Twilight Rain

Twilight Rain

this is a song i wrote some years ago, that i revised for my last album.

it's a somewhat autobiographical tune..
it blends acoustic and electric guitars, with harmony vocals and bass guitar, but no percussion of any kind.

i used every guitar i have on this one (Williams strat-paul hybrid, carvin dc200k, usacg strat, ibanez artist, taylor 414 and seagull artist mosiac)

a soft ballad, that is a bit trippy......

http://soundcloud.com/bats-brew/bb07-twilight-rain

I got your new CD awhile ago and have worn out the "Batsblues" track and right after it "Twilight Rain".  These are going on the mountain mp3 as soon as I get off my keester.  THIS IS A GREAT TUNE!  It also has the vibe of David Crosby's Album ( it was an album when I had it) "If I could Only Remember My Name", yet totally different.  How can that be?  You got me!!  If I knew how I'd do it.  I'm listening to this song now and am going out to the car to get the CD and load it into my mp3 player. 

Sounds good here and I agree the vocal is very Jon Anderson and a Yes vibe to the track.

Good stuff

Great track! The guitars sound awesome. I'll say it has 80's pop influences?

lynn
thanks for listening.....it's very kind of you to say those things...
i have to agree, a lot of what i hear at songs forum is pretty inspiring.
plus, it's a great place to steal ideas!!
LOL


warren
"batsblues", heheh, i had to go back and look at my track notes to remember which song you were referring to, the "Waiting to Shine" tune....!
"if i could only remember my name", man, i remember that song, i haven't thought about crosby (as a solo) in a long time, now i'm gonna have to go stream some "freak folk", yes sir.

vechung
thanks vicente, appreciate it!

you know, throughout the 80's (actually, from 1979 thru 1986) i worked on the road full time, doing mostly covers.
some were hard rock, but some were pure pop, R&b, and funk.
so, there's no way i could get away from all of that, for sure....

i think maybe i was thinking more along the lines of stuff off of eric johnson's 2nd album, ah via musicom, when i built this arrangement.
in fact, it sounded so close to that kind of thing, with the original demo i had, that included full drum kit, that i took the kit out.

tried to give it a more classic, or timeless feel, without the drums.
it throws some people.

maybe one day, i'll hook up with a really creative drummer that will come up with something for it that is totally unexpected, but i could'nt improve it on my own.
everything i did sounded so..... expected.
LOL


janet
thanks so much for checking this one out.
it is a song version of memories of my childhood growing up in florida.....
where it rained every single day!
LOL

now, out in Utah, maybe it rains once a month.
but it's a dry heat.
LOL again......

Waiting To Shine rocks my mood every time I listen.  A GREAT tune that makes me move.  Batsblues, I didn't know if you'd remember that.  That's funny!

This is beautiful. I'm guessing John Anderson must have cost a fortune to hire in ;-)

That's a wonderful mix, I can only aspire to such things. 

Nice - I would probably lose the rain fx - feels kind of cliched, but then I guess cliche is just another word for popular .

++++ 1 

Love it! Who's Jon Anderson?

I hear the references to Yes and Jon Anderson..... but I also caught some serious CS&N vibe in there too, especially the harmony vocal stuff. 

nice job. and a beautiful tune. This may be my favorite thing from you. 

Terrific vocals layered perfectly. Well done.

Biab-
+++thanks


NotNat
thanks man, thought you might dig the guitar work a bit....

scotty
heheh, you know, i know you do!
he's the lead singer of jethro tull......



;-)





keith
the rain, it's just gotta be there.

i experimented for a long time, with different versions of the RAIN sections....

how long to let it rain before the thunder, where to put the thunder in relation to the opening chords of the song, i let that 2nd section run all the way thru the 2nd verse on one version...
i tried a lot of variations, but ultimately, keeping it short and sweet seemed to be the right way to go with it.
thanks for listening

JD1813
appreciate the kind words...



details of vocal 'processing'

well, it's very straightforward and old fashioned, in terms of production and tracking.


i've got 3 vocal mics i use at different times, a AT4033, a ADK Hamburg, a Shure SM57.

now i have a Shure KSM44 which i use on ALL vocals, but i did not have that when i did this recording.

the lead was the AT4033, the backups were all the ADK Hamburg.

my modest rig:


i have a nice tube mic pre, a A Designs Audio MP-1, that takes the input from the mic.
i run out of it, into the front of a small DBX compressor they no longer make, called a MC-6.
it's design is based on the DBX 160, a rack mount unit i used to use a long time ago...
i particularly like the way this unit colors my voice, so i use it always.

i can't tell you how i set it, because it varies from song to song.
i adjust every parameter by ear, til i get what i want.

then the signal comes out of the MC-6 and either heads directly to my Maudio Audiophile 192 card, using IT's convertors, or i use a ART DPS convertor section, and go into the sound card via SPDIF (digital)

and that's it.

once it's in Sonar, i may put a software compressor on it, or eq it a bit, or add some delay, rarely reverb, and that's it with the processing.

more times than not, i'll double track my lead vocals, and if i'm feeling REALLY work-a-holicky, i'll double track all my backups too!

double tracking is really hard, takes a lot of concentration and really hard listening, and a good bit of punch-in on the 2nd part!!
LOL

i'll create a part, more or less on the fly, and get a performance i really like, then i have to go back, learn that performance, memorize it, and sing it all over again!! matching the words, annunciations, emphasis, sometimes DE-emphasis, and then i'll blend that track in underneath the original.

so really, i don't do hardly any vocal processing.
it's really just capturing performances the old fashioned way.
same way i always worked with tape, only, now the tape is a waveform on a harddrive.