listening again - you’re the best Steve :) i am very impressed with your chorus of live handclaps!

funny how your backing mixes inspire me to tackle the group singalongs.

also, thanks Per. hopefully Emily won’t hate her vocals this time. :P

i am particular, sorry bout that, but i think they sound pretty decent now :)

No worries! I think you always sound good, but I’m glad we worked out the glitches.

I’ve taken another couple of listens this morning. I’m still just as impressed with everyone’s efforts. The song even collected a new verse, which is particularly cool! Who wrote that?

BTW, the attribution is not correct, just FYI. The samples you’ve used are from “The Remixin’ Blues” and not “Dear Mr. Williams.” Just a heads up. :)

Thanks AB! Just fixed the attribute. Emily riffed nicely over the “organ break” section, and Frank gets the credit for the last verse lyrics and obviously nails it. Thanks to all my friends who helped out!

Yeah, it was all done by email and no, we weren’t in the studio together.

In a nutshell, here’s how I did it. I took Admiral Bob’s original source files (his vocals and the acoustic guitar track) and created a basic arrangement for it. Since his original source consisted of basically 3 verse tracks (each with a chorus built in), I decided to structure it around a similar format, but have different people repeat the first verse (which let me split up Admiral Bob’s 3 verses over 5 minutes).

I then added:

an electric bass guitar
an electric tremelo guitar
drums
an electric piano track to the “instrumental bridge” section
a synth track to the “instrumental bridge” section
A stereo mix of about 10 tracks of me “ooohing” and “aaaahing” harmony vocals
A stereo mix of about 10 tracks of me doing handclaps for the arrangement to give it a “live” feel

With this, I created a “click mix” that I sent people a link to. They downloaded it and recorded their parts and sent them back to me. Most of what I got back I cut up further and placed to best effect. For instance, I really cut up and moved Frank’s stuff around, while Emily’s track is pretty much intact. I also tried to use the panning space with so many vocal tracks. I hard panned stereo tracks of my vocals, Susan’s vocals, Emily’s backup vocals, and Frank’s backup vocals to different degrees to minimize the center of field overlap.

All of the live tracks were recorded in ProTools, and the final mix with vocals was done in Logic.

Thanks everyone!

Thank you!

thanks J!

Thank YOU mon frere! You far exceeded my already high expectations. I really appreciate the time and effort you put in here Frank. Your stamp is all over this, as it should be.