Baby Likes Gees

[7String]

This is something I wrote in 2014 about my wife and the way she drives. I noticed her hitting the gas as we went around corners and asked her about it. She said she likes the way the G-force feels. Ok, the intro is a little hokey but it suits the song.

What I'm concerned about is the bass (as usual) and the vocals and anything else you might notice.

Baby Likes Gees.mp3

[rayc]

I've not downloaded from MEGA before -
Bass sounds fine.
The drum pattern in the change dominates the song.
The guitar doesn't seem to get any attention with the honkytonkin' piano opposite dominating.
Vocals sit nicely.
Fun song.
I'd have liked to hear a beefier engine in the intro but that's just me as it sounded like a jap 250 m/cycle once it was traveling.

[Greg_L]

I agree with everything Ray said. The drums are monotonous and the death metal tom breakdown does not work at all for me. It's distracting. The drum sound is also obviously very canned. It's a like a robot playing drums. Work on humanizing those drums. Work on the velocities of the hits and also get some better samples maybe.

Along with the monotonous drums, the entire song is monotonous. Nothing ever changes. There are no dynamics in the arrangement, performances, or mix. The piano banging away in my right ear is pretty much the same thing throughout the song. The vocal melody or inflection never changes.

On the plus side, the bass seems okay to me, and the overall mix has good levels. I can hear everything fine. The song and mix just need more work to make it more interesting.

[vomitHatSteve]

I'd have liked to hear a beefier engine in the intro but that's just me as it sounded like a jap 250 m/cycle once it was traveling.

It sounds like Outrun!

+1 on the drums sounding super-fake.

What's this about a death-metal tom breakdown? I was excited for that, but it just stayed a standard blues song throughout.

Bass sounds fine tho. Other than the drums, the mix is pretty consistent.

[JD01]

The vocal sounds pretty good to me.
The mix generally seems pretty good, no massive wollys in there.
You've gotta do something about them drums though - they're really mechanical sounding. I know you mentioned it before, but what are you using for your drums? Just about anything can sound more human than that.

[7String]

Sorry it took me a few days to get back, guys. I had 2 sick dogs this weekend and the 3rd was pretty indifferent to all the puking and runny poop. The cat seemed to be fascinated with the cleanup process though...

I've not downloaded from MEGA before -
Bass sounds fine.
The drum pattern in the change dominates the song.
The guitar doesn't seem to get any attention with the honkytonkin' piano opposite dominating.
Vocals sit nicely.
Fun song.
I'd have liked to hear a beefier engine in the intro but that's just me as it sounded like a jap 250 m/cycle once it was traveling.

It's the first time I've used Mega. The sound of the car was actually done on my ESP 7-string. I stole that from Brad Gillis. I was a bit worried about the drums being too loud, but only in that little pattern part. Appreciate the listen and the comments!

I agree with everything Ray said. The drums are monotonous and the death metal tom breakdown does not work at all for me. It's distracting. The drum sound is also obviously very canned. It's a like a robot playing drums. Work on humanizing those drums. Work on the velocities of the hits and also get some better samples maybe.

Along with the monotonous drums, the entire song is monotonous. Nothing ever changes. There are no dynamics in the arrangement, performances, or mix. The piano banging away in my right ear is pretty much the same thing throughout the song. The vocal melody or inflection never changes.

On the plus side, the bass seems okay to me, and the overall mix has good levels. I can hear everything fine. The song and mix just need more work to make it more interesting.

Death metal tom breakdown? Wow, I never considered that a death metal or any type of metal for that matter. The drum pattern is intended to take the listener from zero to 100. It is meant to be aggressive, like the driving. Your other points are good and I will take a second look at those. Thanks for pointing those out!

It sounds like Outrun!

+1 on the drums sounding super-fake.

What's this about a death-metal tom breakdown? I was excited for that, but it just stayed a standard blues song throughout.

Bass sounds fine tho. Other than the drums, the mix is pretty consistent.

Death metal? Blues? I wrote it more in the vein of an 80s country rocker. The drums are what I have at the moment. I can replace parts of them easy enough. I really hate the snare that comes with EZD! Thank you, Sir!

The vocal sounds pretty good to me.
The mix generally seems pretty good, no massive wollys in there.
You've gotta do something about them drums though - they're really mechanical sounding. I know you mentioned it before, but what are you using for your drums? Just about anything can sound more human than that.

EZD is what I have at the moment. I also have MT Power Kit but at the time this was done I only had EZD. So the general consensus is nobody likes the drums. Got it.

Thanks for the listen and the comments!

[JD01]

I use EZ Drummer too, mate. You’ve just gotta learn how to make them a bit more human. It’s more than just pressing the humanise button

[7String]

I use EZ Drummer too, mate. You’ve just gotta learn how to make them a bit more human. It’s more than just pressing the humanise button

Ok, tell me how. I'm listening and always willing to learn.

[rayc]

I suspected it may have been guitar motor - the classic example being Todd Rundgren on the Bat Out Of Hell album. If it's guitar you can beef it up with EQ and a sim or three.

[JD01]

I use EZ Drummer too, mate. You’ve just gotta learn how to make them a bit more human. It’s more than just pressing the humanise button

Ok, tell me how. I'm listening and always willing to learn.

Ok, this is my method - you might like some of it, all of it or none of it, but it works for me.

1. Don't worry about the Humanise function yet - leave that until the end.
2. Turn off all of the "percussive ambience" reverbs and compression that come with EZ Drummer - just mute all these tracks.
3. This should leave you with Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads only.
4. Adjust the levels of all of these in EZ Drummer so they're all equal.
5. Send your tracks multi-track from EZ Drummer to your DAW.
6. You'll have loads of pointless ones that you've now muted - delete all these which will leave you with the Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads only in your DAW and you can label these in your DAW - now you don't have to arse about mixing in EZ Drummer.
7. You can now create a drum buss in your DAW which will contain your MIDI strip and your Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads tracks.

Now you've got this set up you can mix the drums, mess about with reverbs and compression all in your DAW.

So humanising.

1. Make sure that you've never got more than two hits with your hands and two hits with your feet at the same time.
2. Get your kick and snare hits sorted first. If you've got a simple 1, 2, 3, 4 with your kick 1 and your snare on 3 they'll probably both be a similar and probably relatively high velocity based on this song.
3. You hi hat hits will add the groove to start making things sound more natural. Your drummer will hit the hi-hat harder when he's also hitting a kick or a snare. So, start by giving your hi hat hit on 1 and 3 the same velocity as your kick and snare and make the hits on 2 and 4 about 50%. You'll straight away start to feel your drums groove a little bit.
4. Now, where your kick beats are more complicated, say every other bar you have a hit on beats 1 and 2, the 2nd kick beat will normally be harder, so maybe make the first kick about 75% of the 2nd one. Also, the drummer will normally hit the hi-hat harder when he's hitting the kick, so you'll want to vary your hi-hats a bit more at this stage.
5. With crashes at the start of a bar the drummer would normally wallop the kick, so push the velocity right up for these.
6. Fills - the drummer will normally hit the first hit pretty hard, then the velocity will decrease before gradually increasing across the fill - this really is a rule of thumb though.
7. Also with fills, one hand will generally be hitting harder than than the other throughout the fill. So, if you had a building snare roll - imagine 8 beats, using two hands, your velocities might end up being 80, 75, 85, 80, 90, 85, 95, 90 followed by a kick and crash.
8. Now highlight your whole track and press H for humanise. Start of with velocity variation of about 8 - 10% and a timing variation of 5 - 8%.
9. You might want to go back to your fills and further humanise these later.

[JD01]

Also, while still in the EZ Drummer mixer narrow the stereo field on your overheads and toms as EZD defaults to having them hardpanned which sounds a bit unnatural. Go about 75% on the OHeads and 50% on the toms.

Also, listen to some of my drums (not dancing in the dark, a different song) you might think they sound shite and you don't want to try any of these things.

[vomitHatSteve]

I also use EZD primarily. (e.g. http://www.regdarandthefighters.com/dow ... FwbmV3dG9u)

My method is
1. Pick grooves that match what you're trying to accomplish
2. Don't loop the same groove over and over again. Switch between a few similar ones that match. (I like to work in threes: AABAAB or ABCABC)
3. Edit the individual hits in the MIDI as needed
4. Use Reaper's midi humanise at very high settings instead of EZD's
5. Layer on other, more lo-fi percussion

[7String]

Ok, this is my method - you might like some of it, all of it or none of it, but it works for me.

1. Don't worry about the Humanise function yet - leave that until the end.
2. Turn off all of the "percussive ambience" reverbs and compression that come with EZ Drummer - just mute all these tracks.
3. This should leave you with Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads only.
4. Adjust the levels of all of these in EZ Drummer so they're all equal.
5. Send your tracks multi-track from EZ Drummer to your DAW.
6. You'll have loads of pointless ones that you've now muted - delete all these which will leave you with the Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads only in your DAW and you can label these in your DAW - now you don't have to arse about mixing in EZ Drummer.
7. You can now create a drum buss in your DAW which will contain your MIDI strip and your Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Toms and Overheads tracks.

Now you've got this set up you can mix the drums, mess about with reverbs and compression all in your DAW.

I already do all of these.

So humanising.

1. Make sure that you've never got more than two hits with your hands and two hits with your feet at the same time.
2. Get your kick and snare hits sorted first. If you've got a simple 1, 2, 3, 4 with your kick 1 and your snare on 3 they'll probably both be a similar and probably relatively high velocity based on this song.
3. You hi hat hits will add the groove to start making things sound more natural. Your drummer will hit the hi-hat harder when he's also hitting a kick or a snare. So, start by giving your hi hat hit on 1 and 3 the same velocity as your kick and snare and make the hits on 2 and 4 about 50%. You'll straight away start to feel your drums groove a little bit.
4. Now, where your kick beats are more complicated, say every other bar you have a hit on beats 1 and 2, the 2nd kick beat will normally be harder, so maybe make the first kick about 75% of the 2nd one. Also, the drummer will normally hit the hi-hat harder when he's hitting the kick, so you'll want to vary your hi-hats a bit more at this stage.
5. With crashes at the start of a bar the drummer would normally wallop the kick, so push the velocity right up for these.
6. Fills - the drummer will normally hit the first hit pretty hard, then the velocity will decrease before gradually increasing across the fill - this really is a rule of thumb though.
7. Also with fills, one hand will generally be hitting harder than than the other throughout the fill. So, if you had a building snare roll - imagine 8 beats, using two hands, your velocities might end up being 80, 75, 85, 80, 90, 85, 95, 90 followed by a kick and crash.
8. Now highlight your whole track and press H for humanise. Start of with velocity variation of about 8 - 10% and a timing variation of 5 - 8%.
9. You might want to go back to your fills and further humanise these later.

Good points, all. I'll work on these points and hopefully improve things. Thanks for taking the time to write all of this out!

[7String]

Also, while still in the EZ Drummer mixer narrow the stereo field on your overheads and toms as EZD defaults to having them hardpanned which sounds a bit unnatural. Go about 75% on the OHeads and 50% on the toms.

I widened the toms on this one because they are featured in some spots.

Also, listen to some of my drums (not dancing in the dark, a different song) you might think they sound shite and you don't want to try any of these things.

Will do!

[JD01]

Cheers. Good luck. Hope it works for you

[TripleM]

Fun song. I like the bass and the vocal. I swear it's "Baby likes cheese." Except the last one.

The rhythm guitars are a little indistinct and a bit mushy. They need more chug. They're getting bullied by everything else in the mix.

The panning on the motocycle was cool. I'd shorten it by a couple of seconds if it were me.

Drums were a bit robotic. I'd like a more natural snare sound - this kind of sounded like an 80's hair metal snare. Too much reverb on it for me.

[7String]

Just picked up Audio Assault's Druminator for $9. It's mostly for metal I think but has a boat load of options with it.

Audio Assault's Druminator

Here's an indepth video.

[vomitHatSteve]

Just picked up Audio Assault's Druminator for $9. It's mostly for metal I think but has a boat load of options with it.

Audio Assault's Druminator

Here's an indepth video.

Dang. That's cheap for a VSTi Drum.
Might as well snag it.

[Bubba]

This is not my "thing" at all. I don't like fucking line dancing and I hate twats that do.

Nice clean mix, however. As Greg said, that tom break at the beginning is massively out of character for the song.

Don't do any more like this, I implore you.

[7String]

This is not my "thing" at all. I don't like fucking line dancing and I hate twats that do.

Me too! I got pretty sick of seeing it every bar you went into in the 80s and 90s. Wonder if it's still going on...

Nice clean mix, however. As Greg said, that tom break at the beginning is massively out of character for the song.

Don't do any more like this, I implore you.

Thanks for the listen and the comments. I'll take that last one under consideration.