PavlovsCat

I picked up their upright piano last year. It's a nice little KONTAKT library for only $5 USD on sale. It's not a stunning deep sampled library, but if you like its tone in the demo, it's a great value and the developer, in my dealings is really nice. I also have their ukulele strum library which is nice but pretty limited in terms of chords.

Exactly, Kevin! I have really bad tinnitus too, but it really doesn't bother me during the loud parts, just the quiet parts. My two teenage kids hear my voice and tell me, "Stick to the drums, dad!" But they won't keep me down!!! Hahaha. I sincerely appreciate the encouragement and want to do the same right back to you. I have been begging my daughter to sing on this stuff as she has a really good voice and sings with her school choir, but she keeps declining. Hopefully, someday soon, and the quality of my music will improve by a million times. Although it may mean I'm doing a lot of Billie Ellish songs! Which is fine, but as people can see, I'm a rocker -- and love Zeppelin, The Beatles, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, etc.

The playing, the vocals, the mix all sound excellent. The feel on this is perfect. Great job!

Wow, nice! Nice tune and the guitars sound really good.

Thanks for the insights. I really don't know what I'm doing with mixing -- and I realize it shows, but I'm going to try to implement your advice. All I did on the vocal was slap on a couple of effect chain presets from Nectar and ezMix. But I realize that you're right I just don't know how to deal with fixing the issues, but I'm going to try. Okay, I shared that I stopped playing professionally due to tendonitis (in both wrists) that result in pain after playing drums for even a couple minutes. But I didn't share that I was born with a birth defect in my inner ears that causes a significant hearing loss and the inability to hear some frequencies, so even as I'm starting to learn about mixing, I'm one of the worst possible people to do a mix. It goes against nature that I can play anymore! I actually was just playing Kashmir for the first time on the original piano track and it was maybe the first month since I started playing again and, as you can hear, my timing on the piano section was awful as certain frequencies overlapped and I lost track of the click, which you can hear bleeding into the mic (I need it to be super loud to hear it, so it's basically always bleeding into the mic on my vocal tracks). But I'm still glad I can even play anymore. And I will slowly get better at playing and learn how to EQ, use effects and mix. Back in the day, all I cared about musically, was playing, arranging music and songwriting, so I never really learned about music production. My mother went to college for classical piano and organ performance and taught piano, organ and guitar and worked professionally as a musician. She encouraged me to be a professional musician, but would always add, "It's a shame you have such a horrible voice." But I'm confident if she could hear this, she would be horrified at my piano playing too and tell me that I need to practice and record this again when I can get it right! But hey, I'm more comfortable sharing my flawed performances than I was a year ago, so while I need to improve my playing, I'm at least able to share my stuff without being too concerned about my flawed playing.

Believe me, the first rock record album I bought was Zeppelin III. There was a part of me that said, "How dare you try to change Bonham's part!!!" Dead serious. I really do appreciate your constructive criticism. It's very helpful. Thanks again.

@Reid RosefeltI didn't have time to watch the entire video,, I watched it from the Harrison Ford part and thought you did a great job and you seem so much more comfortable in this video than the last. This is just like you're talking to a friend and I think that's the winning formula. Great job!

@Larry T. Funny enough, I thought the 6/4 parts near the end would be the parts people liked best and I was contemplating doing the song over with all of the sections with that progression played like that! I'm curious what you didn't like about it? Was it the drum beat, the additional guitar riff I did (not in the original song)-- which I stole from a song I wrote back in the 90s -- a combination of that...? The whole thing was really just me adding tracks to the original tracks of me playing piano and singing like you hear in the section without drums the first time I ever tried playing and singingthe song (I had just worked out the parts). I saw this as me trying things out to see what worked and didn't. So it's interesting to me that the part I thought worked best might not be other people's cup of tea. But I shared the earlier version with my friends before on Facebook and no one commented, so I took it to mean it really didn't grab anyone (as when my friends like something, they comment) . Again, thanks much for taking the time to listen and share your thoughts. It's appreciated.

@Simeon Amburgey I was wondering, I don't use loops, and considering that it's a 19GB I thought the two included drum libraries might be pretty detailed. What are your initial thoughts on it for someone like me, who is a drummer, who is purely looking for drum sample libraries to play from a midi controller? I wasn't sure if it is comparable to say a very good multisampled drum kit (e.g., Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, Abbey Road Drums -- for KONTAKT -- etc.)..

Of course, when I wrote "greatly improved from last version." I meant greatly improved from my last version, not Zeppelin's! I recorded and mixed the earlier shared track a few months ago, and this is my update to that, with some swapped out instrumental parts and different parts brought up in the mix. This is a work in progress, but I think this is substantially better than my last version. Some production notes: (1) I replaced the drums that start the song from the previous version. This beat is much more straight ahead and groove oriented than what I used in the previous version. (2) There's a lot going on in this mix, with a total of 44 tracks, and I clearly need to figure out how to do a better job of mixing it. (3) One of the key premises of my version is -- what if the beat went with the 6/4 timing of the other instruments, instead of 4/4? I do that in the two later verses after the piano section. (4) I used Melodyne on my vocal to fix some notes in my first verse (I did better as the song went along), but I definitely haven't figured out the art of using that well yet. I will keep practicing and trying to do a better job with the vocal. (5) This whole thing started out with my playing piano and singing, doing a bunch of improv -- hence why it's a bit adventurous and not refined, especially, of all things, the drums (of all things, because I used to be a semi-professional drummer and that's the sloppiest part of this, I just did three takes with three different drum kits and didn't really spend much time worrying about if they lined up perfectly). I very much am interested in production advice. I realize I'm not a good singer -- I never was -- so I'm very limited in that area. But where I can really use insights are, what are some specific things I can do to improve the mix -- what do you think works and what do you think doesn't work?

Reid, we love you just the way you are, man. Don't sweat that stuff! Just look at how people in this community care and offer helpful advice. You're likeable. It comes across. I already know from your other videos that you're only going to get more comfortable with doing these videos as time goes on -- like anything, more experience will lead to refinements. I think Jesse, above, has some really good advice -- especially that you should put a link in your sig file here and at other forums. And the advice about the importance of titling your videos can't be overstated. It is really important and you should consider doing some keyword research before you decide on titles of your videos to try to tailor the title around what the audience you're trying to reach searches for. Anyhow, like everyone else here, I just want to see you succeed.

Thanks. Yesterday I did another mix that brought up some different parts and I added a new drum part I thought was superior-- and I put the vocal through Melodyne, but something really strange happened with Melodyne. Anyhow, so I'm going to redo some of the vocals, but the other version I have is far better than this one. Hopefully. I can finish it up by the weekend. As usual, the most challenging part of doing these recordings are the vocals.

Killer. Another great track, but to be very candid, based on everything else I heard from you, I knew it was going to be excellent when I saw your username. Kudos. Beautiful playing and another very well written song. Top notch.

The first rock record album I ever purchased was at 5 years old. It was Led Zeppelin III. Granted, Kashmir isn't on that album, but Kashmir is one of my all-time favorite rock songs and the one Zeppelin song that my wife and kids love, so I wanted to do a cover of it. There's no way I could ever come close to the greatness of the original and I didn't feel like imitating John Bonham -- because, hey, no one could ever equal or do better than what he or any other member of Zeppelin did with this song, certainly not me -- so I really had fun with doing some very different things with it. I lost track of the click during the piano part, but hopefully you can look beyond that.

I'm waiting for the next external hard drive deal Larry posts! All of these samples need a home and I have four drives all with very little space left. I think Seagate and Western Digital should sponsor this forum!

@mibby Thanks for sharing this info. I've been to their site and wondered if they were decent. Their prices are certainly low. I think I'll start with checking out some of their latest demos. But I wanted to say thanks, I always find it really valuable when people here share their testimonials/recommendations on plugins and developers that I'm not experienced with.

This is excellent! Great job, I love it. Suggestions? Keep posting more music! I was listening to your other songs you posted and enjoyed everything I heard. Really tasteful playing.

I understood that and I value your input -- and you're completely right (although I think your being a little too kind about the rest of my singing-- but I appreciate your kindness) .My voice is really inconsistent. I'm thinking of coming back to this, maybe tomorrow, and trying to re-sing the verses, but especially the first verse, which is not as good as the rest of the song (not that I sing well at all, I just sing better than the first verse) . I actually think the only singing I did half okay was the pre-choruses. Anyhow, your comment is really helpful, as it confirms what I was thinking-- because part of me thinks-- all of my singing is so poor, maybe I'll just let it go. But I think I can probably do a better job on the verse. In fact, my singing kept me from sharing this with my family. If I can improve that, I think I did a decent job with the musical performance. So thanks much. You've persuaded me to try to do better. I'll absolutely update this thread with the new version-- unless I find I can't do a better job. Singing is the only challenging (often frustrating) part of making these recordings for me. I would greatly prefer having someone else singing and sticking to the music. In the bands I formed, I never picked me to sing lead vocals and prefer it that way.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. I do have some regret that I didn't pick it up when it was cheaper.

Wow. cool vibe and a nice voice! (Don't listen to my stuff, my voice is terrible!). Great job.

The chorus is a lot easier for me to sing. It's in a different key. Although, I think it's that I just enjoy getting loud! Back when I played semi-professionally, I did background vocals and often would be the person who sang the "yeah" yell kind of parts. So I think I still have the quality. But also, I'm of Italian lineage, so I think being loud is genetic! Hahaha.

You and your brother did a really nice job on a classic. Kudos.

Thanks. Actually all of the instruments are sample libraries played via midi controllers. I have midi keyboards, midi drum pads, a Roland V-Drum kit. I basically started working with midi and sample libraries years ago because of my tendinitis, playing my acoustic kits really causes a lot of problems --- which reminds me that I need to at least sell one of the two acoustic kits! I just started a new thread with the completed song. I wasn't sure if I should put it here or a new thread. I figured it was too much to expect people to sift through a bunch of posts to find the song, so I created a new thread.

Cool tune. I like the groove, the progression and especially the guitar riffs and the guitar playing overall. Nice job!

“THESE DAYS” - FOO FIGHTERS COVER Dave Grohl calls this the best song he’s ever written, and I think he’s right. The Foo Fighters is one of the handful of bands that my entire family (my wife and our two teenage kids) enjoys and this is my favorite song from the band. For those who don't know anything about me. I grew up the son of a music teacher and professional musician with my first instrument being piano, then organ, then drums (I later took some guitar lessons, but never got proficient on the instrument). When I was 5, my three siblings decided to form a family band and asked me to play drums -- after a short time, I fell in love with the drums. At 5, my first rock album was Zeppelin III. By 7, I heard Who's Next and was certain that I was going to be a rock drummer. From 18 until around 30 I played drums semiprofessionally, had a chance to join a major band named Veruca Salt whose lead singer saw me play with Chicago area band, I declined, and a few years later got painful tendinitis that stopped me from playing (in the late 90s). I still can only play for a few minutes on the drums before I have pain, so I really can't practice anymore and get to playing anywhere near the level I did even as a kid. But age and the pandemic caused me to spend more and more time wishing I could express myself musically. So almost a year ago, more than 20 years since I stopped playing, I decided to just play and record some of the music I wrote years ago and some covers. Unfortunately, I was never a lead singer. I did background vocals and that's really all my voice was good enough to do. So, there's my story. Now unto the details on my arrangement of this song. My arrangement varies from the original in a number of ways, but especially in two of the major ways: (1) The tempo of my version is around 10 BPM slower than the original. I felt that allowed me to create a more R&B feel during the verses and a bluesy feel during the pre-choruses (particularly the second one where I came up with a slide acoustic guitar part). (2) I added a number of instruments not part of the original song and came up with original parts on those instruments: acoustic guitar, piano, electric piano, organ and strings (I also added a synthesizer and tambourine). I played all the parts you hear live to click track using a total of 23 tracks. No parts were programmed. And yes, when I was playing the drums in the chorus, I totally had my Keith Moon hat on.