i think the birds are too loud

simeon psimian · Post by **simeon psimian** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 9:18 pm

http://sev.sevcom.com/BirdAcousticLiveMp3.mp3

Theun · Post by **Theun** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 12:07 am

This song is very beautiful ....

Your voice is great! (I won't sing the first few days, after hearing you..)

O.K., technically speaking the recording may not be perfect, yes, maybe indeed the birds are too loud and the piano is a bit soft, but this song is so pure and with some raw beauty, your song really moved me. Doesn't happen too often ...

I have a few questions.
What I hear is:

birds in a cage & some dogs barking
a male singer
a female singer
a piano
a bass guitar

Did you use overdubs, I mean separate tracks for bass, piano, vocals, etc or did you record everything in one take with one mic again?
I suppose you dubbed at least the bass, but reading the earlier thread I can also imagine that the female singer (probably your wife or girlfriend) plays either the piano or the bass.

For the moment, I'm really stunned ....

simeon psimian · Post by **simeon psimian** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:08 am

wow, thanks! that's really nice of you to say so

yes it's me & my wife; i play bass, andrea plays piano, we both sing, she wrote the words & we both wrote/arranged the music. As you guessed, it was recorded live in glorious mono in our echoey kitchen because of my poor laptop's technical problems, but the birds (& dogs) are from a separate stereo recording in a back garden by someone calling themself acclivity on the excellent freesound website for sharing audio on a creative commons license (a condition of which is that the user credits the owner, hence the links!).

it certainly took more than one take, i don't remember if the result is a single take out of several attempts, or a couple glued together. i was tempted to tell you: well, we lined the birds & the dogs up in our kitchen, & we achieved a pseudo-stereo effect by waving the single microphone around with our feet whilst playing & singing, but i thought better of it

i would however be most put out if anything i had anything to do with ever put anyone off from singing, which is everyone's birthright despite our culture's obsession with top 10s of top 10 lists & who is best competitions, especially as i started singing & playing bass with the deep conviction that i was & always would be crap at both, was deeply unmusical, not that kind of a person and just didn't have it in me - - - but i wasn't about to let a little thing like that stop me (i just started out writing songs with 2 chords a tiny vocal range just so i could play & sing them)

Theun · Post by **Theun** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 4:12 pm

simeon psimian wrote:i was tempted to tell you: well, we lined the birds & the dogs up in our kitchen, & we achieved a pseudo-stereo effect by waving the single microphone around with our feet whilst playing & singing, but i thought better of it

I woud have believed you

!

I imagined more or less this, just an impression, don't take it too serious:

.....................................barking
.......................................dogs
.......................................p......i.......a.......n........o
.................................................................ladysinger
...........b.....a......s.......s
......................................male singer

.......................mike
.....................birds cage

Anyway, it is clear that it's stereo, so all in one take with one mike would have been difficult!

I should have mirrored the layout above, as it seems I mixed up the left & right connectors of my monitor speakers.

simeon psimian · Post by **simeon psimian** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 11:12 pm

simeon psimian wrote:aha, in reality only acclivity's garden is really in stereo, me & andrea & the piano & the bass are sqeezed into a tiny monophonic matchbox. the actual recording layout was:

.
.
.
way over there in cyberspace, in stereo:
........................................................................................................................................bird 1................bird 2
.....................................................................................................................................................bird 3
..........................................................................................................................bird 4
........................................................................................................................................................................bird 5
............................................................................................................................................dog1
.............................................................................................................dog2
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
in the room:
p i a n o..........................................mike (mono)
......andrea.........................................me
.............................................
.............................
...bass

it's a bit like in the wizard of oz, where oz is in colour & kansas is in b&w, so similarly our kitchen is in humdrum banal mono, & i have had to bring in stereo from that glorious fantasy place, the world wide web, to add a little colour to our drab humdrum reality

ok, i'd better stop now

simeon psimian · Post by **simeon psimian** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:12 pm