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Pocket

By onezero on May 1, 2016 10:25 pm

Having a bunch of work to concentrate on this week, I whipped up some steady kick drum beats (acoustic kit samples and 808, and later augmented them with some hand percussion and hand claps. A little electric piano filled in on bass and added some chordal color...but I ended up stripping these out after I tracked real bass.  (Once again, I'm back to the dialectic approach of two simultaneous bass lines in places).  I busted out the Res-O-Glas for guitar, and some initial chords...just didn't seem right.  Putting that aside, I put down a few snippets using my Pocket Operator (the Sub version), and a few of those went in during the break and for a few bits after that.

I tracked more guitar, at first through my new recording amp (Vox AC4TV), but the small-diaphragm condenser I was using to mic it didn't seem right for the track--there was much more bass energy in the room than the mic was picking up.  (I'll want to figure out the right mic for this, because it does sound good.)  For this one, clean seemed to be the way to go.   A couple times I time-stretched guitar snippets for a sort of horn/viola tonality, just to see what would happen, and it mostly fit.

Return channels: two convolution reverbs (large studio chamber and a church for the Pocket Operator) and a channel of Filter Delay into Beat Repeat for all those percussion variations. 

Mix and arrangement were a bit of a struggle, but in the end...this mostly wanted to be a disco track.  So get down.

Title from the fact that I used the Pocket Operator, and because things kind of seemed to sit in the pocket rhythmically.

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Loved the combination of the drums and strings! Downloading it!

Oh yesss… this is really good. Also downloaded. ::)

Nice vibe. I like the bass line.

So good, always look forward to what you put out each week, very nice disco/funk vibe to this, great balance of sit back and relax yet also makes you want to move

Very cool, the riff at the start reminds me of a Stranglers song, but the name escapes me at the moment. Listening to this on a Sun blessed day in London (year pretty rare) it feels right.

Damn thats Funky! It reminds me at the 70´s. I think the Vocals are waiting smile

A nice pocket to be in, a sunny day strut. Nice vibe here, love the bass and guitar work as usual and enjoy the panning, delayed percussion bits.

Funky and good. Perfect for watching the landscape passing by outside the train as I am listening.

This one really kicks into high gear about halfway through when the clapping and weird sounds come in

Really digging the percussion effects, as usual. I'm gonna have to play around with Beat Repeat some time...

Hey, this is cool.  Great percussion and bass.  I'm a fan of two or more bass lines. Cool delay/stutter effect on the percussion. Fun reverb whale song in the middle!  Well done!

rANGEL wrote:

Loved the combination of the drums and strings! Downloading it!

Jim Wood wrote:

Oh yesss… this is really good. Also downloaded. ::)

BTS wrote:

Nice vibe. I like the bass line.

Jason Nijjer wrote:

So good, always look forward to what you put out each week, very nice disco/funk vibe to this, great balance of sit back and relax yet also makes you want to move

Thank you all!  High praise!

Robroy wrote:

Very cool, the riff at the start reminds me of a Stranglers song, but the name escapes me at the moment. Listening to this on a Sun blessed day in London (year pretty rare) it feels right.

Ah--that's an association I wouldn't have thought of...but I did spend a lot of hours as a teenager listening to the first four Stranglers discs.  Great bass player, JJ--and a heck of a compliment.

m2K7 wrote:

Damn thats Funky! It reminds me at the 70´s. I think the Vocals are waiting smile

Thank you!  I'm going to have to figure out a vocal way in.  My vocals...are usually not at all funky.

miraclemiles wrote:

A nice pocket to be in, a sunny day strut. Nice vibe here, love the bass and guitar work as usual and enjoy the panning, delayed percussion bits.

Plantrain wrote:

Funky and good. Perfect for watching the landscape passing by outside the train as I am listening.

Thank you! 

CrazyBob wrote:

This one really kicks into high gear about halfway through when the clapping and weird sounds come in

Really digging the percussion effects, as usual. I'm gonna have to play around with Beat Repeat some time...

Thanks, Bob!  Yeah, the Pocket Operators kind of take it over the top. For Beat Repeat, I really like starting with Fill In The Blanks, but taking out the down-pitching and volume drop-off, and then kicking up the variations.

NWSPR wrote:

Hey, this is cool.  Great percussion and bass.  I'm a fan of two or more bass lines. Cool delay/stutter effect on the percussion. Fun reverb whale song in the middle!  Well done!

Thank you!  Glad you all liked it!

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