Music

Wedding Mixes: Moose

 

Moose “This River Never Will Run Dry” [marry in the morning mix]

In this mix:

  • More balanced volume across the song (you can hear the intro without having to turn it down several times later). This is a simple volume envelope, so it didn’t squash the dynamics any more that they were already.
  • Shortened outro without the screeching halt at the end. Yes, some will find this blasphemous. Judge away.

Mad Men Theme Chords

 

I know there’s a full R2J2 song I haven’t heard yet, but since we’re marathoning MM I had to figure out at least this part. With capo on the 4th fret it’s easier to work the melody in.

x-0-2-2-1-1  C#m
x-0-2-2-1-0  (x 2)
x-2-3-2-x-0  D#m7-5
x-2-3-2-3-x  (x 2)
0-x-3-2-3-x  C#m/G#
0-x-2-2-1-x  (x 2)
x-x-1-2-1-x  D#7-9/G
x-x-1-2-0-x  (x 2)
0-x-0-1-1-x  G#7+
0-x-0-1-0-x  (x 2)
x-0-4-2-1-0  C#m6 (C#m the 2nd time)

The final synth harmony is a low C# and slightly flat B with rich harmonics implying a C#7 (major).

Goodbye Trish Keenan

 

The singer of one of my favorite bands passed away.

It is with great sadness we announce that Trish Keenan from Broadcast passed away at 9am this morning in hospital. She died from complications with pneumonia after battling the illness for two weeks in intensive care.

Our thoughts go out to James, Martin, her friends and her family and we request that the public respect their wishes for privacy at this time.

This is an untimely tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly – a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being. Rest in Peace. [Warp records]

Less is More: Billie Davis 1969

 

“Nobody’s Home to Go Home To” was a 1969 B-side for Billie Davis that I have a weakness for. The bass playing is incredible and the song cleverly jumps between three keys, but the strings and backing vocals kind of take over the recording. I noticed this morning that they’re both panned hard right and the vocal is centered, so I got to work.

  • Dumped the right channel to make a mono track of the left, leaving all the essentials: drums, bass, piano, elec & acoustic guitars, a quiet organ, tambourine, and the vocal.
  • Made several surgical cuts to bass frequencies that took over the mix at points.
  • Mitigated some incidents of “breathing” and “pumping” in the breaks. This is where a compressor had turned up the gain while the band’s last note of a section was fading out. This can be done to great effect (after the snare hit at 0:21 in Elvis Costello’s “Busy Bodies”), but on this track it just sounded like a someone with coffee jitters was leaning on a fader, and it made the snare hits that preceded the following sections unnaturally loud.
  • Raised some high frequencies to bring some sparkle to the vocal
  • Added a tiny bit of stereo echo to widen the sound

In the result, you get a more interesting intro (IMO) and a tighter rhythm section, and you can actually hear the piano, the backbeat snaps of the electric guitar, what sounds like a low temple block on the snare hits, and Billie’s quiet falsettos at the end of the choruses.

Billie Davis – Nobody’s Home to Go Home To (mrclay.org mix)

[audio:http://www.mrclay.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Billie-Davis-Nobodys-Home-To-Go-Home-To-mrclay-remaster.mp3|titles=Billie Davis – Nobody’s Home To Go Home To (mrclay remaster)]

Here’s the original .

Plastic Sitars Intro for piano

 

I’ve been playing more music lately, but also trying to go back and learn the fundamentals of reading/writing music and keyboard playing—I can play chords and pop melodies semi reliably but suck at playing scales with either hand. Yesterday I created a free account at Noteflight, which lets you compose scores online (you have to enter notes via mouse/keyboard, but the UI is pretty quick once you get the hang of it). The import feature successfully digested a 15 year old MIDI file of something I wrote in college.

The (yet unrecorded) French Horns song “Plastic Sitars” always started with rhythm guitar live, but for a few months I’ve been toying with a short solo guitar piece as an intro, ideally stealing Johnny Smith’s tone. Below is a piano arrangement for my tour of airport cocktail lounges.