Wagtunes Production Music

[jancivil]

the Stephen King title is Pet Cematary anyway...

[jancivil]

For honest (or brutal) feedback, I don't find this tense or spooky at all. The use of reverb takes every bit of sting out of any dissonance (it's all a wash/awash) and actually is a bit of sopor for me as a whole. It seems like it was done in very little time, and like there's two pads and an attempt at the psycho strings texturally.

TBPH, I think the person audiitioning it would give it a miss within the basically 10 seconds you have to grab someone's attention.

[wagtunes]

For honest (or brutal) feedback, I don't find this tense or spooky at all. The use of reverb takes every bit of sting out of any dissonance (it's all a wash/awash) and actually is a bit of sopor for me as a whole. It seems like it was done in very little time, and like there's two pads and an attempt at the psycho strings texturally.

TBPH, I think the person audiitioning it would give it a miss within the basically 10 seconds you have to grab someone's attention.

Thanks for the honest feedback Jan.

[wagtunes]

For honest (or brutal) feedback, I don't find this tense or spooky at all. The use of reverb takes every bit of sting out of any dissonance (it's all a wash/awash) and actually is a bit of sopor for me as a whole. It seems like it was done in very little time, and like there's two pads and an attempt at the psycho strings texturally.

TBPH, I think the person audiitioning it would give it a miss within the basically 10 seconds you have to grab someone's attention.

Hey Jan, not that I expect you to listen to all my tracks but is there anything I've done so far that's any good? I value your opinion highly.

[JJ_Jettflow]

is naming them after famous horror books/films a good idea?
do others in the production scene do that?

i honestly have no idea, so its a question not a criticism.

Depends. It can go either way.

1. Titles can't be copyrighted so there are no legal issues there.

But they can be trademarked so you may want to check on that.

Actually, no, they can't.

** EDIT ** Okay, clarification here. If I were to write a book or do a movie Pet Cemetary, I couldn't as that title is trademarked for those works. For music, not the case. Because music titles can't be copyrighted or trademarked. In US law, this is a gray area. In either case, I don't think I have to worry about Stephen King coming after me for putting out a 2 minute piece of library music titled Pet Cemetery, not for the $5 in royalties that I might earn from it.

Thanks for filling me in that...now we both know!

Funny you mention SK. My late music partner and I wrote an instrumental interpretation of The Tommy Knockers called "Transformation". We were very careful not to use any reference to the book and give full credit for it in our liner notes as we were afraid of getting sued! Ah to be young again and actually think you have a chance at making it with your art.

I know I have a copy of Transformation digitally saved somewhere so I think I will do a remaster and put it out there. Well, there goes the weekend!

[Hink]

the Stephen King title is Pet Cematary anyway...

I looked at the house online he was renting when he wrote that, it's on river road in Orrington Maine (Orrington borders my town), the cat is still buried outback in the garden. The house was selling for 275k 6 months after we bought this house...good chance Denise would have been all over it, good thing though because it was a large house (with a few fireplaces ) and more house than Ash and I need

[jancivil]

For honest (or brutal) feedback, I don't find this tense or spooky at all. The use of reverb takes every bit of sting out of any dissonance (it's all a wash/awash) and actually is a bit of sopor for me as a whole. It seems like it was done in very little time, and like there's two pads and an attempt at the psycho strings texturally.

TBPH, I think the person audiitioning it would give it a miss within the basically 10 seconds you have to grab someone's attention.

Hey Jan, not that I expect you to listen to all my tracks but is there anything I've done so far that's any good? I value your opinion highly.

Yeah, there's definitely a number of songs I'd regard highly that physically sound pretty good.

this is just way outside of your wheelhouse, tbh

[jancivil]

It looks like you tried to intuit the sound world, but that stuff happens very specifically out of techniques and it's not so easy to do.

[wagtunes]

It looks like you tried to intuit the sound world, but that stuff happens very specifically out of techniques and it's not so easy to do.

Didn't expect this to be easy. Outside my wheelhouse? you betcha. My hope is that, with time, I will improve. But I have to start somewhere. Trying to make it as a pop music writer has proven to be quite futile, though, ironically, now that I've given up on that dream, I have a band that loves a lot of my music and is going to be doing a whole album of just my songs. Go figure. That's why I'm not entirely giving up writing pop songs. Not yet anyway. I'll see how this venture with them turns out. But I would like to give production music a shot.

[wagtunes]

Something a little different. This one should be pretty obvious.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/the-holy-spirit

[JoeCat]

I think this may be right your wheelhouse, Wags. I just listened to "Lost in the Jungle". Would I change a few things? Maybe - I might pull the paddy-flutatious (sic) sound in and out a bit more, maybe add a little chord change or bring in a subtle low instrument for dynamic effect. These are subjective things. But I'm a harsh critic (which is why I don't comment much in Music Cafe, etc.)

So, if I thought you were way off base here, I probably wouldn't comment, and I really liked that little track - it sets a specific mood, which is exactly what you're trying to accomplish.

My advice (again) is this: Spend more time self editing. Even now, you're working quickly and asking for feedback, and I think it's a bit premature for some of these tracks. IMHO The skill you may most need to work on is going back and editing your own work. That's speaking from experience, especially with my band, where most of our tracks are unrecognizable from the initial work. This assumes you have a good start, which you do.

There's a book for writers called "Self Editing for Fiction Writers". Great book, because it's not about creating the work, which is the part of the craft most people spend their time on, but about gaining the ability to look at it critically and make changes. Editing and iterating is not as much fun, so we naturally spend less time doing it.

For example, given "Pet Cemetery" - I'd may have added those string hits in the beginning initially, but listening afterwards just left them till the end. You've already gotten some feedback. I'd suggest holding back a few days and listening before posting here, to see if you come up with some of the suggestions your getting. It's not different than submitting work to your editor that's already well edited - it's a separate skill you can learn (and reasonably quickly, I think)

Party on...

[wagtunes]

I think this may be right your wheelhouse, Wags. I just listened to "Lost in the Jungle". Would I change a few things? Maybe - I might pull the paddy-flutatious (sic) sound in and out a bit more, maybe add a little chord change or bring in a subtle low instrument for dynamic effect. These are subjective things. But I'm a harsh critic (which is why I don't comment much in Music Cafe, etc.)

So, if I thought you were way off base here, I probably wouldn't comment, and I really liked that little track - it sets a specific mood, which is exactly what you're trying to accomplish.

My advice (again) is this: Spend more time self editing. Even now, you're working quickly and asking for feedback, and I think it's a bit premature for some of these tracks. IMHO The skill you may most need to work on is going back and editing your own work. That's speaking from experience, especially with my band, where most of our tracks are unrecognizable from the initial work. This assumes you have a good start, which you do.

There's a book for writers called "Self Editing for Fiction Writers". Great book, because it's not about creating the work, which is the part of the craft most people spend their time on, but about gaining the ability to look at it critically and make changes. Editing and iterating is not as much fun, so we naturally spend less time doing it.

For example, given "Pet Cemetery" - I'd may have added those string hits in the beginning initially, but listening afterwards just left them till the end. You've already gotten some feedback. I'd suggest holding back a few days and listening before posting here, to see if you come up with some of the suggestions your getting. It's not different than submitting work to your editor that's already well edited - it's a separate skill you can learn (and reasonably quickly, I think)

Party on...

Joe thanks for the feedback. It's greatly appreciated.

The problem with all of it, and even my pop writing, is that it's all subjective. Worse than that, for me anyway, is that when I hear something a certain way it's almost impossible for me to hear it any other way, which is why I hate covers. It's rare that I like a cover more than the original.

With my own work, listening to it back (and actually I listen to each track I do a hundred times at least before it's done each few seconds of the way) and trying to make "corrections" is impossible, unless something is really out of whack, like a cymbal crash too loud, or a note that clashes with a chord or something that just sticks out. Otherwise, if I'm listening to it and not cringing, I'm going to leave it as it is. If I could have thought of something for the track that was "better" than what I have, I would have done that to begin with.

Now with a song that I'm working on that I'll be posting soon, originally I had the mix buss very bright and open but I noticed that it really made the lead vocals sound harsh around words that start with the hard "k" sound no matter how much EQ I did. So I ultimately scrapped that mix and did one that was more middle of the road. Now, could that mix be further improved? Probably. But because it doesn't sound "bad" anymore, I wouldn't know what to improve it to. And if I start fiddling around with it, I just might make it worse. And even I don't make it worse, at what point do you stop and say "Enough, it's time to put this to bed." Because let's be honest, we can ALWAYS find something to criticize with a mix. I have a friend who works a whole year on one song just to get it right. Sorry, I can't do that, especially not at my age. Spending a year of my life on one track is ludicrous for me.

I've made peace with my work ethic. I put in as much time into a track as I feel it needs. No more, no less. Once I like the way it sounds, I'm done. Now if somebody can definitively point out something that is clearly out of whack and would definitively sound better if I did something else, I am absolutely willing to make the change, just like I did with the one track where it was suggested to start and end with the violins. Now of course you're saying that I shouldn't have done that. Well, somebody is right and somebody is wrong. And for me to try to split hairs to decide just who that is, sorry, that's where I draw the line or I end up getting nothing finished.

TLDR - Bottom Line. If you hear something in a track that should absolutely be replaced with something else because it clearly does not work at all and sounds horrendous, tell what it is and what it should be changed to and I'll be happy to make the change. Otherwise, I'm keeping what I did and letting the chips fall where they may. Otherwise, nothing will ever get done.

[donkey tugger]

I've found over the years that absence makes the heart grow less fond, i.e. before absolutely settling on something as a 'final' version I always leave it for at least a week or so without listening to it. Bit of perspective through distance has many times worked to reveal what the bleedin' obvious faults are in something. In the meantime, you can always do something else.

[wagtunes]

I've found over the years that absence makes the heart grow less fond, i.e. before absolutely settling on something as a 'final' version I always leave it for at least a week or so without listening to it. Bit of perspective through distance has many times worked to reveal what the bleedin' obvious faults are in something. In the meantime, you can always do something else.

Except that won't work for me due to the way I go about creating a track of music.

Without going into excruciating detail, my process is essentially lay down an instrument track, tweak it, process it, do whatever to it and listen to each iteration of it until that track is done. This could be as many as 20 to 30 listens. Then repeat that for each instrument track that I lay down after it, sometimes having to go back to an earlier instrument track because of EQ conflicts with a later track.

By the time the process is done, I could have easily listened to the entire song 300 - 500 times.

At that point, I can tell you every note of every part of every second of that song. Take ONE thing away from it and it'll sound wrong. It won't matter if I put the song away for a year. If I listened to it one year later, I could still tell you every note of every part of every second of that song and would immediately know if something was changed.

Hell, I'm currently listening to songs that are over 10 years old that I've done and I can still tell you every note of every part of every second. No amount of time putting the song down is going to change that. It's just the way my brain works.

The only way that I can "improve" a song that I've worked on is to hand it off to somebody else who thinks the song can be improved and let him improve it and send it back to me. I'm not capable of doing this. Not after having listened to the track as many times as I have before finalizing it.

[Morgaxx]

I agree with donkey above. My impression was that in the past you just rushed through things. Seemingly, just to say you completed xyz style/project. Saying a cd will have 15 tracks, then really scraping the barrels bottom after the first half. With time, patience and a critical ear you might have done better focusing on a reasonable number of tracks. Very little passion evident, to my ears.
Slow and steady wins the race.

Haunted House had a metallic texture, conjuring a more sc-fi notion. Not bad though.
Same as above with Pet Cemetery. not liked as much. To me haunted places and or cemetereys have a more organic/darker feel. My feeling only of course.
Lost in the Jungle felt closer to its suggested theme.
The Holy Spirit felt closer to its suggested sound, obviously. Though there were a couple of darker clashes that stood out. Also, the airy pad became distracting radio noise after a while. There were quite a few notes, though little theme seemed evident. Not bad though.

There are some good ideas happening. I would add, if I may to what others said. No need to rush (I know you will go at the pace you have selected). Perhaps you will slow down with experience, as you see the subtleties you could add. Pay closer attention to your own art as art deserves this.

I mentioned percussion in my other post. Again I find its placement arbitrary and for the most part not needed. Many hits seem to come from no where and hit smack in the face. You have some flams or rolls in the jungle that do not bother me so much. In the Jungle is where I heard the only percussion that really seemed appropriate tonally/spatially.

Well, mercy me that is a lot of wordage. Hope it is useful in any progress you seek