I Am The Walrus - cover

Since the old thread was stale... I decided to post this new topic.
 
This is one of Rock's greatest songs of all time.   It took about a month but I got the whole song put together now.   
 
The background....  I'm doing all the instruments except, the sound effects, pre bridge break, spoken words (Hello Sir!, etc) and outro radio sweep, choral singers and King Lear recital.   A friend and myself did all the vocals until the outro, where I blend us and the outro together.   I watched the Fab Faux do this song and they even use samples from the Beatles to do their live version.
 
I used Producer 8.5.3.   Guitar, Bass and vocals are live takes.   Cellos, Violins, Drums, French Horn, Trumpet, Electric Piano and Shaker are all MIDI.
 
Hope you enjoy it!   (This is about 200 hrs of work.)  
 
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11862729

I enjoyed it the first time round quite a promising production

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you kind Sirs!

Walrus is not anywhere close to being finished but wanted to let you know it's still alive and being worked.   More to come on this one.

Coming up soon and in progress is "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "The Word".   I'll post'em when they are first available for evaluation. 

Good stuff.  

Brilliant!  Love it man, great work....

Oh I agree, this is one VERY fine and polished production - can't imagine you doing ANYTHING else with this!   Brought back some great memories too since I haven't heard it in quite awhile.  The vocals are awesome, processed just right in that style - along with all those BGV's as well!   What a treat - superb orchestrations!    Wow, excellent job all the way around!        
- John

You got a LOT of ambition man.   Well done.

Daryl

daryl & markno:  thank you so much for the appreciation of the effort!  

Hi Bob,

You are very kind!   Thank you!   Still more to do with getting things tweaked in on Walrus, when I get it finished, I'll repost it.

Scary that I look like one of your ex-bass players! Bet that made you look twice!   LOL!!

On a related topic...  here's the latest muse I'm starting... we did a quick, rough draft demo of Strawberry Fields my friend and I are considering doing this way as an up tempo power pop number.  
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11930770
Different!  huh?     LOL!

Now I am the biggest Beatle fan around these parts.  Ok this is souding great, vox is awsome.  All the instruments sound good apart from the fake trumpet thats somewhere in the mix.  It really affects the rest of the instruments because it does sound fake.  Also the drums need a bit more beef and for me the whole track needs more gravatis, or more bass.  It sounds slighty thin in places.

On saying that it is an excellent job and I am somewhat jealous.  I was always a little scared to take this track on.

Peace Ben

dkbender


Ben,

Good catch on the trumpet, I wasn't real happy with that one either but that's what is in Dim Pro, unless I missed a better one hidden in there elesewhere.    At the start of this project, I was kind of curious if midi and what is loaded in SONAR Producer could handle the task.

I had the bass at one point more elevated but after listening to the original, decided to pull it back down a couple of dB.   I'll revisit it again.   The drums are SD3 and I played around with tuning the snare to give it that thin sound like the original.   The kick and the tom have normal weight.   I do agree there are a couple of spots yet where the song in general has some thinness and I haven't decided what to do about that yet.

Thanks for the excellent crit! 

I've used the trumpets from the dim pro for a cover of strawberry fields and I found them more than useable, so thats funny.  I suggest you use Rings Beat Kit in session drummer three.  As far as I know it is a Beatles Ludwig kit.  Detune it, not the Kick, I can't remember if I did the snare not the cyms as well but def the toms.  This gives you Ringo's almost timpani sound he was getting at the time.  Also whack a low pass filter over the top of the all the drums except the kick and cyms and roll of betwen 3 and 6 db to around 2Khz.  This will slighty muffle the drums, this simulates the tea towel effect Ringo was using at the time.  If you don't know Ringo was quite fond of placing tea towls over his drums.  I've also used a fairchild limiter virtual compressor this gives you a realistic Beatle drum sound.
 
As for copying The Beatles sound in terms of bass, don't.  I was going to mention this yesterday.  My first question to you is what master are you listening to in terms of IATW.  Are you listening to the original 1987 issues or the latter ones.  Because if you are listening to the originals the masters are really thin.  I haven't heard the new remasters but I have heard the Love version of this track and none of that inherent thiness from the orignal CD is there.
 
Peace Ben

CLEAN:  thank you!  doing these things is always so instructional for me.  

Now, my Strawberry Fields departure from the original (posted elsewhere) is one that is controversial.... but I actually would like to believe that if Lennon had heard this version, he would have really liked it.   He liked to push the envelope.