My Enthusiastic Cover of "I Am the Walrus" After Not Playing for 2 Decades

[PavlovsCat]

I recorded this several months ago, the first song I played since stopping playing for more than two decades due to tendonitis, so there's a lot of pent of energy in this performance (and zero chops!) -- for better or worse. I had a blast recording this and the original tracks were just me contemplating if I should try to sing this, I didn't actually plan on sharing this version, but I ended up having such enthusiasm, I thought, why not? My greater dilemma is that I don't know anything about mixing and there's a lot going on there, so I'm sure the mix is pretty terrible. I could use some very simple mixing tip as I think I did a decent job with this performance, I just have no idea how to mix it. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-345532605/i-am-the-walrus-the-beatles-cover-remixed

Edited February 8, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[John Vere]

Yes mostly it's the vocals that are not clear. Do you use sub busses? I like to have a sub buss for each part of the "Band"

Bass, Drums, keyboards,Guitars, and then vocals. 

So it's pretty easy to go back to a mix and turn stuff down. Notice I said turn it down. A common mistake is turning stuff up. Then you're going to be slamming your peak limiter and the song will die of over compression. I just released a seires of 10 tutorials on recording original songs and there's lot's of info about how I build the mix starting at the tracking level. You'll find my tutorials in the sub forum. 

Also I show you how to export and Top and tail the song. I noticed right away you had 4 seconds of dead air at the start. 

[David Sprouse]

Peter, I'm a classical guitarist and have developed osteo arthritis in both hands....so I can relate to the tendonitist story.  Luckily, I'm more interested in creating new things than I am rehashing the repertoire..it's been done to death anyways.  I listened to this on cheap speakers and it sounded just like the original!  If you've ever seen John Waters films there's one called *pink flamingos* that's hysterical.  In that there's a character called *the egg man*.  Try to watch it if you're not offended easily...lots of nudity and crude stuff, but funny nonetheless.  Great job on this.

Edited February 8, 2022 by David Sprouse

[PavlovsCat]

37 minutes ago, David Sprouse said:

Peter, I'm a classical guitarist and have developed osteo arthritis in both hands....so I can relate to the tendonitist story.  Luckily, I'm more interested in creating new things than I am rehashing the repertoire..it's been done to death anyways.  I listened to this on cheap speakers and it sounded just like the original!  If you've ever seen John Waters films there's one called *pink flamingos* that's hysterical.  In that there's a character called *the egg man*.  Try to watch it if you're not offended easily...lots of nudity and crude stuff, but funny nonetheless.  Great job on this.

Thanks so much for the encouraging message. As far as easily offended. Nope. It takes a lot of effort to offend me -- which kind of sounds like a challenge after I just put up a song illustrating my poor singing and pedestrian musicianship after two decades of not playing. When my kids hear my voice they tell me, "Stick to the drums!" So easily offended? Not so much! But I thought, after not playing for so many years and just pressing record to play this song -- I figured, it's a Beatles song -- and I love the Beatles, but lets be real, it doesn't take much technique to play Beatles' songs which is why I thought it was a cool choice since I have no chops anymore and can't play for long enough to really practice to get better. That said, since recording this early last year, my timing and playing has gotten a bit better. 

I'll check out the film. 

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

Yes mostly it's the vocals that are not clear. Do you use sub busses? I like to have a sub buss for each part of the "Band"

Bass, Drums, keyboards,Guitars, and then vocals. 

So it's pretty easy to go back to a mix and turn stuff down. Notice I said turn it down. A common mistake is turning stuff up. Then you're going to be slamming your peak limiter and the song will die of over compression. I just released a seires of 10 tutorials on recording original songs and there's lot's of info about how I build the mix starting at the tracking level. You'll find my tutorials in the sub forum. 

Also I show you how to export and Top and tail the song. I noticed right away you had 4 seconds of dead air at the start. 

Thanks for the advice. No, while I've been using multi-track recorders since I was a little boy, I've never known what I was doing. I worked professionally as a drummer for two decades and played publicly as a musician since I was 5 with a family band, with training on piano, organ, guitar and drums, but I played in bands where sound pros or another band member handled mixing, and while I've used DAWs since the word was invented, I really never knew anything beyond making multitrack demos to show band members, I never even attempted to create a mixed, polished production with just me playing, just demos that were unmixed and unmastered. Subsequently, I only recently even really learned about busses, so I need to research what sub basses are. But I am appreciative of simple advice and will try it. All I did on this is press record on the various tracks. I never even knew about comping until recently -- after I recorded this cover, actually, I watched a YouTube video by Creative Sauce that was about comping. 

So, I'm definitely game to watch your videos and it would be great to learn how to mix with this recording. Where do you recommend I start? By turning down all of the faders or setting them to zero?

Frankly, I recall little tips I've learned, like keep bass and drums in the center, but I'm not even sure about panning, so if you listen to this and the panning is all over the map and seems to make no sense, that is because I mostly just played around until things sounded as good as I could get them. But yeah, as I don't know what I'm doing, I really didn't have a lot of success getting this to sound as good as it could have or even to my satisfaction, to the point where I might even cal it unmixed or ineptly mixed! So again, where do you recommend I start -- and I want to start from scratch -- to try to do a decent job mixing this? And I've purchased a bunch of Izotope's pro mixing software packages, so I have the tools, I just don't know how to use them well. I thought that relying on AI would be good enough, but soon found out that it completely ruins the mix worse than when I don't use it, because it has no idea how I want things to sound. 


 

[MGC59]

Nice Beatles cover PavlovsCat!

Talk about a challenging song to take on!

You absolutely nailed the Lennon vocals and his sound! The vibe of the song is spot on as well.

 

 

 

[John Vere]

Yes I think my videos numbered 201 -210 will explain a lot of what you can start with. I don’t go into super details, it’s just a series where you look over my shoulder as I take a rough song idea of vocals and guitar and turn it into a finished song and mix and mastering is involved .   I’m planning on a series with details later but taking a break to work on my own stuff right now   
 

If I lived near you I’d gladly come over and help  

 

 

[Bajan Blue]

Really good cover - particularly the vocals that sound spot on - good job

Nigel

 

[mark skinner]

 Great Job ! I instantly got the same vibe as the original had. You vocals are Way better than you think they are. It was Real nice hearing this again ..     mark

[DeeringAmps]

Enjoyed!

As to mixing advice, watch and learn, but mostly; lather, rinse and repeat.

Like any skill set it takes constant practice...

t

[Larry T.]

Great job on playing all the parts, vox and recording....the mixing will come in time....watch Mike's and John's videos and you will be surprised at how easy the mixing, mastering and Cakewalk DAW tricks become once you learn them ????