Inside 71 Slice channel review.

Garry Moore The Prophet Cover

Slice has a very long way to go. he hasn’t got an exceptional technique as a guitarist, he is well within the average and will not shine in this region without hard work. As a performer he has got the feel, but needs to work on his expressiveness, musically and theatrically. He has made progress and we are helping him to find the way to his style. But this is a journey that he has to do on his own. As a guide to his personal evolution as a musician. I am going to review some hints in his channel uploads.  

My personal review of Slice’s channel in You Tube and the covers he has uploaded. To this day Slice has uploaded 14 covers since March 2010. As you may say he is not very productive, and you are very right to say so. so lets see what he has shared with us.

Looking at his playlist there is one obvious artist that stands out over the rest, that is Pink Floyd. Slice has done 4 covers of 3 songs or parts, these are the earlier covers and are dated from March 2010 when he opened the channel. This first cover was for the David Gilmore “Comfortably Numb” second solo, as recorded live for the P.U.L.S.E. Album during the tour of the same name. Here Slice is 14 years old, his performance is not the cleanest and he does make a few minor mistakes, but listening to the cover you can hear that he has managed to find some tone and a feel for the solo. The sound is not that good since he recorded it with a small Casio camera and there is far to much ambience noise. One thing to notice is that he took the video so that his face was not visible.

Comfortably Numb cover number one. 9 March 2010

He later repeated this cover in a second video in July the same year only 3 months later, this is a much more mature video. He uses the Sony Handy Cam, this improves the video and audio quality. He performs a much richer solo with much more feel and intensity to it, cleaner in performance and with a more responsive and adequate tone. He also appears full headed so that the viewers can see him from this video on will be the standard.    

Second cover of Comfortably Numb Jun 2010

Following the Pink Floyd Covers are a Money solo cover from the Dark Side of the Moon and a full song cover of Shine on you Crazy Diamond Part One from the Live P.U.L.S.E Album. this is a 13 minute and 25 second cover and was recorded on December 2010. This is a long cover with several parts. This is song has a lot of dynamics, that the player has to keep the right mood and feel through the various stages.  

Shine On You Crazy Diamond Cover

In between these two last covers Slice added a Guns N’ Roses solo from the “Chinese Democracy” Album This I Love song originally played by Dj Asbha. a very emotional piece with lost of bends and vibrato 

Slice has done a few rhythmic covers, where no solos are involved like “Sum 41” With Me full song cover, Green Day American Idiot full song cover, “Disciple” After The World full song cover and “3Doors Down” Here Without You full song cover.

With Me Cover for Sum 41

One exception to the rest of the covers is the “Jimi Hendrix” Little Wing intro cover, this cover is different since Slice plays it there is no backing track. This is a Classic and there are many grate covers in the Tube.

Jimi Hendrix Little Wing Cover

As Slice has been making progress in his performing techniques he has also started refining the video and audio recording quality. Note that as he added more covers he started editing the footage using several frames for different instruments played simultaneously a good exposure of this can be the cover Slice made of “Dire Straits” Sultans Of Swing song from the Dire Straits album. Here Slice uses the same hand picking technique that is so characteristic of Mark Knopfler. this is also one of the videos that has received a high rating since day one. Further progress has been the sound mixing on the early videos Slice would play the original song on his PC though his external speakers and played in to his Roland Cube amplifier and matched the volumes of both. Se other post that can provide further info on how we are doing it now.

Dire Straits Sultans Of Swing Cover

The final step has been the inclusion of Chroma Key video recording and editing to provide a better visual experience. The main goal is however to maintain and centre the attention on Slice’s and his performing and not that much on the videos. However there needs to be an appealing video with motion and character to keep the viewers attention.

Don’t Cry Guns N’ Roses Cover

So far we things have been slow but the new project STW that Slice is working on is a major change in direction and we are working for your enjoyment. 

I will be on vacations for a week so I will skip some posts but will be back the second week of January with new stuff that I hope you enjoy.

Remember to comment and subscribe if you have liked this blog. and please follow Slice’s channel on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Thanks and Happy New Year to everybody. 

The Crossroads, a compromise.

As musician's and an artists, ¿what are we willing to trade of for making it? Some would sell their sole’s to the devil like in the movie Crossroads, ¿But is this true? Not quite. The devil doesn’t want your sole he is after your integrity (bad word). Integrity meant in the terms of commercial compromise. Long since, music more than an art is an industry, musician's have soled their soles to record companies in return for the use of there marketing machine. Yet it is the ego of the artist that burns in this trade not the sole. When an artist wants to make it  in the music scene, the first thing he need to realise is that he himself and his art are going no were. This only means that while he may have the talent and the art, he lacks the resources, connections and machinery to put it altogether. Getting anywhere nowadays requires a potent combination of both. The tricky part is that the combinations have to mix ingredients like ego and profit, to often a musicians ego will stand in his way, “I am the artist and nobody tells me how to do my art” well fine, but wrong. there is some one out there spending money making others work for you so that you can use your art, but there is a price to pay. This doesn’t mean that you are a musical prostitutes, it is a give and take compromise and most of times seen afterwards the give is not that much of an ego thing as you tend to make it. What the record company wants is to add some commercial value, Most of the times very subtle changes introduced by experts in the business that know more that you  do of how to make a song hit. I have always thought that it is best to listen and talk to each other and try to se what is the purpose and how it can be achieved, you can be surprised at how close you can come and how easy it sometimes becomes to reach a compromise. 

On the other hand what kind of an artist is oneself, if he cant bring his personality and ways onto everything he does, no mater what. This is one of the flags musician wave all the time. Some will agree with these words “I can play 3 blind mice and you could still tell it was me” and naturally they would be right. Try to imagine Jimi Hendrix, or SRV or Prince or Eddie Van Halen on a guitar, or Steve Wonder or John Lord on the key boards. how about Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant, Sting or Sneer O'Connor on the vocals. They would simply make the tune their own and print their style and signature on it. If you can make your self distinguishable as an artist in any discipline there is no compromise it is a signature, not anything to fuss about. So any musician that can come across as such will find a way to accommodate the commercial requirements without losing his self esteem and originality. Being flexible also gives you the opportunity to be stubborn at real critical things. it is as I said a give and take.

What is my purpose in this post? well really I see Slice and other young musicians very concerned in the bravado mega ego aspect. This is my song, my music, my playing I don’t allow any body to tell me, I am the artist, the creator and I won’t listen to anybody. I thinks that they need to re think this attitude and learn that everybody is on the same side, everybody wants him to succeed because his success is everybody's success. What is worse his failure, is everybody’s failure and failing costs a lot of money, time and resources.  At the same time a musician wants to sell his music as much as the record company does. This binds both interest and differences in the same tie, levelling thing in everyone's stakes.  

To keep it short Ill stop here, Please send you comments I am really interested in all  different perspectives if any one has any.

Please keep track of Slice at his You Tube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed.

Ian.

Slice & STW Mixing

Mixing in music is a procedure where we blend different tracks with audio content to make a musical piece. The general idea is to merge them together and make one resulting peace where everything is balanced. In a way, all instruments create a pleasing result. In this scenario a producer or engineer try's to combine different techniques to obtain a uniform result where all instruments are matched, and they all have their room and place in the mix. There is a hole array of tools that help in this task, being the Mixing Console the most obvious but not the only one. With all recorded instrument or vocals tracks assigned to one channel each on the console, the engineer set’s the input gain and output father so all are combined in the way wanted. This is being simplistic and it is what I want for this post at this point, I will work down the post providing further detail and I will complement with an other post soon.

For now let’s say that the relative volume of all parts have a necessary matching amplitude between each other. This requires attention to all parts. Finding room in the frequency spectrum, the stereo image and the depth picture for every instrument is a planning and exercising task. On top of this the producer needs to provide room to make one or another predominant at different time when they have the lead roll on the track (vocals, guitar, keyboards etc.). He also needs to glue them al together in a way that they are tight in a musical sense.

Mixing the STW project is different in many ways. I mean different not harder or easier. The goal for the STW mix is different and the approach changes, Slice is covering a song and will be predominant over the backing track. The first peculiarity is that we use the original song as a backing track, this source has already been mixed and mastered, there for we have little headroom there to work with. Specially if we want to keep as much as possible of the original as possible. So we already have a mix that has been maxed out in frequency spectrum and layout, Stereo image and Depth. In other words our box is full.

Second we want to put Slice’s performance on top in the most respectful way and at the same time provides sufficient performance data that the listener can distinguish Slice form the original. It is obvious that the first approach will be decrease the level of the original just enough to provide room for Slice.

Amplitude Diagram

This however has a flaw to it Slice is not covering the full spectrum range so we need to work in two dimensions amplitude (volume) and tone (frequencies). This leaves us with a moral issue, How? I don’t want to alter the original, so I intend to introduce no effects or mods to the original and EQ would be just that, so ruled off.

Frequency Spectrum Diagram

A third dimension is the stereo image, this has an easier approach, the solution here is to widen the stereo image using stereo enhancement on the new performance and play with the stereo gaps of the original. the same as with Depth it seems reasonable to bring the added performances to the front and widen this dimension.

Stereo image and Depth Diagram     

Also to be considered is the fact that not al songs on the STW project are in the same style or mood. While not a limiting fact it does need to be brought through on the cover mix not just in the performance done by Slice, but also in the production part. This also requires planning and getting the hole picture in to scope before you even start recording. If you don't get the mood right and this is some times not that easy you may end up with an out of place cover and have affected the mode of the original song.

Some mixes are very busy the same as others have more room and are more disperse, This variation in the amount of instruments fighting to get room in the mix is an additional over head. They can’t be treated in the same way and it is not always the case that less busy mixes are easier since you in theory have more room. Silence is one of the hardest instruments to work with, and some times calm and clean passages can give more work than expected. having a full idea of how you will treat a specific song and how you will use the space or lack of it is key to getting your desired results.

The first cover we have done, putting all this theory together is the Cover to Gun’s ‘N’ Roses ballad Don’t Cry form the Use Your Illusion 1 album. Here Slice only performs 3 different guitars, and only 2 simultaneously at any time. This is a Ballad and mood is very important and predominant in different parts of the song so this had to be accounted for. Also this song builds form a relatively relaxed mix to a busier one during the chorus, the solo, and the finale. so two different approaches where necessary.Finally the original song used as the backing track is a potent one and the Vocals by Axel Rose and the Guitar craft by Slash mesh in a dramatic mix, this made a big difference sin Slice had to com in on that same mood and not lose the effect. Yes we needed to overpower Slash at some part, but still wanted to keep the presence of his mastering sound.      

I have to admit that there are some things that can be done to this mix to improve the result but it was the first attempt and I was also a bit overrun by the video and Chroma key part. Yes this is my excuse, but lest see what comes out with the next covers.

That's about all for now on this. I will get some more stuff coming soon.

Pease comment and thanks for taking the time in reading.

Follow Slice in his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Ian Burt