Recorded this song for a lofi project set up by a cassette label back in 2006. The song had to feature something related to a telephone so my contribution was turned down eventually because it didn’t contain a reference to a telephone, it was about a telephone and that was not within the bounds of the project.
The song was recorded in the basement we had back then using a single Shure SM58 for everything as far as I can remember. Samplitude was used as the DAW, this was just before I completely switched to Linux for everything. When sorting stuff out I came across these recordings again and felt the urge to dust them off. So I managed to get Samplitude running in Wine, loaded up Ardour and placed all the WAV’s at the exact same time locations as in Samplitude.
In the end the only extra instruments I added were some cello’s, the rest stems from the original recordings. As I am nowhere near being an experienced Ardour user or an experienced sound engineer I tried dusting off the recordings as good as I could with my limited knowledge of effects processing. I’m still not completely happy with it, the guitar squeaks for example are stil a bit too loud and probably overall stereo image and compression could be way better, I have so little experience with that, just turned some knobs until it sounded ok.
It’s an acoustic, singer-songwriter kind of track. Second lead vocals courtesy of my wife. Hope you like it. Feedback is more than welcome!
Very nice! You did a great job, string squeaks, amp buzz, etc etc are where the magic lives! I don’t know how much better produced an indie acoustic originally lo-fi intended track could be. Great vocals by both of you, a nice open acoustic guitar sound and arrangement. Thanks for sharing!
Excluded on a technicality eh? Really enjoyed it. It has that rainy Sunday feeling. Sounds great to me, with a very nicely rounded out sound. I really like the mix of instruments. To me it sounds like the cellos smooth off the reedy sound very pleasantly. Is it a reed organ? Vocals are great and capture the melancholy mood perfectly.
Thanks Glen! You’re right about the magic but EQ-ing the guitars also lifted up the squeaks a bit too much. But fortunately it doesn’t really kill the whole feel and it can still be fixed I think. And it turned out better than I expected.
Thanks e_r! It’s not a reed but an EBow on an acoustic guitar. And it blends nicely with the cellos. Really cool to hear that it might give the impression that there seems to be a different instrument involved, for me it’s one of those things that I love about music. And back then the few songs my wife and I recorded were stored on my hard drive under the “Ready Room” moniker (yeah, the one from the Enterprise) so I’ll pass on the Vulcan salute.
Well, a good song to begin with and you did a good job “re-processing” it !
The guitar string squeaks didn’t bother me … I liked the clarity of the vocals
Thanks for sharing !
Really nice sound, say my ears. And who else’s can I trust?
I find it helpful to listen to things that I like and concentrate on all the squeaks, fret-buzz, and general noIsE that doesn’t bother me at all when it’s other people making it…
