Song- Give Thanks

 I had been working on another mix for the last several weeks at least and I finally decided to bury it completely. I couldn't get the parts to jibe correctly,it wasn't happening so I decided to move on.
 On a whim I recorded this more traditional piece as almost an afterthought. I happened to be playing it live so I thought, why not?  I didn't go for the loud volume thing here. Tried to keep it more like background music.
 
http://soundcloud.com/starise/give-thanks
 
 

Nice song... I like the sound of the piano. 

I say this next part with care and concern..... not lightly and certainly not in an insulting manner. 

My nits go to the performance. There were a few places where it seemed to be hesitant where to go next.... some of the bass notes and piano seemed to be off or stumble onto the wrong notes.

The cool thing about midi is that it is so easily edited to fix things. Wrong notes can be dragged to the right ones or simply deleted.  It is important to take you time when editing and mixing. I find myself spending as much time as is necessary to fix things so they are just about as perfect as I can get them.  If I can't fix something to my satisfaction, I hide it.  No shame in that. I either bury it or more commonly I will envelope it out. 

Example...I'm working on a remix of an older song with another calkwalker. We both did vocal parts and when I popped in his tracks today.....oooops... one of us had a different word in a phrase.... his worked and mine worked...alone. So I enveloped one of the parts down just on that one word.... in the mix... heck, you can't even tell it was taken out. 


I'm guessing this is 100% midi..... so... another "cheat" you can use is to slow the BPM down to allow you a few seconds more to think about what to do as you are playing....I run into that all the time when I try to do piano...I run up against the "oh man...where do I go next..... hurry hurry..... dang... blew it" syndrome all the time....  just a suggestion... 

Don't take my statement wrong.... man you are just about there on the perfection scale.... but, to make it absolutely perfect... there are a few things that need fixing. 

or you can tell me I'm way off base and to shut up already. 

This song is one of my favorites from the old P&W music days on Sunday mornings. Nice work and nice song choice. 

What Herb said. Except " the old P&W music days" unless W stands for something other than whipped? In that case, then what Herb said.

wow, i for one really enjoyed this - AS IS.   I saw why you wanted that trumpet in there.  you sprinkled it in at just certain times/notes to accent the emphasis on top of certain piano notes.  And that's one very well-played piano too, in my very humble non-piano ability opinion  HaHa    Sure i hear the couple places where slight hesitation happened.  I do the same thing.  
Herb has the fix, with slowing down tempo to play, then bring it back - I don't know if I know how to DO that though, maybe you have a handle on it but I intend to give that a try next time I'm actually playing a piece of any complexity.  on one final note (no pun!)  and just a personal thing - I love this tune and it is always uplifting to me.  Even if it was a mediocre performance (and I've heard a few), it makes my heart smile.  Yours - is far, far above that level.  I sincerely thank you for sharing it, and my own nickel worth is, KEEP the trumpet there.   
My only nit for real, is -  what is the other mix that you buried?   I wanna hear it !! 
best wishes!
JOHN    

Great playing Starise. I too will be back for take 2

Starise


  ....
 Herb- At one time I thought midi correction was for whimps lol. The problem I seem to have is that if I retake a part and correct a mistake in one place then more times than not I make another small one somewhere else. In live performance I just go with it but in a recording it can be changed in midi. I'll see what I can do to this in midi. No offense taken at all. Sometimes though to my ears what some would call a clash doesn't sound bad to me ...not sure why that is maybe my ears are wearing out.

      
 

I know what you mean. When I first started, I would record several tracks and then add some more.... then when I started to get into the mixing stages, I was hearing all these small mistakes, timing issues and other things that just were not working. Trying to find them was hard enough....and when I did, it often meant, as you pointed out...fix one track and that throws something else off.   this caused me to throw in the towel on many a song. To much work involved to fix it. 


BUT... it is fixable. You just have to be willing to do the work. Mute all the tracks except one. Work on that track and get it 100% right.  Then you unmute one other track and listen with surgical precision to that new track. see what is perfect and what is not. 


Can you fix it with editing or does it require a punch in/punch out and record a new clip in there to fix it? Either way, keep working until you have 2 tracks that work together and you hear no conflicts. 


repeat that process one track at a time until you have them all in the mix. 


Sometimes I simply delete a track entirely and start again from scratch or if the track just wasn't working, I delete it and move to something else. Not all "brilliant ideas" end up being good ideas, so don't be afraid to delete that bagpipe track in a house trance tune. 


If you take the time when tracking, to add one track at a time.... decide if it's a scratch track...a place holder of sorts, until you have more time to devote to recording the "keeper" track. It's when you get in a hurry, throw a bunch of tracks together and each has a few nits in them..... and things sound kinda good to start with, that you get into trouble and end up with something that could have been better, had you taken the time to get it right. 


Envelopes can be your friend as I mentioned above.... more than one time I have used an envelope to "edit out" a timing issue, a bad note, s's at the ends of words on BGV not ending together...... they are life savers and if they work well, it sure beats recording that take again. 

 

 Well guys I went into the midi editing and really goofed things up on the first track. I decided it was less time consuming to play the tune again so that's what I did. I heard a few places where I could have made a midi tweak or two but decided to keep it more human and I think I may need a little more midi editing practice.

 I simply played the track in again with no kind of corrections. I added a new patch from Z3TA-2 which I just purchased yesterday,really loving that synth! The piano is Pianissimo . I followed up the mix with a Breverb patch and a combination of TRacks plugins and PC. Hope you like it! I linked it here again but it is changed above too.


http://soundcloud.com/starise/give-thanks

John- Thanks for all of your kind positive comments! That other mix is still far from done but I did make another mix I intend to put up soon.:)

NotNat- Thanks for listening. I tried to minimize the clinkers this time although there are a few places where things are not quite sitting right on the beat.

 Daryl- Thanks !

Herb- Thanks for  your advice. I am still working on getting the midi editing right. My main problem seems to stem from some of the notes  holding over as part of my playing style. When I try to edit it things gets too mechanical sounding know what I mean?  More practice is needed. I may try to tweak this one yet.I have used envelopes and am really loving the lanes in X2 for that purpose. Great ideas as always Herb.

 Daryl- Thanks.  In the new track I made sure to get rid of them. My velocity was a little too high and the EQ needed some work.






 
John-Thanks you for all of the positive comments. I really wanted to keep the trumpet there but it just didn't seem to be working out so I decided to change it.

nice arrangement and fantastic performance, Tim!  you're getting great advice from others on the mix and technical part of it, so I'll just say that I enjoyed the performace!  (I didn't hear the original - only the version without trumpet)

ok - I lied.  I have to say one thing that hasn't been said yet - I'm hearing distortion on the heavy velocity notes.  which sampler or synth are you using for output?  I think you may be overdriving it.

Very good... this works much better... well done...

 Notnat- Thanks for listening.

 Batsbrew-Thanks! I went in a reduced the velocity of those offending notes. Thanks for the listen. I can be like a bull in a china shop with midi but this went ok.

Beautiful instrumental music, pleasant to listen to .. well done

I really, really like your take on this Tim.  It's beautiful and you play very well.  

(and I ALWAYS have to correct something in prv, if that makes you feel any better)  :)  Part of it is that I just don't have the time to learn to play everything correctly before I record it.  And well, maybe it never would be possible for me to play it correctly.  Maybe I'm too scared to find out.  lol  Fortunately, I don't have to when I record.  I hear my mistakes enough when I play live, which isn't very often anyway.  :)

This is beautiful! 

Thanks for your rendition to one of most inspiring song ever written.