A miniature scale prog epic (To the Sun)

OK, I finally finished another tune. It's not getting any faster to do new ones, but at least they are getting better. This one is a huge step forward for me in my journey.

As always with me this is all but aw shucks naturale compared to modern music. Almost everything was committed to during tracking. The only compression in the mix is a couple dB on the mix bus in the loudest parts (Drawmer 1968.) No time or pitch alignment, just a little automation. A little ambience was added to a few parts but the bulk of the ambience was also committed during tracking. A handful of VibeEQ plugs were used to tweak some of the tracks a bit in the final mix.

And it's also not at all your standard flat bar wave form, so don't blow your speakers out. It goes from nothing at the start to full scale at the end, with slowly increasing but old school RMS. So it's designed not to sound loud but to sound good turned up loud (hopefully anyway, that was my intent, tell me if not.)

Also not for the ADD generation. Basically I wanted to take on my first prog epic, but didn't want to try to actually try to pull off a 20 minute piece at this stage in my development. So I did a mini-prog epic, that is only like 3 minutes long, but it really has all of the attributes of a prog epic pretty much and it manages to sound longer than 3 minutes (in a good way hopefully.)

* When I say prog here I mean of the soulful, melodic type a la Floyd, not the more wanky, extreme instrumental prowess type of prog.
 
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/TmpAudio/Final/ToTheSun-Final.mp3
 

I think this is great! I love a good bit of prog rock and this is just that. I agree with mgh's comments... Where's the guitar solo? ;-)

Rock on man!

Cheers,
Terry.

This is killer, Dean.  Definitely has the Floyd vibe.  Although I feel as though it's too short.  It's left me wanting more .  I echo the sentiment, could definitely use a guitar solo!  I love prog.  This is awesome, nonetheless.

Yeah, good one Dean, I enjoyed that. Strapped a guitar on and had a jam with it too

Yes, very Floyd-esque or early Genesis.  Enjoyed it quite a bit. 

Yeh, so far I think every comment has indicated that it should have a solo, so obviously my leaving it out was a sub-optimal producer move on my part :-) In fact that whole song first started with me thinking about that sort of long building intro with a Gilmour'ish type of solo on it. But somewhere long the line it morphed. And I did play around with a solo on the outro but never quite got happy with it and went another way.

Oh well, I'll know better next time.

Very cool item there, Dean.  I loved the way the beat gradually emerged from the shroud of ambience (not surprisingly, I've been working on a tune with an intro out of the same school).  Excellent mix meaning not just the production, but also the choice of synth textures and percussion.  Well done.

Pretty cool tune. Had a John Lennon singing Pink Floyd vibe to it. There were a couple of dissonances that stuck out a bit for me. The little background chromatic run at 0:50 and some neighboring tones around 0:58-0:60. I think the envelope was betraying the harmony a bit. The ending did seem abrupt and I kept waiting for that next big chord that never came.  

Woooooo-hoooo! This brings me back to my Floydian days for sure! The entire thing is fantastic. I am picking up some distortion fromclean guitar part at the beginning. Otherwise, no mix issues that I can sense.

Love this music - I could have listened to another half hour or so! Kind of Supper's Ready length would be good...long live prog rock. 

well done, I love your vocals too.

Bill

great job!!!...love the whole ride!

Thanks a lot!

There's just something about getting instruments out into the air and mic'ing them that makes them sound more like real instruments, more like they would sound if you heard the piece live, where they have to be gotten out into the air to be heard.

These days, particularly with younger people, they'd probably think that their stereo is broken (or their iPod since they don't know what a stereo is either probably :-) I turned the volume all the way up and it's still not hurting my ears, I think it's broke!

Hmmm... The Brothers Gibb, that wouldn't have ever thought I'd be compared to. I guess it could have been worse :-)

I find it interesting the percentage of prog type material that gets posted to forums like these and enjoyed by the readers thereof, when this music is pretty much completely non-existent at the commercial level. What seems to pass for prog in the commercial world, to the extent it does, is really to me metal music, not remotely related to the original progressive rock movement.