We’ve been breaking our backs for several weeks on this sorry effort and we’d feel honoured if our esteemed fellow artists would care to have a wee, as Chief Dinglefinger likes to put it, listen.
It appears to be a silly song indeed, but let us quote The Great Macca himself:
What’s wrong with that, I’d like to know?
Enjoy the song Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much, drive safely.
Sincerely,
SCP
“Eagle In A Sunbeam”
The sound reminds me a lot of the Stone Temple Pilots. 
For my taste, the vocals are a bit too much buried under the guitars.
And the snare, dude, in most drum fills you really hear that it’s just one sample…?
Besides that, I like it. Especially the intro, because my first thought really was: oh man, did you even tune your guitar before recording? 
Anyway, keep up your work.
Haha, me too. That was funny …
Yeeeaaah, awesome work Dr. Fineweather 
Stellar guitar tones and some really fun, loose lead guitar parts. Always liked the guitar tones you shoot for and on this tune I get Stone Roses vibes big time.
The overall general progression is nice and fluid and the tune flows freely. The drums work fine but slash makes a good point about the samples I think - perhaps some acoustic samples with round robin might have helped in this regard? Like DrumGizmo, for example. Might be worth experimenting with just to see if it compliments / adds something to your compositions?
I wouldn’t call it a silly song To me, a lot of your tunes have this “if punk and brit pop mellow out and had a baby” vibe that doesn’t take itself too seriously and has this very human feel to them.
What gear did you use to record this and how did you go about recording / mixing it, if you don’t mind me asking?
Well… I believe I have some explaining to do.
First of all, The Stepford Crash Pilots are a work of fiction, my imagination of the ideal band I’d like to play with, quite a romantic idea:
A bunch of anti-Zeitgeist, merry lunatics who, more or less openly, bemoan a bygone era, the decade of my own juvenile years, the 70s, and to some degree their reincarnation, the 90s. In the lyrics, you will frequently find the statement “This is not the future I signed for” between the lines.
What is being told is the story of their efforts and antics within the studio and out in the wild. Simplicity, if not minimalism is the main ingredient of their project, which was concieved in the spirit of the first generation DIY Punk movement. A guitar band and a couple of voices, no keyboards, nothing fancy.
The drummer, a woman naturally, amiably nicknamed “The Drummer Queen” by her bandmates, operates a basic set consisting of Bass Drum (omitting the standard dry kick), Snare, Hihat, and Crash, that’s all. With every beat, roll, break, and fill she has to make optimum use of her resources. I freely admit that I frequently fail to achieve that when I arrange the little dots in the Hydrogen drum patterns, but you’re not always that inspired and it’s a cumbersome process. I use the “Colombo Acoustic” set included in Hydrogen btw.
The Fellow Rockers part of “We raise our glasses to” in the credits of the song on bandcamp comprises a band called The Notoms, which are one of The Stepford Crash Pilots’ heroes. Of course I made that up, too.
The whole thing leans towards what Wagner called “Gesamtkunstwerk”, not that I have the audacity to compare myself with Wagner, but why not climb on the shoulders of giants, others do it, too.
The minimalism continues with the choice of guitars and amps: An Epiphone Emperor and a cheapo J&D SA10 Jazzbox for rythm guitar, and an Epiphone Sheraton (2000 Korean build with ebony finish, sexiest bitch on the planet) and a Casino for lead and Solo. In fact not that minimalistic after all you may object. But in light of the big expenditure that’s customary elsewhere- there you go.
Then we have a VOX AC15C1 with an inexpensive Rangemaster clone into the Normal channel. No pedal board, no fancy guitar tone talk. Plug it in, crank it just as much as the song needs, 1-2-3-4 go.
From the external speaker output of the amp we go into the cheapest non-reactive power attenuator you can buy from Thomann, and from there into a single-channel Zoom U-22 interface and into Ardour.
The AC15C1 is such a tone monster that it easily makes up for the inevitable loss of the latter while the signal passes through the cheapo attenuator, just turn down the Tone Cut a bit.
I think everybody agrees that the guitar sound is grand. Like The Kinks on steroids, I love it.
The Bass guitar is an Epiphone Viola, directly into the DI. The Mini Humbuckers make it a mighty beast that needs no EQ whatsoever. Brutal compression on the other hand is required because of occasional deadspots on the fretboard. But I don’t care, it’s a beautiful instrument, it feels right, and sounds right, that’s all I need.
Vocals are picked up with a 49,90 EUR USB large diafragm condenser microphone by Fame bought at Musicstore Cologne, which prooved to be one of my best investments ever.
Mixing was done with vintage Sennheiser HD429 headphones entirely this time and “proofhearing” on a beautiful 1970 Grundig reciever with matching speaker cabinets, it’s a doozy. Before that, I did it with my Bose Companion 2 computer speakers blasting right into my face, but they have the tendency to cancel out certain bass frequencies so that you don’t have complete control over what’s happening… before I realised that I thought it were the dead spots on the bass fretboard, and lifted the bass track volume at the respective points only to realise that the sound had become unbearably inconsistent when I listend to the mix on a proper stereo set, jinx!
My mixes are mono and Master volume is set to max out with the display juuuust in the low red range, with a bit of compression. I don’t check “analyze” when I export. If it sounds right, it’s allright.
After export as WAV, I create an additional MP3 with Audacity, and that’s it.
All programs are free software that come with Debian GNU/Linux, except for Ardour 8.12 which I got from the download page.
Now: What exactly do my esteemed colleagues dislike about the Snare drum? The sound itself? Or the fact that some patterns are repeated a couple of times? The latter is part of the composition, it’s a Rock’n’Roll song, and if there is one thing, besides a few others, that defines Rock’n’Roll it is repetitiveness, at least that’s what I learned. Apart from that and beyond, you don’t go and criticise Beethoven for using the same four tones over and over in the 1st movement of his 5th symphony, do you. Because it’s his general Leitmotiv technique, he sometimes uses an interval consisting of as much as two tones, see the 1st movement of his piano concert No.3. Again, not that I’m as presumptious as to compare myself with the Master.
The Snare sound itself is the intermediate result of my efforts to get near to what Ringo Starr used between 1966 and 1968. “Rain”, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and particularly “Don’t Pass Me by” are some examples. I know I’m still lightyears away, but eventually I’ll get there.
Maybe this is the cause for the dismay? Ringo Starr is quite underrated, ev’rybody knows but few admit it, and the Beatles’ sound is not after everybody’s fancy. Well I can’t help you there. As I said, this project is anti-Zeitgeist, I didn’t set out to wait on contemporary taste. If I managed to attack anyone’s listening habits I’d be utterly satisfied, haha!
No offence meant, and hopefully none taken.
About bringing some variation to the snare sound. Remember, this is one drummer banging the shit out of the drumheads, and who in his right mind would go and change Snares mid-song? Certainly not Keith Moon, and neither Jayne Wohn.
The whole approach is quite simplistic and old-school, that’s the way aha-aha I like it. Apart from that, I’m A Lazy Sod, which is another ultra-cool Sex Pistols tune this project drew inspiration from.
Ah yes, and the vocals are perfectly allright, they are mixed like that on purpose, sitting right in the mix, maybe juuust a bit to the front. Come up and see me, we’ll listen to it on the stereo set, I promise you an epiphany.
I hope I was able to clear up a few things around here, like in that famous Gary Larson cartoon.
Typos are free of charge.
I also hope I could satisfy Prof. Dinglefinger’s curiosity:
Sincerely,
SCP
A-hooga!
Ah, I forgot to mention the usual EQ, Reverb, and Compression on the Vocals, all ACE plugins.
And never any Reverb on the AC15C1 or in Ardour as far as the guitars are concerned.
And here’s one for Ljuba:
You remember your post in the thread “2026: distro choices”:
“Debian kicks some serious ass”.
I replied “you just inspired me to include a little treat in the outro of the upcoming single. Just you wait and see…!”
Here you are, a quote from “Back To The Future”, Doc Emmett Brown exclaiming “When this Baby hits 88 mls an hour you’re gonna see some serious shit!”
I’ve added the following “post-export” command to the export profiles I use.
lame -b 128 -q 0 -ms --quiet %f
Then both the .wav and .mp3 are created in the export folder, directly from Ardour.
A-hooga! Appreciate the details, chief Nice one
You’re most welcome, Sir!
Man that’s a lotta stones. I consider myself lucky no one came around with rolling ones yet!
Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone ya just a-like they said they would
They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to go home
Then they’ll stone ya when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned!
Bob Dylan, “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35”
Thanks for the compliments Mates, very much appreciated. That being said, it’s quite a couple of mouthfuls, are you really sure?
Anyway, as far as the Stone Roses are concerned, I think it’s the VOX amp, you can’t go wrong! Man I love this bugger.
Why? 
What year are these “vintage” Sennheisers you have? I can’t find any “vintage” HD429. Are you using the HD420* headphones actually? Because those are super vintage. 
As mixer Paul Third has pointed-out repeatedly: You can’t mix what you can’t hear. ~Which I think you’ve already started to understand. 
Anyway, I suggest getting a significantly better monitoring setup. And you can do so easily and cheaply via eBay, or second-hand local, etc. -Something much more flat across the frequency spectrum at a bare minimum.
For example, just the other day I bought some basically mint-condition Sennheiser HD650 headphones off eBay for way less then full price. And if you’re into vintage stuff, then these Sennheisers (well, the HD600) were released all the way back in 1997 O___o, so that counts as vintage at this point. -Apply some basic EQ to approximate Harman and you’re good to go.
I enjoy the spirit of your rock. But I think it’s at least worth upgrading your monitoring so you can get mixes that translate better. 
-J
Fuck, you got me there! I was assuming they were vintage 'cause they came with that Grundig reciever. The design is not necessarily 70s, but I thought they’d be at least mid- to late 80s.
So I talked bullshit, that’s most embarrassing, all the more since I’ve been on a crusade against the Bullshitters of this world for some time now. Next time I’ll look the bleeding thing up I’m inclined to stick a label on. Shit [sic!].
Now to something not that completely different.
Because
This is good enough for me. It’s what it is supposed to sound like, regardless of how inferior anyone might consider the mix. I hate to repeat myself, but
I don’t strive for high standards. I don’t want to sound like fuckin’ Warner, it would kill the spirit you said you enjoyed. In fact, I despise the geartalk, I’m into making optimum use of one’s resources, which I consider the true spirit of DIY. Apart from that, I’m just a poor boy recording in his bedstudy, much like Dead Moon did it in their early days, you might want to look them up.
In other words, as I explained on another occasion:
The objective from the start was to make the project sound as much rehearsal room and as little studio as possible, and I think I pretty much nailed it.
Anyway, thanks for the well-meant consideration. Btw that old reciever is fab, you can dial it in as flat or fat as you like, it’s a cool monitor setup. The Sennheisers are groovy, too. Gone, the days of those shitty Bose speakers!
Er… about the mixes being mono. I don’t know where my mind was when I wrote that, of course the audio files are stereo, what I meant was I don’t do any fancy panning.
I LIKE IT! It doesn’t remind me at all of STP, but it does sound like an old Pink Floyd song redo in a modern way. Cool tune man!
I think I’ve said it elsewhere before but I generally think it’s good practice to do a lot of the mixing in mono. In doing so, you might find a narrow stereo field suits the music / recording best too.
Bleach was published like that, wasn’t it. Everything sits über tight in the middle of the stereo spectrum yet it still sounds ace. Californication likewise. Sometimes a lack of stereo depth is just what the music needs, man 
Phew… I’m a bit confused now. Isn’t it that the mix and the exported audio are stereo unless you click the “mono” button in the monitor section?
There you go, I haven’t spent much time looking under the hood, just gathered as much knowledge as I needed to breathe life into the darn songs.
THANX a lot!
Now. We had a number of comparisons, equally honouring and hillarious, the latter 'cause they couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Here’s the original that inspired it and which parts of the lyrics are taken from:
A-hooga!
Yeah! Which is also true for the original mono release of “Revolver” by The Beatles.