PhonoBrainer

Also, generally of course you want the vocal up front, but maybe it's just a bit too forward here? IDK, tough call. Great tune, though. Guitars and piano have great clarity.

The second version addresses what I heard in the first version, pulling some low mid out of the vocal. This version is much cleaner down low! I'd also be tempted to add a bit of tight delay to the vocal, or maybe a reverb with a lot of the low end return cut away. Dig the structure of that riff after "Disappearing Man". Version #2 is soooo much better! Cool tune!

Lyrics are fun and the bass guitar part is 100% great. Feels live. During the lead guitar solo, I found myself wanting the levels of the drums to come up a bit in the mix. Ending was way cool. This is a keeper. cheers, -Tom

cool sonic pallette, with maybe glass harmonium? reversed piano as well? nice! I was waiting for the Jesse poetry but that's on me. Chill can be the thrill.

Shout out for Zynaptiq's free Subspace reverb. I have paid for many other good verbs but I use that one all the time. https://www.zynaptiq.com/subspace/

Thanks so much Tim! Three pianos, all eq'd out of each other's way. PITA. Thanks for the listen! Thanks Ramscapri, I appreciate that. Thanks Steve, glad you felt that and it's very gratifying to hear, to say the least. I appreciate your response. Words would be an fun experiment - but we'd lose the "thoughts in your head while you listen" part. In another life, who knows? Go for it if you'd like, let me know what you come up with? Thanks again! Kevin, that's awesome! Very happy it might get spun once in a while. Cheers!

Yeah! I couldn't wait to hit play on this one. Awesome chords, unexpected arrangement moves, funky emphasized punctuated hits, and awesome chops in an awesome mix. One thought might be, in the very intro / first minute, and a lot throughout the piece, you have a unison sax and guitar - the sax gets buried by the guitar (for me) and I don't know that the clean sax/dirty crunch guitar works that amazing in unison? Maybe a bit more sax brightens that up when they are together? But I trust your judgment 100x more than mine! Great tune, dug the ending too, it sticks the landing! cheers, -Tom

Hi David! Many thanks, and I guess it's a combo of still images (with pans and zooms) and some video/graphic animations in there as well. A mix. I appreciate the comments! And "phonobrainer" is just another silly music name I seem to keep coming up with . . . Bjorn, "adjusting yourself to the season" and straining to make human connections are exactly what I was going for, nice to know you read those things! I appreciate it very much. Thanks a lot Kurt!

I bet you're a singer. Typical.

If these voices are half off, I'd definitely be using Melodyne.

IDK, "Jaguar" sounds quote stylish, it suits you! ?

Thanks Mark, I sweated the intro to the vid quite a bit, glad it went over well. Chilly, indeed, friggin' freezin! Thanks for the time and the listen . . . Thanks Douglas! I appreciate the kudos, put as I listen to the mix I can still hear things I'd shake up or try to improve! Gotta let it go, life's to short to split that 99th hair out of 100. Thanks for the comments! Really appreciate that, Tom! Many thanks!

Vibe is quality, song is a mover, and the mixing down low would definitely be worth some time . . . Vocal performance is spot on!

Another fun ride and I appreciate your mentioning the synths and effects you use, I have zero Arturia anything and I'm getting interested the more of your examples I get to hear. Nice fade at the end to boot.

I'd start off by saying cool tune, love the loose attitude towards the end, and your vocal performance totally works! the mix struck me as having these potential issues . . . 1. The vocals are too loud. Processing is just fine, really, maybe just drop em 1-2 db at least? 2. The guitars sound thin, a bit jangly. Jangly guitars can sound very cool, but often the parts are doubled or chorused to give it some thickness. 3. Bass guitar brought up some unfortunate questions about how it was recorded and what equipment you have. How did you record the bass, what audio interface, what preamp, did you actually mic an amp, is there a clean DI blended in, those sort of questions. Just a total guess but it sounds like you stuck an sm57 in front of a mediocre amp that had seen a few years on the road? And ran the mic line into a not awesome preamp or audio interface? Not trying to be harsh, because we all work with the means and the tools we have. But if you were looking to redo and improve the sonic quality dramatically, I'd start with the bass recording. If you solo just your bass track, how does it sound all by itself? Does it have the kind of presence, clarity, and tonality you'd want to bring into any mix? From experience, I'd say one of the hardest turd-polishing efforts is making a bad bass guitar recording sound decent. EQ can only do so much down there. If you had a clean DI bass track recorded as well, I'd go with that alone, which would increase clarity I think. You've got both singing and songwriting talent, and I dig the attitude of the song! It's very much worth the effort to improve! cheers, -Tom

totally worth some polish - I really liked the energy, I thought it would make a cool background to a chase scene, or something with animation. The vocal shouts and adds were excellent touches. Maybe just a "fade in" beginning and a "fade out" ending? the part around 2:20 got really good, and I noticed the non-lead piano at that point had a pretty strong theme going. You might take ideas from what is working in this section, and apply it to the overall piece? there is a lot of information coming at the listener at times, with lead piano noodles over most everything. Here's a question - if someone asked you to sit at the piano and play the main theme of your piece for 15 seconds, could you? What's the main riff / melody over bass? there is a lot of hecka cool stuff going on at all times, but you might centralize it and build it all off one one or two definable melodies / themes. Sorry if I'm not making sense, it's a hard idea to get across in text, but I did like what you have going here! cheers, -Tom

He only left out that the best notes a jazz player plays are the ones in the gaps he plays that are left out.

wow! What a great collab, don't know where to start - how about the lyrics? Love those, the vocal delivery, the cadences, harmonies - really pulls the ear in. the guitars are so well recorded and played. The drums have a lovely tone as well, organic and live, the snare has a great crack/thump tone! I listened once on hifi headphones, and on my better monitors. Great sound on both!!! Mix ideas, you don't need any but you might think about how loud the guitars are in the first sung verse, they cover up the vocals just a bit maybe? Everything is killer but the vocals could pop up relative to the guitars in spots, to my ears. Other than that, maybe a few more drum fills towards the ends of verses - into - chorus? This is one of the best things I've heard around here. Fantastic! cheers, -Tom

No, I liked the amount of finger slides I could hear! If you have an eq with a good live visual waveform display (fabfilter pro-q 3 or equivalent) you might watch the upper eq area, above 10 kHz? Starting at 2:25 . . . I bet around 2:28 you'll see a bunch of high frequency drop off. Good luck, very nice tune!

This is a slow burn and a good ride. My ears and brain enjoyed every second, and the mix clarity is out-friggin'-standing! Well done!

Headphones should be mandatory for this! Those synths are well placed and sound very clear, well placed in . . . space. I thought I heard some space birds as well! I've heard a lot recently about the CS-80 and the different software versions, do you like or love the Arturia version? This is an incredible soundscape and it enhanced my morning. Thanks!

Thanks, Jack! Thanks so much Andy! I figured if a song is this slooooow, there should be cool things to look at. I appreciate your comments greatly, and I hope you have an excellent music-filled year as well!!! Gary, thanks, and I bet your winters are friggin' awesome. The piano is three instruments playing similar but not identical parts. The main felt all the way through is the Woodchester piano, which has a fantastic woody tone, that unfortunately comes with a huge raspy hammer-hitting-felt sizzle for each note, around 8 kHz I think. I had to come to terms with a big eq dip there to cut out the stupid fuzz rattle on each hit. To fill that 8hz hole back in, I duplicated the Woodcester track with a Noire felt, which also brought along some bass sustains that were pretty cool. LAstly, the upper, more melodic "bell" tone that comes in is the Atelier piano., for just the melody lines really. All of this got a bit thick in the mix but it's all good I think. It could be a bit cleaner below 500k but hey. thanks for the comments, Gary, and the subscribe, much obliged! Awesome, glad you liked it Noynekker!!! The ending works for me as well in a kind of "return to reality" to which we all must, eventually. I've always liked random radio chatter as a sound source, like "Windpower" by Thomas Dolby. Cool stuff that. Appreciate the remarks!

That was really nice and mellow. The fretless has a good tone and I didn't hear any bass humm thing, but I did notice a bit of air/slight hiss in the beginning when the two guitars were featured, it comes and goes, like some real-room takes were being comped together. Nothing bad about that, of course!!! You might check 2:28 - the air is there, and then it's gone. But you might get some upper-high eq curved off at maybe 15kHz and above, just to see if that "air" disappears. Or not. The point is, very clean guitar takes indeed inside a nice composition. cheers, -Tom

downtempo chill, originally 2017, remixed and reimagined for 2022 . . . with better video! Any and all comments are welcome, thanks! An audio-only Soundcloud link is below the video link . . . audio only: