New song...remake/remix of Basement Jaxxx , "Where's Your Head At" Rocktronica

bedheadproducer

This is a one nighter, 26 tracks in Cubasis, no glitching or CPU probs whatsoever.
I sang the harmonies, doubled the leads, but also used their acapella behind my voice .....think zz top meets joe satriani and daft punk and of course...Basement Jaxx!! This was a hit about 15 years ago I believe....I can't exactly remember when and I didn't google the info, so don't quote me on that!

oh , and as per usual, the guitar solos are improvised and I had no idea ahead of time what I would do with this track, whether I could do it justice, and keep it interesting with just one part, for 4 minutes
I picked this specifically to illustrate that good songs don't always need a ton of parts or changes and also that it was an exercise in limiting myself.. Rather than pick something that would be more challenging to play and learn, I picked something that forced me to be creative with less.Tom Petty wrote a lot of songs where the verse and the chorus are over the same chord progression. Now admittedly , I'm a ton of parts kind of guy and in reality this has a lot going on and it's dynamics and nuances that get the listener through it anyway..That's what the original version did, so I felt I had do that as well, with my own twist of things of course. For many years I rarely recorded covers. Now I find it a blast to find a way to make them my own somehow.

chandroji

One man, one night and 26 Tracks produced on just an iPad?
Wow! That’s really great Marc!
This is a funny song! Love it! 🎶👍

McDtracy

Damn... your production technique is amazing. I'm sure it helps to be able to do all the singing, playing and head banging yourself.

There's one other guy on the forum that produces tracks somewhat in this vein but they tend to be instrumentals and he uses GeoShred for the kinds of guitar playing you do live.

It's great to have every genre of music represented and you just nail this type of rock perfectly.

studs1966

Nice one mate.... Yep!..... I remember Basement Jaxx, when I was a nipper....

bedheadproducer

Thanks ! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

bedheadproducer

And here is video proof...you can record a lot of tracks on an IPAD, no hiccups yet.

I was mistaken.it's 27 tracks..also unlike the soundcloud version, this one is not mastered. This is the sound coming straight out of the daw, no eq on the master bus at all.

gusgranite

Love this! Seriously, nice work! It’s a favourite track from back in the day and you have really kept the energy and party rowdy feel while making it your own.

LinearLineman

You are good for this forum, Marc. Good approach and philosophy and the results show it.

bedheadproducer

@gusgranite said:
Love this! Seriously, nice work! It’s a favourite track from back in the day and you have really kept the energy and party rowdy feel while making it your own.

I almost forgot to thank you. Since you already knew the song, you were very helpful in quenching my fears about still keeping it fun and with that party vibe. Thanks so much for you kind observations. I hope this version rekindles the song for you like ti did for me. I have always loved this song..for no reason I can explain.lol. It's just plain good and catchy..to me anyway. Black eyed peas did a similar feat with" tonight's' gonna be a good night" actually if I think about it, I'll best every good.pop artist has at least one very simple but super catchy hit song. Funny how even the most complex minds ultimately gravitate to simplicity. Now some might say this isn't that simple, but my mind is geared towards classical music and layers of complexity on that level..but classical can be like dense chocolate and hard to digest very much in one siting..so I rarely listen to classical, but it's at the root of my composition skills..partly because the only two theory clases I ever took were based around how classical music used to be composed. However as a listener , not a composer I prefer simple.brilliantly simple in fact. IE fav two hard rock bands: AC/DC and ZZ top.. Both are marvelously simple but yet brilliant.

universe

So good! Love the guitar playing. Very talented. All in one night too. Amazing. May I ask what was your vocal recording process. Did you double track them ? What effects did you add to them to liven them up. And when you say mastering, what apps did you use ? did you export the track to do so, or add plugins to the master bus in Cubasis ? Were the drums made from loops or programmed from an AU or something ? Just trying to see if I can learn from your skills !

bedheadproducer

@universe said:
So good! Love the guitar playing. Very talented. All in one night too. Amazing. May I ask what was your vocal recording process. Did you double track them ? What effects did you add to them to liven them up. And when you say mastering, what apps did you use ? did you export the track to do so, or add plugins to the master bus in Cubasis ? Were the drums made from loops or programmed from an AU or something ? Just trying to see if I can learn from your skills !

thank you! the drums were two cubasis drum machines, doubling the same disco pattern. Then I aded about 4 loops in the background because the nature of drum loops is that they create a push and pull when layered that's hard to achieve with ordinary swing. They create a poly rhythmic swing so to speak that offsets the straightness of the core beat. the vocals are generally fairly dry, but with just a hint of delay or verb. I doubled the main guitars and panned them hard left and right. This song has a crazy amount of vocals. I don't often do stuff as chaotic as this is at times..but it creates a tension.and then release..
Mastering I use wavelab, another steinberg product. I have an exciter, a 32 band graphic eq, a multiband compressor and finally a limiter at the end of the chain. I cut everything below 50 hz and a litle of 60 and 50, leave everything else flat except the occasional notch cut between 7 a 1 hz where the unpleasant highs reside. I used to sum the bass frequencies to mono for clarity, but that plugin stopped working. For limiting , I go the hard and fast route and if it damages the mix, then I remix so that it wont , keeping in mind that dums can easily get lost during the final process, so i almost always mix the drums a little louder than what my ears naturally tell me so that when they sink into the mix in mastering, they are just perfect. I usually double check al final mixes on a stock car stereo that is decent Lately I've been mixing on headphones, just to see if I can.turns out I can.lol. Reference material of other peoples well recorded albums is always a good test so you figure out what any group of speakers is lacking or artificially boosting, because i have yet to hear anything that is actually completely accurate on my budget over the years.. The two biggest and most repeated mistakes are too much bass or highs.then second, the exact opposite. You have to find something you know slams but doesn't distort the speakers and that sets the bar for what is perfect or by contrast, too much or too litle of any particular frequency. Your track should be sonicaly well rounded.with each instrument hopefully occupying a different eq shelf without overlapping , which causes frequencies to cancel each other.. Of course it also depends on the genre. Typically rock music has a lot less bottom end than electronic dance music.

universe

@bedheadproducer said:

@universe said:
So good! Love the guitar playing. Very talented. All in one night too. Amazing. May I ask what was your vocal recording process. Did you double track them ? What effects did you add to them to liven them up. And when you say mastering, what apps did you use ? did you export the track to do so, or add plugins to the master bus in Cubasis ? Were the drums made from loops or programmed from an AU or something ? Just trying to see if I can learn from your skills !

thank you! the drums were two cubasis drum machines, doubling the same disco pattern. Then I aded about 4 loops in the background because the nature of drum loops is that they create a push and pull when layered that's hard to achieve with ordinary swing. They create a poly rhythmic swing so to speak that offsets the straightness of the core beat. the vocals are generally fairly dry, but with just a hint of delay or verb. I doubled the main guitars and panned them hard left and right. This song has a crazy amount of vocals. I don't often do stuff as chaotic as this is at times..but it creates a tension.and then release..
Mastering I use wavelab, another steinberg product. I have an exciter, a 32 band graphic eq, a multiband compressor and finally a limiter at the end of the chain. I cut everything below 50 hz and a litle of 60 and 50, leave everything else flat except the occasional notch cut between 7 a 1 hz where the unpleasant highs reside. I used to sum the bass frequencies to mono for clarity, but that plugin stopped working. For limiting , I go the hard and fast route and if it damages the mix, then I remix so that it wont , keeping in mind that dums can easily get lost during the final process, so i almost always mix the drums a little louder than what my ears naturally tell me so that when they sink into the mix in mastering, they are just perfect. I usually double check al final mixes on a stock car stereo that is decent Lately I've been mixing on headphones, just to see if I can.turns out I can.lol. Reference material of other peoples well recorded albums is always a good test so you figure out what any group of speakers is lacking or artificially boosting, because i have yet to hear anything that is actually completely accurate on my budget over the years.. The two biggest and most repeated mistakes are too much bass or highs.then second, the exact opposite. You have to find something you know slams but doesn't distort the speakers and that sets the bar for what is perfect or by contrast, too much or too litle of any particular frequency. Your track should be sonicaly well rounded.with each instrument hopefully occupying a different eq shelf without overlapping , which causes frequencies to cancel each other.. Of course it also depends on the genre. Typically rock music has a lot less bottom end than electronic dance music.

Thanks that was very informative. The only thing I was left wanting more of was the baseline. I kept thinking it was about to kick in. Not sure if it was there but I was just not hearing it.

bedheadproducer

@universe said:

@bedheadproducer said:

@universe said:
So good! Love the guitar playing. Very talented. All in one night too. Amazing. May I ask what was your vocal recording process. Did you double track them ? What effects did you add to them to liven them up. And when you say mastering, what apps did you use ? did you export the track to do so, or add plugins to the master bus in Cubasis ? Were the drums made from loops or programmed from an AU or something ? Just trying to see if I can learn from your skills !

thank you! the drums were two cubasis drum machines, doubling the same disco pattern. Then I aded about 4 loops in the background because the nature of drum loops is that they create a push and pull when layered that's hard to achieve with ordinary swing. They create a poly rhythmic swing so to speak that offsets the straightness of the core beat. the vocals are generally fairly dry, but with just a hint of delay or verb. I doubled the main guitars and panned them hard left and right. This song has a crazy amount of vocals. I don't often do stuff as chaotic as this is at times..but it creates a tension.and then release..
Mastering I use wavelab, another steinberg product. I have an exciter, a 32 band graphic eq, a multiband compressor and finally a limiter at the end of the chain. I cut everything below 50 hz and a litle of 60 and 50, leave everything else flat except the occasional notch cut between 7 a 1 hz where the unpleasant highs reside. I used to sum the bass frequencies to mono for clarity, but that plugin stopped working. For limiting , I go the hard and fast route and if it damages the mix, then I remix so that it wont , keeping in mind that dums can easily get lost during the final process, so i almost always mix the drums a little louder than what my ears naturally tell me so that when they sink into the mix in mastering, they are just perfect. I usually double check al final mixes on a stock car stereo that is decent Lately I've been mixing on headphones, just to see if I can.turns out I can.lol. Reference material of other peoples well recorded albums is always a good test so you figure out what any group of speakers is lacking or artificially boosting, because i have yet to hear anything that is actually completely accurate on my budget over the years.. The two biggest and most repeated mistakes are too much bass or highs.then second, the exact opposite. You have to find something you know slams but doesn't distort the speakers and that sets the bar for what is perfect or by contrast, too much or too litle of any particular frequency. Your track should be sonicaly well rounded.with each instrument hopefully occupying a different eq shelf without overlapping , which causes frequencies to cancel each other.. Of course it also depends on the genre. Typically rock music has a lot less bottom end than electronic dance music.

Thanks that was very informative. The only thing I was left wanting more of was the baseline. I kept thinking it was about to kick in. Not sure if it was there but I was just not hearing it.

The bass doesn't have a lot of attack, but the frequency is there, so on all of the devices I have , there's a ton of bass, so maybe you are using smaller speakers that aren't that bass heavy?

universe

@bedheadproducer said:

@universe said:

@bedheadproducer said:

@universe said:
So good! Love the guitar playing. Very talented. All in one night too. Amazing. May I ask what was your vocal recording process. Did you double track them ? What effects did you add to them to liven them up. And when you say mastering, what apps did you use ? did you export the track to do so, or add plugins to the master bus in Cubasis ? Were the drums made from loops or programmed from an AU or something ? Just trying to see if I can learn from your skills !

thank you! the drums were two cubasis drum machines, doubling the same disco pattern. Then I aded about 4 loops in the background because the nature of drum loops is that they create a push and pull when layered that's hard to achieve with ordinary swing. They create a poly rhythmic swing so to speak that offsets the straightness of the core beat. the vocals are generally fairly dry, but with just a hint of delay or verb. I doubled the main guitars and panned them hard left and right. This song has a crazy amount of vocals. I don't often do stuff as chaotic as this is at times..but it creates a tension.and then release..
Mastering I use wavelab, another steinberg product. I have an exciter, a 32 band graphic eq, a multiband compressor and finally a limiter at the end of the chain. I cut everything below 50 hz and a litle of 60 and 50, leave everything else flat except the occasional notch cut between 7 a 1 hz where the unpleasant highs reside. I used to sum the bass frequencies to mono for clarity, but that plugin stopped working. For limiting , I go the hard and fast route and if it damages the mix, then I remix so that it wont , keeping in mind that dums can easily get lost during the final process, so i almost always mix the drums a little louder than what my ears naturally tell me so that when they sink into the mix in mastering, they are just perfect. I usually double check al final mixes on a stock car stereo that is decent Lately I've been mixing on headphones, just to see if I can.turns out I can.lol. Reference material of other peoples well recorded albums is always a good test so you figure out what any group of speakers is lacking or artificially boosting, because i have yet to hear anything that is actually completely accurate on my budget over the years.. The two biggest and most repeated mistakes are too much bass or highs.then second, the exact opposite. You have to find something you know slams but doesn't distort the speakers and that sets the bar for what is perfect or by contrast, too much or too litle of any particular frequency. Your track should be sonicaly well rounded.with each instrument hopefully occupying a different eq shelf without overlapping , which causes frequencies to cancel each other.. Of course it also depends on the genre. Typically rock music has a lot less bottom end than electronic dance music.

Thanks that was very informative. The only thing I was left wanting more of was the baseline. I kept thinking it was about to kick in. Not sure if it was there but I was just not hearing it.

The bass doesn't have a lot of attack, but the frequency is there, so on all of the devices I have , there's a ton of bass, so maybe you are using smaller speakers that aren't that bass heavy?

I was listening through beats x wireless earphones. And they are quite bass heavy normally.

bedheadproducer

lol, well then it's not impossible that because I spent the last two days in bed recovering from a stomach flu, that when I listen in my car I'm going to find out whether my statement "turns out I can mix on headphones" was false and I was instead, sick and delusional. I did listen again with what you said in mind and it's definitely missing the obvious presence of a bass line, sort of like a metallica song, where the bass and guitar and keys are blending into one fat instrument, which probably is because normally when I do electronica, there is no thick guitar....I usually use guitar pretty sparingly there or not at all and then the bass is king...and hold down the rhythm, so this time in my delerium I concentrated on the guitar more. Also, it could be that the guitar like keyboards I mixed in, are bass heavy and are canceling out the actual bass, or that I simply need to turn the bass frequency on the bass part down and then boost the actual bass line, because on my bedroom system and headphones...it's still pretty boomy....just no definition. I guess the lesson here is...it's never fully finished...a mix, that is, until after I play it in my car. That's when any mistakes I made have made, will jump out at me!

universe

@bedheadproducer said:
lol, well then it's not impossible that because I spent the last two days in bed recovering from a stomach flu, that when I listen in my car I'm going to find out whether my statement "turns out I can mix on headphones" was false and I was instead, sick and delusional. I did listen again with what you said in mind and it's definitely missing the obvious presence of a bass line, sort of like a metallica song, where the bass and guitar and keys are blending into one fat instrument, which probably is because normally when I do electronica, there is no thick guitar....I usually use guitar pretty sparingly there or not at all and then the bass is king...and hold down the rhythm, so this time in my delerium I concentrated on the guitar more. Also, it could be that the guitar like keyboards I mixed in, are bass heavy and are canceling out the actual bass, or that I simply need to turn the bass frequency on the bass part down and then boost the actual bass line, because on my bedroom system and headphones...it's still pretty boomy....just no definition. I guess the lesson here is...it's never fully finished...a mix, that is, until after I play it in my car. That's when any mistakes I made have made, will jump out at me!

Hey man I’ve just listened again on home speakers this time, and the bass is much more emphasised here. I’m not quite sure why it sounded different in the other earphones. Sorry I hope I didn’t cause you undue confusion in your mixing skills. It really does sound much more defined now than before. Sounds good. I like it a lot.

bedheadproducer

@universe said:

@bedheadproducer said:
lol, well then it's not impossible that because I spent the last two days in bed recovering from a stomach flu, that when I listen in my car I'm going to find out whether my statement "turns out I can mix on headphones" was false and I was instead, sick and delusional. I did listen again with what you said in mind and it's definitely missing the obvious presence of a bass line, sort of like a metallica song, where the bass and guitar and keys are blending into one fat instrument, which probably is because normally when I do electronica, there is no thick guitar....I usually use guitar pretty sparingly there or not at all and then the bass is king...and hold down the rhythm, so this time in my delerium I concentrated on the guitar more. Also, it could be that the guitar like keyboards I mixed in, are bass heavy and are canceling out the actual bass, or that I simply need to turn the bass frequency on the bass part down and then boost the actual bass line, because on my bedroom system and headphones...it's still pretty boomy....just no definition. I guess the lesson here is...it's never fully finished...a mix, that is, until after I play it in my car. That's when any mistakes I made have made, will jump out at me!

Hey man I’ve just listened again on home speakers this time, and the bass is much more emphasised here. I’m not quite sure why it sounded different in the other earphones. Sorry I hope I didn’t cause you undue confusion in your mixing skills. It really does sound much more defined now than before. Sounds good. I like it a lot.

Ok , so I listened in my car and you are right .. it can use some more bass! I’ll have to remix in a day or two .