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My Cover of Gary Numan's "Cars"


PavlovsCat

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In the late 90s I stopped playing drums -- after 12 years of playing mid-size venues, nightclubs, fests, colleges and recording -- due to severe tendinitis. Around Christmastime last year I had gotten my son a gaming PC and he wanted a midi keyboard to learn to play keyboards on. I started out on piano and organ -- with several years of lessons -- before deciding drums was the instrument for me, so I was showing my son how to play some Beatles songs and realized that I could play those simple songs without much pain. Consequently, after not playing for two decades and not having a DAW PC since the 00s, I decided to get back into making music. I got setup with a new DAW PC early this year and have been starting to relearn to play. This is keyboard drumming -- I played to a click track using a bunch of Orange Tree Samples' guitars and bass and, of course, lots of synth samples and a couple of soft synths. I picked this tune because it's not challenging technically and, as you can hear, I don't have a great voice and this song doesn't require a great vocalist. 

I never learned about mixing or mastering, so I'm relying on Izotope stuff and I'm using headphones, so I realize the mix is probably awful. I own most of the regular Izotope tools and Waves' NX Nashville Ocean Way headphone mixing plugin. I'm open to any basic tips on how to make the mix better. This song was put together quickly and I no longer have any chops after decades of not playing, so be gentle! Haha.  It's pretty sloppy -- I didn't quantize everything and it's nowhere near the level of some of the songs posted here, but it's my start at trying to make music again. 
 

 

Edited by PavlovsCat
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This song was always a favorite of mine, and your version is very credible so far. Maybe some guitar tuning might be tightened up a bit? I'd also say, vocals definitely up in the mix. You've got the synth tones nailed, I think, what are you using for the synths? They sound great!

cheers,

-Tom

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Fun ride, here. You definitely nailed that 80's techno beat.

As for mixing and mastering, I have been watching the Creative Sauce series on YouTube and 'Mike' explains in detail how to do a recording project from start to finish on Cakewalk.  

Cheers,

Bert

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