On The Inside (original song, soulful hard rock)

[JonJon]

Been working hard on getting my mixes better. This one took about a week. Good learning experience. Not perfect but im somewhat proud of it

 

Approximately 80 tracks involved

 

Its going to be a fairly low quality upload because its an MP3 to start with and then uploaded to an MP3 site

On The Inside, scratch full mix #1

 

EDIT: Rebalanced mix, much better On the Inside, rebalanced mix#1

 

Enjoy, JJ

[Musikman7002]

Hi JonJon. I enjoyed this track and would love to hear it again after a more thorough mix. I don't have much to critique here just some observation. I really liked the bridge where you doubled the vocal. It kind of put me in the mind of Paul Stanley a bit or specifically like a Kiss type of bridge. I like the tone of your voice and would love to hear it up front of the mix a bit more. I understand the early stages of mixing can be a chore but you are onto something with this song. I write a lot of originals as well and know how hard it can be to create the whole sound of the track. It can be much easier at times to just cover material. I feel the song is strong overall and just needs to have the mix punched up a bit. Great Job.

 

[JonJon]

yeah. Thanks for the kind words. Have heard enough times already how this mix sucks, this sucks, that sucks.

Spent about a week on this song now, ready for a break. Im no closer to finishing it than before I started it. Good luck finding a "reference track" for something like this.

I doubt ill be tackling anymore 80 track songs any time soon

 

The whole musical trip is really weird. I started posting my guitar/drum jams on Fbook. People would say "it sounds weird without words". So I take it upon myself to start singing. Now I feel I have my voice responding well. Of course, as you may know, its never enough. Now I have to have a pro mix too. Im assuming that when I get my mixes together someone will want a video so they can really "feel it"

 

here ya go, a fun little stripped down mix

On the Inside, LSD mix

 

A couple more from my massive collection of world famous songs. if nothing else I always could write a good, trippy bridge

The Garden

Another Fool

[ronws]

Yeah, look, I know, you are proud of how old and stubborn you are. And I am older, with more practice being stubborn. Finish the production, secure copyright, get it released.

Then, get ahold of JJ Abrams and / or who ever his music person is and get it synchro-licensed to the next Star Trek movie. This would be awesome in that sound track, with Chris Pine doing all kinds of daring-do.

But I know you want rear back and prove how stubborn you are and dismiss my advice. Well, come at me bro ...

[JonJon]

actually im pretty sure I could do TV/soundtrack type work lol

 

"finish the production".   When I hear that I hear, "bench press 400lbs".   Quite an uphill struggle. Laptop really maxed out on that song and I had to "freeze" pretty much all of the tracks as I went...so its a bit of a chore to keep working on it.

needs to be totally remixed from the ground up. Dunno.

 

Besides, I have seen the future.

 

lol. Folksy harmonized stuff is the truth

 

[ronws]

Yeah, send me your address so I can fed-ex you a box of tissues for your tears. Finish the song, anyway. You already have more than the Beatles had when they started out.

Take advice from David Lee Roth from the song "Crazy from the Heat."

"I ain't complaining, you do the best with what you've got. I know you're laughing 'cause it's easy to tell

I'm going crazy ...."

 

[JonJon]

3 hours ago, ronws said:

 You already have more than the Beatles had when they started out.

except for the whole George Martin thing....

[ronws]

I'll ease off now. I will say this, though, if you spend the effort to state why something cannot be done, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Musikman7002]

JonJon, I feel your pain about mixing. I am not the best at it either. I have used a few services where I uploaded files to a shared server and the studio pros mixed my tracks for me with very good results. It isn't super expensive either around 175ish per track. Not per hour etc and you are sent back reference mixes for approval or for making suggestions. It is fairly cheap but if you write a lot of music it can add up lol. Either way I love the track brother and will check out more of your writing.

[JonJon]

40 minutes ago, ronws said:

I'll ease off now. I will say this, though, if you spend the effort to state why something cannot be done, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

never ever said anything COULDNT be done. I fully plan to make mindblowing music. I just like to reiterate and complain out loud how every single itty bitty step has to be some extreme uphill battle.

The Beatles were 4 guys plus a great producer plus studio musicians and  none of them ever worked a day in their lives. Im 1 guy doing this on top of a full time job. You know the spiel

 

Matthew 21:28-32

²⁸ “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

²⁹ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

³⁰ “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

³¹ “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

-----

 

Im like the first son. I moan and complain but in the end im getting the work done

 

[ronws]

So, I gather. Whereas, I learned a few times that it does no good to complain. Like one friend said, "no one listens, anyway."

And I have had great recordings using a cheap mic and Audacity, before. So, I know Reaper and my other mics do just as well or better. But in either case, it boils down to what I do with it.

And I have had a few people tell me I could not do a particular thing. And I would prove them wrong, which can be a delicious feeling, at times.

A co-worker and friend of mine said I would not be able to get a master electrician license because the test is just so hard, blah, blah, and blah. And so, that year, I took the test twice and passed the second time. First time, I use a study guide all summer. Didn't pass. Second time, waiting for the testing date, I did word search puzzles and passed. And let him know I did word search puzzles. So, not only did I get to prove him wrong, but rub it in a little.

The object of a word search puzzle and code book test is the same. The answer is right in front of your eyeballs, literally. You just have to allow yourself to see it.

And, I finished the exam before anyone else. 100 questions, 5 hours, open book. Even after re-checking all of my answers, I was finished at 4 hours and 25 minutes. I made sure my friend knew that, too.

And the next time I got a word search puzzle book, I wrote on the cover, "Ron's Master Electrician Study Guide" and took it to work.

It's how I was raised. My mother had a saying, "May God have mercy on your soul, because I won't."

Which was awfully close to the motto of the Outlaws MC - "God forgives, Brotherhood doesn't."

And I was still his friend but there are things I cannot forget.

So, take the things you feel you cannot accomplish and then prove yourself wrong.

[JonJon]

good learning curve. I have figured out a major mistake ive been making on all my mixes...including those ive posted here,

Since i always start with drums, I tend to have them WAAAAAYYY to hot. Then I add guitars and im probably already up around -5db or so. So I dont have much headroom to play with and as I add tracks it just gets to be a mess and ive had to resort to all kinds of freaky workarounds to get the levels even vaguely right

So I took my mix that I posted above, which sucks, and I pulled everything down to nothing and I started with drums at a nice low level and I added bass and then guitar. Wow, its like magic lol. No running out of headroom, no having to do weird doubling sends on extra tracks etc etc.

 

Its great...im like halfway to being an idiot savante

[JonJon]

nothing like 14 hours of mixing to make u feel like a man..or something

EDIT: Rebalanced mix, much better On the Inside, rebalanced mix#1

 

[ronws]

I like this mix better. It sounds cleaner.

[JonJon]

40 minutes ago, ronws said:

I like this mix better. It sounds cleaner.

yeah, much better, the drums and bass are more audible. I did have to redo ONE out of tune vocal too lol (im sure I left plenty of out of tune stuff but thats just for flavor lol)

[Jeremy Mohler]

Really dig this track man, dig the gritty and breathy low singing complimented by the piercing high mid range stuff. It's hard for me to pinpoint the influences in here but I could almost say this is some Electric Light Orchestra-esque stuff hahaha.  Especially that psychedelic break with the harmonies... reminds me of this: 

Great job overall man, not really in a place to give you criticism vocally as you are out singing the hell out of me here lol.  Btw: really dug the ad-libs you threw in there, sounded genuinely soulful and 70s rockish.  

[JonJon]

Thanks brother,

 

tbh, it would be moreso the BeeGees than Queen or ELO. Not because I dont like Q or ELO, but simply because I sang falsetto stuff for years so I used to amuse myself singing BeeGees stuff and some of the Elton John high notes

Its that and a general Motown vibe

 

There is also a general thing with my songs so far along these lines. Write a decent song etc, but then when u get to the bridge cut loose and throw in a monkey wrench or go hard psychedelic or have a breakdown or something. My songs almost always have a new chord or total change in tonality in the bridge

if you listen to this one track with its isolated vocals, you'll understand about 20% of my musical inspiration and about 60% for this one song of mine. These guys were HUGE when I was in like the 4th grade so there was no escaping it

 

Basically this song demonstrates a certain spot in the evolution of my singing where I had been doing sirens for a few months and hadnt recorded any songs in the meantime. So I experienced some added range blah blah. So basically when I did this song I sort of went crazy just throwing in a million vocal adlibs. There was nothing really systematic about it lol

Just like the "TMV" song (Sing my Song or whatever it might end up being called) was partially to show off my nice F#5 note lol

 

So now I feel like I need to work on 2 things.

1) naturally I am nowhere near satisfied sitting under a brick wall at F#5 so that needs to be improved. I think C6, Mark Boals style, is a good target to aim for lol

2) start working more on mid range strength so I can get a more ballsy, chesty sound for instance like David Lee Roth/DIO etc. Im assuming that will largely be a TA strength thing. But I also need to start working on different compressed/gritty tones. I can probably do some decent distortion but I havent really focused on it yet. When i was doubling some of the vox for the "sing my song" song, I got into some nice gritty distortion but its not really showing there because it would be doubled on the other track with a cleaner voice.

you can hear that small bit of grit on the word "yeah" https://clyp.it/2uzom2h3

Sort of to those ends I am going to lean more towards a harder rock/metal edge in my songs right now to help work my way into more of the rock sound I want. So far I dont really LOVE anything ive done..except maybe "Happy Birthday Sugarboo" which I personally think is a great song and had a lot of intense personal meaning. That being said, it was done before I even really had a headvoice and it was a few weeks before I had ever bridged lol. so I rocked some nice falsetto in it.

 

Whether or not it sounds cocky, when my stuff is on par with Halen and Zep, ill be mildly satisfied lol. right now my voice is a little too "clean" and my phrasing is a bit laid back.  But I want to just extend the range some more and get that settled before I try to go all gritty and shouty

 

and what I REALLY need to do is start working hard IN the bridge areas, specifically the higher one, wherever it may specifically be up around c-d5ish. I can bridge from low notes on up to my current highest note around F#5...but SINGING in and around those bridge areas is something totally different lol

[Collin571]

your mix is definitely getting better,  I like the scream at 1:50.  Also the nonono at the end was funny in a good way.  Certain parts of it had too much character like I'd rather hear it done simpler, more jonjon rather than whoever you're trying to emulate. 

[JonJon]

1 hour ago, Collin571 said:

 whoever you're trying to emulate. 

trust me...there isnt a lot of thought going into it once I step to the mic. In the end im just trying to let whatever is inside of me come out

at my age its simply impossible to tell where some of the stuff comes from...since I have been hearing music for almost 50 years

[Collin571]

43 minutes ago, JonJon said:

trust me...there isnt a lot of thought going into it once I step to the mic. In the end im just trying to let whatever is inside of me come out

at my age its simply impossible to tell where some of the stuff comes from...since I have been hearing music for almost 50 years

That's what she said, anyway I think it would sound better done simpler.  Breathier easy tones as opposed to compressed forceful vocals.

it's like the difference between this performance and the next one, you'd only have to listen to the opening to get what I mean.

 

[Javastorm]

I love this track, don't have much to add except in the rebalanced mix#1 I felt like the lead could be more present in the mix. The layers sound like they were placed perfectly, around 2:20 the panned vocals had a similar tone to the guitar lick around the same part. Dunno if it was intentional, (probably was since this mix already sounds super huge and a lot of thought was put into it) but it was great. The ad libs towards the end sounded just right musically. Post the final mix when it's ready!

[JonJon]

15 minutes ago, Javastorm said:

I love this track, don't have much to add except in the rebalanced mix#1 I felt like the lead could be more present in the mix. The layers sound like they were placed perfectly, around 2:20 the panned vocals had a similar tone to the guitar lick around the same part. Dunno if it was intentional, (probably was since this mix already sounds super huge and a lot of thought was put into it) but it was great. The ad libs towards the end sounded just right musically. Post the final mix when it's ready!

thanks. there was thought put into it TO A DEGREE...but it was also pretty much a free for all as u can tell.

I learned a lot trying to mix it. one thing I learned is that it'll be a while before I do something with that many tracks again lol

 

Dunno if i'll mess with it anymore unless im ready to put an album together or start marketing my songs etc.