The Rain Forest

As a lad of 25 I taught my best mate to play guitar, and over time he became a competent and creative rhythm guitarist. We spent many evenings with a bottle of Irish and two reel to reel sony tape decks unwittingly following Pink Floyd's creative method (play Em and D for two hours). After a few years I moved to Norway and my mate moved to Canada leaving each of us with about an hours worth of different clips from our sessions. Mostly rubbish, but one was the Rain Forest which tells the story of a Victorian explorer who vanished into the Amazon rain forest in search of a lost city (yes one of those). Ever since then I have been trying to finish that piece - well re-write and re-record it really. After over 25 years of on-off attempts I have finally got it to the point where I would like to share it and get some feedback. However it is over 12 MB as an mp3 and over 13 mins long! Is there any way I can post it without having to cut it down? - it is built from over 50 tracks and needs to be heard as a single piece.

Is there any way I can post it without having to cut it down? - it is built from over 50 tracks and needs to be heard as a single piece.

I've made a subtle modification to the forum settings - this allows for a larger attachment size, but less of them per post. As long as your MP3 is less than 13MB, it should post fine. Alternatively, I think that you can still put it on Karl's FTP site without any particular size restriction.

Thanks a lot Steve! I shall upload as soon as the latest mixdown is done (it takes about 10minutes each time now!)

    
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I keep getting this message when I try to post - any idea why? I am submitting a reply and everything is filled out - is it the size of the attachment? Do you have a link to the instructions for posting via Karls ftp site?

I have tried several times with no success, I then tried loading it to Karl's ftp space, using Cuteftp, but whenever I try to do anything it says the file/folder cannot be found - I can't my delete my old files that are up there, or add new ones. So I am stuck unless anyone has a good idea? anyone?

I have tried several times with no success, I then tried loading it to Karl's ftp space, using Cuteftp, but whenever I try to do anything it says the file/folder cannot be found - I can't my delete my old files that are up there, or add new ones. So I am stuck unless anyone has a good idea? anyone?

Hmm............... I tried Karl's site with all the correct credentials, and had the same problem. We'll have to contact him, I suspect.

I also had a look at the forum settings, and I can't find anything that would cause the upload timeout either - which rather implies that this is a server setting I can't do anything about. I tried making the connection persistent, but that didn't alter a thing. The reason for the No Subject - Message Body thing is easy though - the attachment gets written first, and the message afterwards. So if the attachment fails, then it looks like a complete cock-up, even though it isn't, necessarily.

What this seems to imply is that there's not any real need for us to put a size limit on uploads - the server appears to have the ability to stuff them anyway from any reasonable-speed connection. I mean, if it can't do this from my broadband connection, which is the fastest currently available in the UK, what chance does anybody else stand?

Oh well, I shall set up my free web page from my ISP and see if it is big enough to post a link to it there. Otherwise the song will have to remain a mystery for a while

OK, if I have done it right (and there are no guarantees of that!) you can download the song http://home.online.no/~mar-stev/artimages/TheRainForest.mp3 I think you have to roght-click and save the link otherwise it just plays it direct. I hope yoou like it and give me some feedback!

Wow MarkT and friend! First three minutes are cool! Deep Forest, Pink Floyd, Ayreon, a little bit of Secret Garden. More of that please!

After that, the song wasn't able to keep me interested. I don't like the drums. They don't seem to fit the ambience and are too pronounced. I guess it's a matter of taste, but I think the song is better off without them in their present state: from 6:35 it sounds much better again. And those guitars, 9:19 and on, and somewhere at the end of the song: are they out of key?

Yet, overall: respect! It must have cost you hours (well: years in fact).

Hi Stan and thanks for the feedback. The drums have been like that since I started the piece, so I haven't really thought about them since. The idea was a Pink Floydish effect, where the drums don't settle into a rhythm but punctuate the repeated chords until the vocal section starts. Did you feel the drums behind the vocal didn't fit either?

As to the guitars, they are doubled then put through completely different amp/cabinet/effects set ups in Amplitube. It may be that that makes them seem out of key. It's possible they are out of key, but I don't think so.

Any further comments gratefully received - how are the vocals?

Did you feel the drums behind the vocal didn't fit either?

No, they were ok then, although the sound of them doesn't quit fit the atmosphere (like I said, most probably a matter of personal taste).

It's possible they are out of key, but I don't think so.

Sorry for that, I should have been more precise. Have a listen at e.g. 9:17 - 9:20 and  9:20 -9:23: the harmonic guitar/second guitar (don't know how to indicate it otherwise) is slightly out of key.. There are some other moments of that later on, which is a pity because overall the guitar sounds ok.

how are the vocals?

Vocals are okay. Yours?

Thanks again Stan,

What I meant about the guitars is there is only one guitar, copied and then each copy processed differently and panned to each side. Maybe there is a phasing effect making it sound out of key - I shall have a close listen - more likely I played a bum note on the original track!

Okay, I've listened to it. Let's start at the beginning... (no I'm not doing a Julie Andrews!)

That weird voice at the beginning (the woman) sounds as though it's pitched - but not in the key the intro seems to be in, and that sounds plain wrong. Trouble is, I'm not quite sure what to suggest there - I think it may be beyond a pitch shift, although experimenting is probably in order.

The drums... well, I understand what you are trying to do, and I disagree with the previous comments! The drums sound almost 'unreal', and are certainly too far back in the mix. But the 'unreal' bit is worrying - I'd replace these with different samples, and the other thing I'd do is not to have quite so many cymbal crashes landing on emphasised guitar notes - they are fighting with each other. I think that reverb may help here, too - certainly on the toms.

The vocal... This is too clear! I think that I'd try to reduce the dynamics of it as a performance, and then feed it into the mix with automation to get the levels right. As far as the 'too clear' bit is concerned, it sounds as though it needs more lower-mid EQ and less top - and also perhaps double-tracking. All this is just to make it sound as though it's actually part of the mix, rather than stuck on top of it, which is what it sounds like now. I think that it should sound like a Pink Floyd vocal, or thereabouts, basically.

My other problem with the vocals is those repeats. Apart from them not decaying fast enough, the thing that I found most annoying was what I can only call 'the repeat of too much of the line with the repeat at the end of it'. For instance, if we take the last one - 'that no-one else could find - {no-one else} could find, could find, could find... I don't think that you should have the second {bracketed} 'no-one else' in there at all, and just get on with the repeat - where it should be, rather than after some redundant words. I'm afraid that it sounds clumsy. The repeat needs a bit of reverb on it, certainly, but it probably needs compressing as well, so that it remains clear as it decays. All that requires experimenting with, I suspect.

Overall, it nearly works. And it probably could work, but you have to be careful with what's emphasised at any given moment - you really don't want the drums crashing into the vocals, or come to that, the guitar either. The minor tuning issues are neither here nor there, really - apart from that one at the beginning, they don't intrude. I suspect that it could do with being just a little shorter, although you'd probably need to ask more people about where precisely they get fed up with each section - if they do, that is; I don't think that I could come up with a definitive answer to that - well, not off the cuff, anyway.

But it's good that you've got it to the state where you feel that you can share, and I think that with a bit of fine tuning of some parts, it will be fine.

Thanks Steve, just the kind of input I was hoping for from you. The girl at the beginning is actually an amazon indian girl singing about cicadas, I sampled it and pitch shifted and time shifted it to fit - I thought! The idea was to have it not crash with the backing, but sound separate - maybe it worked better than I thought! Maybe the answer is to have it with no music behind so that it doesn't clash so badly.

The drums are from BFD and are real drum samples - but maybe I have processed them into unreality - I shall ceratinly look at the cymbal/guitar conflict.

I felt the same about the vocals - but as it takes over 10minutes to mixdown each time I thought I would put it out there and get some comments before I tried to fix it. I think I understand what you mean about the repeats - again I shall listen with that in mind.

I guess the main problem with teh vocals is that I had mixed everything together before adding the vocals (it took me so long to figure out what to sing and how!) that I'm not surprised they don't sit right yet.

Well, that's given me enough to keep me going for a while -with so many tracks it will take at least a week to have a new version ready, but I enjoy it.

Thanks again!

Just to clarify on the repeats are you saying remove the extra words but leave the repeats where they are,"no one else could find................could find, could find...etc  or start the repeats straight after the last word  "no one else could find, could find, could find....."?

Thanks Steve, just the kind of input I was hoping for from you. The girl at the beginning is actually an amazon indian girl singing about cicadas, I sampled it and pitch shifted and time shifted it to fit - I thought! The idea was to have it not crash with the backing, but sound separate - maybe it worked better than I thought! Maybe the answer is to have it with no music behind so that it doesn't clash so badly.

I think that it would actually sound better if it was at the same pitch as the backing and actually sounded as though it was supposed to be a part of it... because the impression that I got, I suspect that others will as well - that it's intended to be integrated.

Just to clarify on the repeats are you saying remove the extra words but leave the repeats where they are,"no one else could find................could find, could find...etc  or start the repeats straight after the last word  "no one else could find, could find, could find....."?

The latter - don't leave a gap. Just time them so that they fit rhythmically. The other thing that might work well is to reduce the level of bass in the voice through the repeats - or even gradually turn it 'telephone' - this can be very effective.