Jazz for Halloween: Frankentstein

Nice little Jazz ditty.
the "scary" stuff made me smile.

Regards,

Your girlfriend's a bit of a screamer.
Piano would sound a lot better without so much verb, in fact so would the whole mix. Toms need a bit of thickening with compression and EQ, and I'd bring the cymbals down a bit and the skins up a bit.

Thanks Stephen.

Thanks Guitarplayingman.

Thanks Paul.
I agree. I think this mix is too wet. I am usually quite conservative with my application of reverb. I did another mix and this one is much drier. However, the tom toms are still a problem. I have to find a better drum kit for my jazz pieces.

Frankenstein2 (dry)

Let me know if you think this new mix is dry enough or perhaps too dry.

I wish I could get my girlfriend to scream like this.


Thanks Ed.
No loops. That's me playing everything from the keyboard controller (but there were a lot of mistakes in the piano solo that I corrected). No drum programming, but I did edit the drum fills at the end of some measures and occasionally had to the tighten up the ride cymbal and rim hits by sliding the MIDI events a few clock ticks closer to the bass line. The bass was probably the hardest part for me to play without it sounding terribly repetitious.


Wow! Cecil and McCoy. They're two of my gods.

By the way, there's a cut on Mulgrew Miller's Live at Yoshi's (volume 2) titled "Joshua". A very inspiring piece. I've been listening to it a lot lately.


Let me know which mix you prefer.


Marko

Frankenstein2 (dry)
Let me know if you think this new mix is dry enough or perhaps too dry.

Sounds better. Still a bit wet, but I think it works well.

Hey, we have do a tune together. If you want to do a progressive / free jazz piece, I'll do the bass track.

Marko,
Ok, but my music room is on the 3rd floor; have you been eating your Wheaties?

One of us comes up with the concept / form and makes the project file and will normal end up being the mixer/producer. This person lays down enough of scratch track to get going. Usually it some canned drums and some simple chords on piano/keys - at least this works on pop/rock/structured music.

Next the project is tranferred to the other in mp3, .cwp of even as a midi file. Sometimes both if there are tempo / time sig changes. This guys adds his bit on. On something more improvisational, there may be a couple exchanges, to go back and add some interaction.

The best approach is to get the rhythm track down and then add the lead lines; and the trick is to not have the rhythm track not overwhelm / consume all the space.

Which Sonar product do you use? I'm using SP5, but if you're using a different version we can save the project as a midi file and use that as a template.

We can continue the rest of this via email, you can reach me at ed_mcg via hotmail.

ORIGINAL: Marko
Please lend me your ears and let me know what you think.

Marko

Nice playing, Marko! Piano sounds good too. At first, I wan't sure if I liked the scary sounds in the background. But I think it does add an interesting element to the tune.

Thanks Den. Keith Emerson? Well, I haven't listened to his music in a long time, but who knows where my muse lies!

Thanks Tim.

Low z. That's a great title for a piece. I can imagine Mr Rogers putting on a very soiled pair of sneakers and wearing a torn sweater.


Thanks for listening to my tune.

Marko

i agree with charley ( i sound like that guy in blazing saddles "howard johnson is right!" .. all
the time parrotting what charley says ;-) ) but he's right .. go with a simple combo mix (everybody has their spatial
position) and life is good. and .. i agree with the scream comment .. everytime i thought this settled
into some groove or was waiting for the cool off between the transitions .. a scream happened ..
which disturbed the piece for me more than enhanced it. i know it's the season and all .. but
they didn't mesh too well. that said .. i dig the jazz . i don't have enough RDJ (recommended daily
jazz) as of late.

jeff

Sweet jazz, sounds like good stuff.