Rated Blue - "I'm A Ram" (TRIPPY MIX)

[GMaq]

Hi,

Here's a little (well OK.. pretty long) exercise and experiment dabbling with post production on a source live recording. We are working on a new album of all new original material but in the meantime we have quite a few recorded and filmed live jams so because we are the artists and the label and because we can we are releasing some of the "better" ones (in our microcosmic estimation) on Spotify and all major streaming services. This one turned out pretty trippy and I had a lot of fun with Ardour and the Shiroverb, TAL-Dub-III, TAL-Reverb-II plugins. The uhe Presswerk compressor and Satin tape flanging plugins came in quite handy as well… This song "I'm A Ram" was originally an early 70's soul tune by Reverend Al Green, I first heard it from one of my fave Canadian bands Big Sugar in their early days and later by American Jam Band extraordinaire Gov't Mule. We've kind of done our own thing with it to cartoonish proportions... equal parts primordial riff rock, heavy dub reggae with an ambient noise guitar solo... We also got a pretty fun video out of the deal experimenting with Cinelerra-GG so without further ado here is our new release "I'm A Ram" (TRIPPY MIX).

Youtube Video:
https://youtu.be/uNcnbHZROAM

Track on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0wIng6MO0TVyWEjp2jhMxF

[folderol]

Wow!
Great work guys, and the vid is something else :

[milo]

Another solid performance! I am always impressed with your guitar playing. You have a tight sound, and it looks like a lot of fun to play in the band shed.

The video is funny, especially when it looks like you are playing an instrument with a bent neck.

[ufug]

Adventures in S-T-E-R-E-O!! Psychedelic goodness. I especially dig the change ~5:42. That's a darn good live mix, everything is clear as a bell.

Presswerk and Satin are addictive, they should have a warning on them.

[jonetsu]

I do not know Al Green. The piece is quite good, especially the guitar improvs. Very well mixed, everything clearly defined.

I do know Neil Young though and your recent "Cortez the Killer" from last month is also pretty good. The only thing about it would be that the last "lost my way' was a bit overdone, as the drums that immediately follows.

What are you using to double the vocals here and there ? Sounds like processing, not so much like overdubs.

Cheers.

[GMaq]

Hello friends!

Thanks you so much for watching and commenting it is very much appreciated!

As we all know from working on stuff you really lose objectivity once you've numbed your brain working on something and hearing it 14,873 times in the mixing phase (video editing adds another 4,657 listens on the average). Add the whole live performance thing and the garbage notes/good notes ratio you need to bean count before setting it free its just nice to push it out the door eventually..

@ufug

Haha, thanks! Heartily agree those plugins are indispensable!

@jonetsu

I don't disagree with your comments but this video at about 5:39 gives at least some indication where things were coming from for that vocal line:
https://youtu.be/x-XnPXL_HMA

Sometimes I copy a vocal track and high pass and pan it elsewhere in the stereo image and free drag it until it creates some delay space, I have been know to punch in and overdub to fix a word or phrase here or there, it rarely happens because we are playing at such high volume the bleed into the vocal mic is terrible..lol

[jonetsu]

I don't disagree with your comments but this video at about 5:39 gives at least some indication where things were coming from for that vocal line: https://youtu.be/x-XnPXL_HMA

Before clicking the link I kinda knew it was from Rust. The whole thing is hypercharged. OTOH I find that the context of your band's playing, with its excellent rendition of this song, was nevertheless not really at the same level, so maybe that's why that vocal line came across as perhaps misplaced. Other than that, excellent. You didn't post it here did you ? I might have missed it last month.

[GMaq]

I don't disagree with your comments but this video at about 5:39 gives at least some indication where things were coming from for that vocal line: https://youtu.be/x-XnPXL_HMA

Before clicking the link I kinda knew it was from Rust. The whole thing is hypercharged. OTOH I find that the context of your band's playing, with its excellent rendition of this song, was nevertheless not really at the same level, so maybe that's why that vocal line came across as perhaps misplaced. Other than that, excellent. You didn't post it here did you ? I might have missed it last month.

Actually not to split hairs but that clip is from 1991's Weld, only noteworthy because it eclipses "Rust" as my fave NY live album, something about the mix of the stage sound and the ambience of the venue(s) made for a magic vibe that well served both his (at the time) new Ragged Glory material and the old classic deep jams like Cortez.. I also agree that Neil is in a deep pocket universe all his own and our version is a merely a fanboy homage to both the artist and the song and not anywhere close to operating on the same level.

I had months earlier posted an edited Cortez with just the band playing but didn't post the full jam and recent new video we did here.. I had been away from the forum for months and didn't want to come back with a new music post at the time, I wanted to catch up on what others were doing. I realize we have a wonderful variety of material, styles and genres posted here but I realize in the current times 'jam band' stuff is a very tiny niche..lol

[jonetsu]

Yeah, I've seen a concert of that tour in Montreal, with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion opening. August 1984. One of the best. I've too quickly mistaken the clip as one of the Rust Never Sleeps tour.

This said do you guys work on originals ?

[lilith]

I really like that raw sound! Great track again! I don't know, but have you thought about placing the bass in the center?

[GMaq]

Yeah, I've seen a concert of that tour in Montreal, with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion opening. August 1984. One of the best. I've too quickly mistaken the clip as one of the Rust Never Sleeps tour.

This said do you guys work on originals ?

Wow!

That must have been a great show to be at!

Lol, yes we do work on originals we have 2 albums of originals out on Spotify etc. and 2 original songs done for our next project (I posted a WIP mix of "Joy" here a while back): http://bandshed.net/music/RATED_BLUE/CR ... ession.mp3

I really just enjoy playing and don't personally make a huge distinction between covers and originals, we never carbon copy covers and often play our own arrangements of them so either way there is room for some creativity.. I don't know why we gravitate to covers when there is a camera in the room... I'm never very keen on my vocals so I'm probably subconsciously avoiding putting my own stuff out there live at this point.

[GMaq]

I really like that raw sound! Great track again! I don't know, but have you thought about placing the bass in the center?

Hi lilith!

Thanks for listening!

Here comes a very long answer about the bass...

When stereo was gaining acceptance as the new standard in the mid to late 60's a lot of the mixing consoles and outboard gear didn't have panning they had "mid" and "side" settings so if something wasn't centered for mono mix it was placed at the extreme right or left of the spectrum. The most well known and extreme example of this is early Beatles albums with all the vocals in one channel and all the instruments in the other... Often if you listen to music from the psychedelic period of the late 1960's you'll find odd things like drums, tambourines, vocals will all be placed on one side or the other. So while stereo was emerging and psychedelia was flourishing 3 piece bands (or power trios) started getting more popular like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, The James Gang, Grand Funk and many more.. even bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who were really trios with a singer.. Since there were only 3 instruments and since often the bass players were much more 'busy' to help make that style of music sound full in many cases live in studio recordings were done with guitar in one channel, bass in the other and drums/vocals in the center... Who cares!? That's all ancient history!!

About 10 years I took my family to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, they had a movie where they played the history of the inductees into the hall of fame, it was in a big theatre with a huge screen and a tremendous sound system... So the show starts with the pioneers of early rock and roll and they played snippets of their songs. Of course the early stuff from the 1950's is mono and of course has the audio limitations of the recording equipment at the time, then they moved into the 60's and you can hear the fidelity and sophistication of the recordings getting better and better. Then they played some stuff from the psychedelic era ("Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces and "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane) and there is stuff all over the place... vocals coming from everywhere, percussion and tambourines to extreme right and left basses and drums way off center and it sounded incredible and so immersive. The actual mixes and effects (plate reverbs, tape echo, tape flanging) were just as much part of the song's artistic presentation as the instruments themselves... and then...

Things move into the 70's... the fidelity and sound 'quality' just gets better and better but the mixes and instrument panning positions start to stagnate and fall into the routine ruts we all hear in modern music of all kinds... basses are in the center, drums are perfectly spread across the stereo spectrum, vocals are in the center and more and more instruments like drum machines and keyboards are stereo instruments so the more instruments in a mix that are stereo the less pronounced the effect of 2 separate channels.. As they get into the music of the 80's and 90's everything gets more gloss and digital perfection and less character... So am I an old fart who hates modern music?? Of course not, I love all kinds of music from all kinds of genres including the amazing EDM stuff you guys put up here.. However I do miss the times when the mixing and positioning of the instruments was a more prominent and less structured part of the process and when people would do stuff just because they felt like it and not to conform to a standard..

I love trio bands, I love power trio mixes, I love the pioneering spirit of those times and the openness to try new things and lastly our bass player is so damn good I think he deserves his own channel!! I love this concept so much I've given it it's own name!

[lilith]

I really like that raw sound! Great track again! I don't know, but have you thought about placing the bass in the center?

Hi lilith!

Thanks for listening!

Here comes a very long answer about the bass...

When stereo was gaining acceptance as the new standard in the mid to late 60's a lot of the mixing consoles and outboard gear didn't have panning they had "mid" and "side" settings so if something wasn't centered for mono mix it was placed at the extreme right or left of the spectrum. The most well known and extreme example of this is early Beatles albums with all the vocals in one channel and all the instruments in the other... Often if you listen to music from the psychedelic period of the late 1960's you'll find odd things like drums, tambourines, vocals will all be placed on one side or the other. So while stereo was emerging and psychedelia was flourishing 3 piece bands (or power trios) started getting more popular like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, The James Gang, Grand Funk and many more.. even bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who were really trios with a singer.. Since there were only 3 instruments and since often the bass players were much more 'busy' to help make that style of music sound full in many cases live in studio recordings were done with guitar in one channel, bass in the other and drums/vocals in the center... Who cares!? That's all ancient history!!

About 10 years I took my family to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, they had a movie where they played the history of the inductees into the hall of fame, it was in a big theatre with a huge screen and a tremendous sound system... So the show starts with the pioneers of early rock and roll and they played snippets of their songs. Of course the early stuff from the 1950's is mono and of course has the audio limitations of the recording equipment at the time, then they moved into the 60's and you can hear the fidelity and sophistication of the recordings getting better and better. Then they played some stuff from the psychedelic era ("Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces and "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane) and there is stuff all over the place... vocals coming from everywhere, percussion and tambourines to extreme right and left basses and drums way off center and it sounded incredible and so immersive. The actual mixes and effects (plate reverbs, tape echo, tape flanging) were just as much part of the song's artistic presentation as the instruments themselves... and then...

Things move into the 70's... the fidelity and sound 'quality' just gets better and better but the mixes and instrument panning positions start to stagnate and fall into the routine ruts we all hear in modern music of all kinds... basses are in the center, drums are perfectly spread across the stereo spectrum, vocals are in the center and more and more instruments like drum machines and keyboards are stereo instruments so the more instruments in a mix that are stereo the less pronounced the effect of 2 separate channels.. As they get into the music of the 80's and 90's everything gets more gloss and digital perfection and less character... So am I an old fart who hates modern music?? Of course not, I love all kinds of music from all kinds of genres including the amazing EDM stuff you guys put up here.. However I do miss the times when the mixing and positioning of the instruments was a more prominent and less structured part of the process and when people would do stuff just because they felt like it and not to conform to a standard..

I love trio bands, I love power trio mixes, I love the pioneering spirit of those times and the openness to try new things and lastly our bass player is so damn good I think he deserves his own channel!! I love this concept so much I've given it it's own name!

Thanks for that long answer. Yup, I thought it's due to something like that. It's cool, but it sounds a bit odd when sitting infront of near field monitors. I watched a video some time ago where the drums were all in one channel. That sounded pretty strange. Maybe cause I'm not used to it.

[Rainmak3r]

Incredibly groovy, great track!