Broadway Melody of 1974: Broadway Melody of 1974

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Broadway Melody of 1974

What a great tune and the easiest to recreate in MIDI. I jumped over to this song because I just got the new box set and the surround sound mix made it real easy to sample Peter's vocal lines without bleed through. Also, I can more clearly hear the parts and thus recreate them with more accuracy both in performance and production (mixing, effects, etc).

I put this entire song together in a couple of days since it is a relatively easy tune to play. I also took the time to try and use a different drum kit from Ocean Way Drums that has more of the open ended TOM sound and a simpler snare drum.

Let me know what you think of this track by rating the sound using the gadget in the upper right section of this page.

Thanks and enjoy,

Jim

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Broadway Melody of 1974

This song is really part of the:

The Lamb/Fly on a Windshield/Broadway Melody

The three song opening of the album. My intention is to include this in the medley when all three songs are completed but I wanted to do this song first in that it is the simplest of the three tracks to use the new vocal audio from BOX SET 3 wherein, Peter's vocals are mixed in the center channel, isolated from the music. This provided me with a vocal track with no bleed through and wanted to see if the vocals with sit better in the tracks without the EQ and clipping that I needed to do to sample the vocals from the stereo mixes.

As usual, there are two versions of Broadway below. One with vocals and one without vocals (the karoake version). Its a short tune but was tons of fun putting together.

Mp3 File of MIDI - Broadway Melody with Vocals

Mp3 File of MIDI - Broadway Melody without Vocals- Karaoke

Mike's Parts

Mike was pretty busy on this tune. He plays three parts. Rick 12 string, Rick bass and, of course, the pedals. The most prominent part is the Rick 12 string. Mike plays this part through quite a few effects to get this sound. It is a simple part, in that he plays octave notes throughout the tune. The sound is where the magic is. One might think that the distorted guitar is Steve but it is Mike (Steve does a have part as well).

In the first section of the tune, the bass pedals are used to create a cool bottom but Mike stops the pedals after the first verse.

The buried part is Mike's bass guitar. The bass is heavily effected with a flanger and is mixed relatively low but Mike has a lot of fun with the timing of the octave F notes. Listen carefully and you will hear what I mean.

Tony's Parts

Well, Tony plays 4 tracks in this tune. He doubles up on RMI and Mellotron. The two RMI and MELLOTRON parts are different and panned hard left and right.

The RMI uses the piano/harpsi sound in organ mode and has an MXR phase and echoplex added. I had to EQ this part with alot of MIDs which was probably caused by whatever amplication Tony used in the studio.

The Mellotron parts were a bit tricky. I completed the entire song and was working on the end and for the life of me could not get the mellotron part to sound correct. I studied what Tony was playing and just couldn't make it sound like Tony. I know he is a magician but I was missing something.

The notes at the end sounded more like single violin notes rather than a string section so I loaded up SAMPLETRON and looked for VIOLIN patches and the first one I picked, BINGO, spot on.

Then this made me think that Tony couldn't change string Mellotron patches mid way through the song so maybe he played this same patch in the first section as well. Don't get me wrong, the beginning section sounded good already with the strings I was already using, but sure enough, this part too sounded SPOT ON with the new violin mellotron patch.

Now, that I had the right sound, I realized that the voicings of the mellotron chords needed to be changed. So, I redid the mellotron chords and they sound wonderful now. You see what I mean about nothing is as easy as it first appears?

So, there you have it, 4 different keyboard parts playing four different inversions of the same chords.

Steve's Parts

As usual for this album, Steve didn't have too much to do in this tune. I wasn't able to add one of his tracks, a "chugging guitar" sound, because I do not have the correct instrument sample to recreate this cool part (I am thinking about creating my own sample of a CHUGGING Les Paul, for Steve uses this technique on quite a few tunes beside Broadway Melody). So, I added his guitar octave note part during the main section of the song.

However, at the end, during the segue to Cuckoo Cocoon, he does play a wonderful guitar chord passage that at first listen, sounds quite simple. But true to form and in the magic that is Genesis, Steve used some very creative fingering (keep open G string in mind if you are trying to learn how he plays this).

Broadway Melody of 1974

Saturday, November 15, 2008