How I Did It
Waiting in the Gardenby Admiral Bob
Samples are used in:
Tools I Used
A Telecaster, a Les Paul, a Yamaha organ, my drum machine, a P-Bass, and an SM-58.
Samples I Used
Bucky Jonson's sax parts from "Do It" and of course snowflake's "Waiting in the Garden."
Original Samples
Three guitar parts, a bass part, a drum part, the organ, and two background vocal parts.
Process
I started by creating a drum part at double the time signature of the 6/8 snowflake used, but in 4/4 in my case. Moved the vocals a little to line up with the beat.
Added a guitar part hitting the chop. Tried to do it with a pick, and realize I am now hopeless with a guitar pick, so went back to fingerstyle. Added a part to double the bass line, then played the bass line after.
Added a one handed organ part. I was going to add the other hand as clav, but thought better of it - didn't want to be too stereotypically reggae. Then I added a guitar part that loosely doubles the vocal on the Les Paul.
Finally, added the two harmony vocal parts more or less hard panned left and right, to give it the feeling of an intimate vocal group backing up the lead vocal.
I did no EQing as the song looked almost perfectly balanced in a spectral analyzer and sounded right. I did put it through a spatial enhancer (which I normally don't do) as I wanted the song to feel expansive, like a large group on stage.
Put it through a vintage style compressor and then a limiter. Allowed the song to stay a little quieter than normal "volume wars" tracks, as I wanted to keep the dynamics.
Other Notes
My Les Paul's input jack fell apart while I tried to this. I had to take it apart and fix it.
Other than that, it happened quickly. I usually try and follow snowflake's piano when tackling her music, but decided to break away in a different direction than the music was leading this time.
This site uses