It’s The End of the World
Well, the end may be coming, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about The End of the World, a song I wrote last week. I recorded a demo yesterday using my laptop and my lil’ $99 Line 6 Gear Box. Plus my Seagull acoustic, Gretsch guitar, Beki’s upright bass, and a microphone. But everything that I played went through the little Line 6 box.
I wish I looked cool when I was recording, but I don't
My goal when making a demo is to work as fast as possible. I had the main guitar part and vocal all worked out, but I made up everything else as I went along. I want to improve my little setup so that I can record higher quality stuff but I don’t want to sacrifice speed. The purpose of a demo is to get an idea for how the whole thing sounds when put together, not to record a gold record anyway.
I went for a trio format, with some MIDI drum loops that I edited subbing for Ken alongside the guitar and bass. Originally I just had acoustic guitar, but then I went and got the Gretsch to get some twang on the chorus (that’s what I wrote that lick on) and add a few parts here and there. I did the vocals all myself, going with first takes as soon as I had a level.
Anywhere, here’s an MP3 of the song. Post feedback if ya got any. Peace.
>> The End of the World (demo)
Right-click and Save-As to save to your hard drive to listen properly. Listen, share, and promote the track as you will for your own non-commercial use.
The best way to stream Beat Concrete tracks is at our MySpace page (www.myspace.com/beatconcreteband) where we have a selection of tracks including this one, or our ReverbNation page at www.reverbnation.com/beatconcrete, which also has this track.
Gee, David, that’s a pretty good demo. Don’t feel too bad that you sang poorly and were flat a lot. We know you were trying hard and it’s just a demo.
Yo D, nice tune! Yeah old post, but I just stumbled into your blog a minute ago, so
Anyway, you asked for feedback, so here is a small tip I found to work really well with adding dimension to a song; vary the velocity of the hi-hats.
Right now it has this copy-n-paste midi feel to it, but you’ll be amazed at the liveliness a bit of play with velocity can add!
Cheers, Artificial. Totally agree on the drum part–it’s a paste job all the way. When I spend more time on a drum part, one thing I like to do is to create separate hi-hat and bass drum loops in increments of like 2 or 6 bars against a 4-bar snare part so the accents change over time. Appreciate the feedback!