dr00bles wrote: And may I publicly mention to the forum that the members of the Project have been nothing but respectful and awesome to me during this process (even though they certainly did not need to be!). They are the gold standard in professionalism.
That's because I haven't logged on yet, you son of a b...haha sike! I am a Project Alum, and I am glad to see that the conversations and comments involving my ex-group members are being well received. I thank you for your compliment on behalf of the group members who are not able to post on here. And not to beat a dead horse, but I agree with you in terms of a disdain for over-production. I love singing for the sake of singing. I am not a fan of octavizers or distortion effects over the voices. The only things I am comfortable with are slight auto-tuning (for my ears' sake) and some effects on the perc to make them sound slightly more realistic. My mom and brother are both drummers, so I like to hear a good strong beat in a song.
Also, to speak specifically to my two songs (And Then... and Listen...) because I know them better than any of the other songs on the CD, we used some effects just to liven them up a bit. "Listen..." is a simple and repetitive arrangement because of the song it is based on (The Doobie Brothers were talented, but this wasn't one of their songs where they showed off their musical prowess) and we used some effects on the bridge to give it that trippy effect that was in the original song. We do not use these effects live. In "And Then..." we decided to add that little intro because the song starts rather abruptly otherwise. We don't do that chord progression live, and it was in fact written on the spot in the studio one day specifically for something different. I think the ethereal effects added to it (chorus and reverb perhaps?) go along well with the song, and help to recreate some of the overtone and echo sound that you would hear at one of our live performances (depending on the venue, of course). I wish I could speak more to the other tracks on the album, but honestly I am not knowledgeable enough in the realm of album production to attempt a breakdown of the process used for our album.
Just to reiterate what our Newbie Jack said earlier, we tried as much as possible to keep the album natural because that is what we pride ourselves in: Strong, Natural, Live performances. However, we simply don't have the access to the equipment necessary for a phenomenal recording of a live album (which is still a rather questionable endeavor since "live" albums still get edited and produced to a certain extent. Raw albums just aren't that pleasing to the ear unless they are practically flawless, and honestly, how often does that happen?). In the end, all I know is that we are very happy with both how our album came out, and our overall scores on here.
dr00bles wrote:And, good sir, I mean this with no sarcasm or suspicion - if you say you did not use an octave generator on the bass lines, then you have bass power that I have never heard before (listen to the intro to "Crazy!").
I can assure you that to my knowledge, no octave generator was used anywhere on our CD, including the intro to crazy. We have two gentlemen (Mike Held and Kevin Gillingham) who can really sing THAT low. But I can hear what I think what you may be hearing, and that is the production used on the bass drum mixing with the low notes of the bass line. The notes themselves, however, are definitely human-produced and not computerized.