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Martha My Dear


steve@baselines.com

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After listening to the Analogues on youtube doing the whole White Album live (!!!) - I did this cover of Martha My Dear.

Italy, Germany, England and USA checking in! @sibviolin violins, @michelefortunato trombones, @azzronika vocals and myself to round it out. #beatles #rock #horns #violins #iinternationalcollab

https://baselines.com/?p=5564

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Hi Steve! This was an education for me, I wasn't really familiar with this song, but you seem to have pulled it off nicely! That's a creditably McCartney vocal! I'd offer an idea, maybe boost the vocal a tad, in spots in really needs to come above the level of the competing piano and synthstrings.

For me, everything clicked in the mix better when it was full bass accompaniament, but I get the song must have the dynamics of stripped-down sections.

Otherwise, the mix had great separation between the instruments, and I agree it's a pleasant and interesting song!

Nice job on it!

 

cheers,

-Tom

 

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15 hours ago, emeraldsoul said:

Hi Steve! This was an education for me, I wasn't really familiar with this song, but you seem to have pulled it off nicely! That's a creditably McCartney vocal! I'd offer an idea, maybe boost the vocal a tad, in spots in really needs to come above the level of the competing piano and synthstrings.

For me, everything clicked in the mix better when it was full bass accompaniament, but I get the song must have the dynamics of stripped-down sections.

Otherwise, the mix had great separation between the instruments, and I agree it's a pleasant and interesting song!

Nice job on it!

 

cheers,

-Tom

 

Hi Tom thank you so much for the feedback and suggestions.  I'll go back and take a listen - next time I update it I will keep this in mind.  Aaron is from England (on Bandlab) and he did the vocal...he does a lot of Beach Boys harmonies as well - he's got a much better range than I do.

As far as the mix and when the bass comes in, it is something I have been trying to do some automation around.  In this case, I boosted the bass and highend of the piano when it was alone and gradually pull it back, but it still did not bring it up to the areas where iZotope Tonal Balance Control was happy.  It is something I intend to work on in the future.

Some of those strings were actual acoustic violin which Michael Herter supplied (Bandlab, Germany).  

Steve

 

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5 hours ago, Douglas Kirby said:

Yeah, you did a good job on this cover. I noticed the fx on the lead vocal (is that a bit of chorus?) - sounds like what Paul did for the original.

Hi Douglas - yes you are spot on!  McCartney double tracked that vocal, so I used Waves Reel ADT on it - that plugin was developed based on what they used to use at Abbey Road studio by controlling two tape machines and slowing down then speeding up one.  Thanks for the feedback!

Steve

 

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steve@baselines.com - Thanks Jeff - are you on Bandlab?

Yes, I am a carry over from the old Cakewalk forum, have not be in the forums in a long time, good to see there is still an active forum with lots of activity happening. When you do your covers, are you playing all instruments or using some midi and actual playing, however you do it...it sounds great!

 

PS...wow, I am confused on How to use quotes and or the quote button on this forum, enlighten me, I finally highlighted your text and copied and then used " and " and pasted in what I copied, but how do you quote so it shows the user's name and all, the quote button doesn't seem to work like I thought it would?

Edited by JEFF MCDONALD
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9 hours ago, JEFF MCDONALD said:

Yes, I am a carry over from the old Cakewalk forum, have not be in the forums in a long time, good to see there is still an active forum with lots of activity happening. When you do your covers, are you playing all instruments or using some midi and actual playing, however you do it...it sounds great!

 

PS...wow, I am confused on How to use quotes and or the quote button on this forum, enlighten me, I finally highlighted your text and copied and then used " and " and pasted in what I copied, but how do you quote so it shows the user's name and all, the quote button doesn't seem to work like I thought it would?

Hi Jeff, there are a few Jeff McDonald users on Bandlab.  If you tell me your @ username, I'll give you a follow.

On the songs I do, generally I play the Bass, Piano and Guitar parts on the real instruments (and Ukulele sometimes).  All other sounds are midi plugins for the most part.

Superior Drummer 3 for the drum parts with a Maschine MK3 MICRO as a drum pad.  Native Instruments, Dimension Pro, AAS Tassman and a few others.

On this one 2 of the three violin tracks are real violins, and the 'trumpet' lead is a real trombone.

When I quote, I just hit the 'Quote' link and it seems to work for me - opens up a new post including the previous post.

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When I quote, I just hit the 'Quote' link and it seems to work for me - opens up a new post including the previous post.

Hmmm, I highlight what to quote and hit the quote button and it open post box to type reply in but there is nothing quoted in the box, not even what I highlighted to quote. I'm using Firefox, maybe it's the browser.

Quote

If you tell me your @ username, I'll give you a follow.

I haven't been active much in here in so long, I can't remember where to look for my @username. Is it listed in my profile or maybe settings? I looked but not seeing it.

Hey, that's a nice mixture of midi and real instruments, and your skill level at playing them is really good!

Here is a song I uploaded recently using Distrokid, all instrumental called Sunset, let me know what you think.  I think I mainly used patches / instruments from Komplete 12, the drums are a free vst, but I can't think of the name right now. Have a listen:

 

 

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35 minutes ago, JEFF MCDONALD said:

Hmmm, I highlight what to quote and hit the quote button and it open post box to type reply in but there is nothing quoted in the box, not even what I highlighted to quote. I'm using Firefox, maybe it's the browser.

I haven't been active much in here in so long, I can't remember where to look for my @username. Is it listed in my profile or maybe settings? I looked but not seeing it.

Hey, that's a nice mixture of midi and real instruments, and your skill level at playing them is really good!

Here is a song I uploaded recently using Distrokid, all instrumental called Sunset, let me know what you think.  I think I mainly used patches / instruments from Komplete 12, the drums are a free vst, but I can't think of the name right now. Have a listen:

 

 

Hey sounds great - are the drums a little to the left?  Nice work!

 

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3 hours ago, steve@baselines.com said:

Hey sounds great - are the drums a little to the left?  Nice work!

 

Thanks!

You have good ears, yes the drums are a little left. Was on another forum a while back and they were talking about songs where they had noticed the lead vocal being slightly left or right, and the only reasoning they came up with was that maybe it makes the vocal "stick out" a little better, being slight away from drum and bass. So, since I had no vocal on my song, I decided to try it with the drums.

Speaking of panning...It's odd, but somehow on a lot of older songs from the 60's and 70's where instruments and or drums were panned in weird ways, it seems to have worked ok a lot of times even though if I try to copy the song with my instruments and plugins and pan like that it does not sound good, things sound out of place, I don't how they were able to do that and make it sound good. ?

A lot of home studio folks say they don't use or don't like to use any of the stereo widening plugins. But, I have found one that I really like and to my ears it sums quite well to mono, it's the one by Ozone called Ozone Imager. I use it all the time now even while I am tracking, for me it seems to add that (stereoness?) for lack of a better term that seems missing when you just do simple panning. You can do similar effect using delays, but then I definitely notice a difference when summing to mono.

I don't really care much any more about the whole summing to mono thing, I like the sound of stereo and I mean for my music that I create to be listened to that way, in stereo with headphones or speakers. Do you use any of those stereo widening plugins?

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10 hours ago, JEFF MCDONALD said:

Speaking of panning...It's odd, but somehow on a lot of older songs from the 60's and 70's where instruments and or drums were panned in weird ways, it seems to have worked ok a lot of times even though if I try to copy the song with my instruments and plugins and pan like that it does not sound good, things sound out of place, I don't how they were able to do that and make it sound good. ?

 

Yes, I've heard some of those early stereo weird panning songs.  In fact, this one, Martha My Dear is one of them.  The piano is all the way to one side, which makes the stereo almost impossible to listen to in headphones when it is the only thing playing.  A lot of the early Beatles stuff is like that.

 

A lot of home studio folks say they don't use or don't like to use any of the stereo widening plugins. But, I have found one that I really like and to my ears it sums quite well to mono, it's the one by Ozone called Ozone Imager. I use it all the time now even while I am tracking, for me it seems to add that (stereoness?) for lack of a better term that seems missing when you just do simple panning. You can do similar effect using delays, but then I definitely notice a difference when summing to mono.

I use Imager a lot as well.  I used to use it more (even with the stereo button on, which they say you should only do for mono).  I've cut back over the past year or so because my ears became more attuned to it and I think I was overdoing it.  There is a post I added a while ago that takes a download from Spotify and checks it with Ozone, and it looks like the spectrum is a lot narrower than what I was using.  https://baselines.com/?p=5510

 

I don't really care much any more about the whole summing to mono thing, I like the sound of stereo and I mean for my music that I create to be listened to that way, in stereo with headphones or speakers. Do you use any of those stereo widening plugins?

I feel the same way.  I don't care to much about what it is going to sound like on AM radio and I don't think too many people listen on their phones without earbuds. ?

 

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16 hours ago, steve@baselines.com said:

A lot of the early Beatles stuff is like that.

Yeah, some of it "did not" sound good, too radical, even before I started recording, when I was younger listening to Beatles, early stuff, I would wonder why they mixed with those weird pannings, it made you just want to listen to it in mono instead. Man, I miss The Beatles creativity in music, that's the group I grew up listening to. Ha, I am no spring chicken, turned 67 this year.

Hey Steve...I figured out why I could not get the quote button to work on this forum. I went through all my plugins / extensions in my Firefox browser and turned them off one at a time, and would try the quote button after turning off each extension,  when I got to this one --->   (OurStickys - Sticky Notes on every page Add Persistent Sticky Notes anywhere on any web page, they will reappear when you re-open the page) and turned it off, the quote button immediately began working correctly. ?

Oh well, time to get some zzzzzzzzzzz. ?

 

 

 

Edited by JEFF MCDONALD
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