog keys. use MOOG sounds and ARP, Yamaha CS80, etc... verb and delays on voices, but with a good amount of predelay.

Fralin's got em

hey jeff! thanks for the comments yea, i tried to match the arrangement with the actual race... It started with Max Verstappen's car damage, then the drama at Ferrari, and then finally to cap it all off, the late-race Safety Car restart that added to the nerves. start, stop, sprint, buildup, race! LOL

hey thanks so much for the feedback, mark! it helps me dial stuff in, to get impressions back... i never keep the old one, i figure, if i needed to work it some more, it wasn't there yet! yes, i did several things to make this punchier.. i took off the 2-bus compression (which was a SSL style G seried comp, doing very little work)... i took the LA2A compressor off the rhythm guitar buss, and just let them ride on their own.. i took some low bottom out of the bass, moved the low peak from 60hz to 80hz, kick from 50 hz to 100hz (it already had enough at 50) and then tweaked the levels just a bit.

don't practice comprehension much, i see. probably substance related? or other?

you are!

pretty much says it all, eh? the question was, 'who's on bass?'

that was not dewar on bass. he is standing at a microphone singing without an instrument. are we talking about the same video?

wow! never knew he played with trower...even if it was just for some gigs... he was the bass player for sly after larry graham left (loved graham, but loved all that music at that time period from sly) Allen joined Robin Trower's hard blues-rock band, where he played on two albums, 1977's In City Dreams and 1978's Caravan to Midnight. all these years a trower fan, but didn't know this, thanks for the headsup!!

who's on bass?

really nice! wished they had higher def

New mix of this up today

so, for rhythm guitar track #1, i wear the baseball hat forward... but track #2, i turn it backwards. LOL shot of whisky, then a shot of tequila. puff of this, then a puff of that. standing up one take, sitting down the next. look for the ugliest tone you can find, and make it work.

hey mark! i appreciate your comments... you know, when i'm writing, i'm doing 'demos'. the idea is, i'm throwing the cooked noodles on the wall, and seeing what sticks. but later, i'll listen to it, and cook it a bit more, thin it out, whittle it down, and when it comes to the 'performance' of the track, i try to make it as authentic as possible, because for me, the FEEL of a track is more important than the performance or the idea of it. so, when i'm 'performing', i already know exactly what i'm going to play, and all that's left is adding the sauce. which is the tones, and choices of gain. so i'll set up 3 or 4 guitars, and with my modeler and boogie, i've got almost any tone available. so i'll mix it up, and every track will be a new 'event' in the performance. at least, that's the way i envision each song i put together, i'm trying to capture something special, if i can. so next time you're going to record a song with 'keeper tracks', get prepared in advance.. i'll even do that the evening before the day i'm going to record. i'll get everything set up in advance, guitars tunes up and on the stands, amps, effects, extra cables, whatever, so if i hear a tone in my head, and it takes a certain guitar, amp, pedal, or even VST Fx, i can just grab it, check the tuning, and run. nothing gets in the way of quickly getting it done.

hey Paul! thanks for the comments. normally i write drum parts in Superior Drummer. i like the Rooms of Hansa drum pack the best, but also have some superior drummer 3 kits put together that are really awesome but for THIS recording, this is an older drum track i wrote over 10 years ago, using Sony Acid. these are loops (pre recorded stereo drum tracks) that i organized into a specific arrangement. i've run them thru several processes (waves Magma BB tubes, studio one Pro EQ, waves SSL bus compressor) to get them to honk the way i want. i actually re-mixed this just last night, worked on the drums so more. i'll post an update this week's end.

hi englandBross! thanks so much for listening... i used three guitars on this composition... left to right, 1984 Carvin DC200k, with a duncan custom custom in the bridge... 2008 USACG custom strat build, with Wilde L500 in the bridge... 1977 Ibanez Artist 2618. i used 3 different amp models (strymon Iridium), one with each guitar, fender deluxe, vox ac30 and marshall super lead. various cabs.

hey andy! glad you checked this one out, i've made some changes on it since i first posted the demo.... yea, i cut my 'guitar' teeth on blackmore, so that statement makes sense. i think i play more legato than blackmore, tho i do like digging in with the pick.

Thanks jack!

the race is this weekend! to celebrate, i have written a new song to honor the british Grand Prix. https://batsbrew.bandcamp.com/track/silverstone

i bought my strymon iridium, during the pandemic.. i thought it'd be a great tool to quickly lay down tracks, using either the fender deluxe, vox ac 30, or marshall plexi 100 as a basis for sound. it does that exactly. and i can use it direct into my interface, or hook it up as a preamp into my mesa boogie mark 2b head. and it works perfectly! and one of the reasons i bought it, over any other hardware amp modeler, was the simplicity, and the way it responds to my playing. i do not use presets. i walk up to the unit, turn the few knobs, get what i want for the track i'm going for, and boom, done. it just works. i never spend more than 5 minutes dialing in a tone. zero problems. and it's one of the reasons i don't use software amp sims. they take forever to dial in a sound that's just right, and there's always a feeling of latency to me. i'm super happy with the iridium.

didn't pat boone do war pigs?

i need a pallette cleanser after all this... black sabbath, paranoid, will set me right.

yep, same idea behind my using the Waves F6 dynamic eq.