pudge's Journal: PudgeTunes: Lines and Squares

After about three months of hiatus, I am back to doing some PudgeTunes. This time it's a song called Lines and Squares. Most of the lyrics are by A.A. Milne, but I wrote the chorus.

The song is dedicated to Stephen Colbert for his fine work over the years in Bear Safety.

Thanks to the friends and family who helped out on vocals and claps.

hmmm

[blinder]

well, this type of thing is not my cup of tea. but that aside, the production, lets talk about the production.

its kind of a mess, wouldn't you say? you've got so many competing mid-high frequencies that what you've got is a nearly inarticulate jumble of noise. the guitars lack any body or depth, its typically a good idea to roll off around 6-9khz so that you can actually hear the body of the guitar, not just the strings.

your supporting vocal tracks are in the same frequency range as your guitar, so again, i

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[pudge]

Heh, I frankly disagree with everything you said. Most importantly, you say your crticisms are about production, but they are more about style than anything else. You cannot have a rhythym acoustic guitar that isn't competing for the midrange of a normal lead vocal; why not just say you don't like rhythym acoustic guitar? Same thing with your complaint about the lead vocal on the chorus; I have no idea what your complaint there is, but you don't like it. Whoopee.

The one valid criticsm you didn't make is

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[blinder]

Most importantly, you say your crticisms are about production, but they are more about style than anything else

no, just because you say so, doesn't make it so. my criticisms were *exactly* about production. how the music was produced, mixed and mastered. no where did i even touch style.

why not just say you don't like rhythym acoustic guitar?

I love a good rhythm acoustic guitar track. find me an old guild guitar, with a decent mic, something like a royer ribbon and you've got a full bodied acoustic guitar th

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[pudge]

no, just because you say so, doesn't make it so.

Which also goes exactly for what you said, too.

my criticisms were *exactly* about production. how the music was produced, mixed and mastered. no where did i even touch style.

I am not going to bother explaining to you how the mix is style-dependent.

i know enough about the genres to know if their mix was appropriate (and sometimes not appropriate given the response the artist is looking to get out of their audience).

Well ... obviously not.

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[pudge]

i just recently put together a little thing [skyflyingbymusic.org] in my studio that illustrates these concepts (no vocals in this piece).

i'll check out more of your stuff.

All the previous stuff said -- I wanted to separate my criticism of your criticism from a more enjoyable discussion :-) -- I lke Simply Put. Not "my cup of tea" precisely either, though probably closer to me than mine was to yours. The only criticism I have is that for a piece with no vocals, not enough is going on to hold my attention -- probably just a taste thing -- but it sounds nice for what's there. Is most of your stuff instrumental?

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[blinder]

not "my cup of tea" precisely either

trust me on this one, i don't fancy myself as a popular musician. the music i like to play and produce is very far from what would be considered mainstream popular, and has a very limited audience. i've been in this game for a hell of a long time, and have "been there and done that" to know that satisfaction ONLY comes from doing your own thing. heh which is why you should take what i said with a HUGE grain of sand, because well, you are doing your own thing! i kinda like

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[pudge]

i've been in this game for a hell of a long time, and have "been there and done that" to know that satisfaction ONLY comes from doing your own thing. heh which is why you should take what i said with a HUGE grain of sand

Oh, I do! Like on the lead vocal on the chorus ... that sounds exactly like it should, yet you think it's terrible. It doesn't make me question myself for you to say that ...

perhaps. i'm into very minimal productions. i don't like to add a lot of sounds. i have a pallet of tones i like and i use them in different ways. i like melancholy, emotional, and moody. that usually means a bit dark, very warm and not a lot of stuff in the mix.

Sure, and I get that, and it sounds good ... but over the course of the whole song, just gets a bit repetitive (which is why George Bush is Hitler [pudge.net] is so short ... I left out the fourth verse, so this isn't something that lyrics necessarily changes ... I added it back for the video [youtube.com], as you can get away with a bit more if there's some

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[jdavidb]

Maybe I just have a short attention span. :-)

My father, the church song leader, never allowed me to lead more than two verses if a song was long enough to take up two pages in the hymnal. Apparently he thought the short attention span was pretty universal. :)