Posted last week to Spotify for the first time. I’d read it’s good to get Spotify setup with an OK track in order to flesh out online profiles and prep for playlists, and to ease the way for “better” releases like EPs and LPs in the future. So this isn’t my best or my favorite track, but it’s still fun. It’s a sort of retro oldies rock song, made completely in Ardour. It’s all acoustic electric guitar, vocals, AVL drums, and Calf Plugins.
I keep my music pretty naked (I gig solo, and so my songs needs to be repeatable live with just 1 guitar, 1 singer, and a looper pedal, so my recordings are pretty bare bones as well. An electric-acoustic splits its feed into two channels, one that goes into the computer clean, and another hits a pedalboard and then the computer.
In Ardour, everything is kept pretty bare bones as well. Mostly Calf 5 EQ for most buses, to duck unnecessary frequencies and bump the nicer ones. Calf compressors on vocals and the clean acoustic channel. Calf Reverb all over, and then the WONDERFUL AVL drums plugin for building out some drums. I love that plugin. Super fun!
Hope you dig the song, and more is soon to come. Thanks Ardour team for such a powerful DAW!
The rawness of the mix and sounds took me by surprise, but at the end of the song I was sold. I liked the country and western feel of the tune. I enjoyed the song very much, thanks for sharing
Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the western vibe. I try to bring they into almost all my music. The rawness is a good comment too. Since I usually try to keep the sound as recreatable live as possible, I end up putting a lot of strange restrictions on myself. I try not to clean it up beyond what would be possible live on my mixer and pedals, and I try to do the whole song in a single take, leaving in mistakes and mishaps.
I think it adds to the old school sound of the music, like in the 50s where you got 4 guys packed in a studio room with a pair of mics, and they track the whole song in a single take. It doesn’t get the best recordings but it captures a different sort of vibe instead. But you pointing out the rawness makes me want to be a wary of taking it too far and leaving potentially good songs in a bad state because I didn’t touch it up or composite how I ought to… finding the balance …
Good comment here. I think the snare and kick especially could be brightened a bit. I tucked them further back in the mix since they’re AVL drums, and I wanted to hide how robotic they can sound if they’re too clean and forward. Haha, looks like I took it too far!
finding the balance …