Broadway Melody of 1974: UH OH

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

UH OH

You know, I was listening to this track and something was missing. I thought it was the voicing of the chords of the RMI but it wasn't that. I thought it was the voicing of the MELLOTRON strings and it wasn't that.

Then it hit me, I was hearing another instrument EQ'ed with alot of mids. So, I played around with some of Tony's other sounds (I knew it was the PRO SOLOIST) so, that led me to another MELLOTRON instrument. And I am not sure that I have the right TONY patch for his FLUTES but that is what I thought it was.

Well, this instrument filled the mix in and made the whole track sound fuller and I did notice that the MELLOTRON strings were primarily mixed in the center with alot of reverb (except at the end). This just led me to start playing with the whole mix and yes, the FLUTES shed a whole new light on my approach to mixing the song.

To cut a long story short, I will be putting up a newer version of Broadway Melody very shortly and there isn't alot of performance differences (well, yes, if you consider I replayed all of the keyboard parts) but I think this new mix is much better than the first version I posted.

You know, none of these tracks are really ever done but I hope that each change brings the project closer to its objective which is to recreate The Lamb in MIDI as closely as possible to GENESIS' original tracks using only MIDI and virtual instruments.

Check back in a few days for the new and improved version.

Thanks,

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

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

UH OH

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