Thanks for such a detailed response, I really appreciate it. The main points I got from your response, which I feel will be most helpful to me are: 1) Take the time to finish writing a song before recording what will be the "final" version. As a newbie to digital recording, I think I've tended to record my "demo" tracks, then gotten so excited about the fun of recording that I keep adding stuff to the demo and end up with a very fleshed-out demo with a very rudimentary drum track. 2) The ease of use of Doggiebox lends itself so well to recording quick demos of songs that it really enhances the "demo" experience. I think I just need the discipline to recognize the difference between my scratch tracks and my final versions of songs, and then adhere to a songwriting strategy that allows for spontaneity, but not at the expense of making a song as good as it can be (i.e., take some time after getting a musical idea to map out a meaningful drum pattern). I don't know if any of this makes any sense to anyone else, but I feel like I've sort of uncluttered my musical mind..... Thanks again for your response. -Patrick ...just listened to Costello Jam...good stuff....

From: "Ben Kennedy" <ben@zygoat.ca> To: "Patrick O'Donoghue" <pdiddyod@hotmail.com>, "Doggiebox List(s)" <doggiebox@lists.zygoat.ca> Subject: Re: [Doggiebox] Some of my tunes... Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 12:05:20 -0500

On 09 11 2003 at 11:47 am -0500, Patrick O'Donoghue wrote:

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I just listened to "Reach You." Sounds really good. I especially like the guitars, and it's amazing what you've done with the drum track with Doggiebox!

Thanks for the props. I'm quite happy with how that tune turned out as well. As others have mentioned earlier, I think a great deal about how good or fake a Doggiebox track sounds depends on how you place it in the mix. Also, some compression on the track can fatten things up, and layering lots of other sound over top of it doesn't hurt either. :)

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I was wondering if you could describe the process in putting that song together. At what point did you build the drum track? It sounds like a lot of tempo changes and fills going on. I could benefit from you describing the creative process....

Good question.

First of all, I wrote the tune on acoustic guitar. Once I had the structure settled out, I immediately went into Doggiebox and scored out the drum track. Then I imported it into Audiodesk, and laid out electric, acoustic, bass, leads, and finally vocals in that order.

It's almost always easiest to put down the drum track first. On the other hand, recording to a click and then pulling in drums later would work too. But I figured if I'm going to generate a click I may as well generate a crappy drum line instead, and if I'm going to generate a crappy drum line, may as well make it sound kinda decent with Doggiebox. :)

The tempo changes in Reach You are actually far simpler than what they may seem to the casual ear -- actually, if you open the dbsong file, you'll see there are no tempo changes at all. The only real change is at the acoustic bridge where it goes into the half-time feel, but the song remains in 4|4 at 160 bpm throughout.

On the other hand, you'll note there is some tempo hackery toward the end of Burgundy Conversation -- I wanted a ritardando at the end followed by a bit of a pause right before the last phrase, so you'll see how I accomplished this in Doggiebox -- manual tempo reduction over the course of a couple bars. Not ideal, but it achieves the objective.

As a side note, in one of those songs (I can't remember which, and the evidence may even still be present in the mix that's online, I'm not sure), I inadvertently screwed up some of the fills by switching drum kits a few times in Doggiebox so that ultimately, several different tom toms ended up mapped into the same one. The result was that tom fills sounded like machine gun fire. This was easy to remedy though by simply re-exporting/importing the track afterwards (since the tempos were untouched all I had to do was line it up at the start point).

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I tend to first put together a very basic drum track with Doggiebox, then record a song to the track. I then find it to be difficult to go back and retro-fit a new (more fleshed-out) drum track.

Due to timing issues or creative (sound design) issues?

Having started out as a drummer, I tend to think like one (or at least try to) when writing songs, so I usually have at least some pre-concieved notions about which cymbals, textures and so on I want to fit with various parts of the song. I suspect that having that basis down to begin with during recording also helps influence the style and performance I give on the other instruments. So I can see how revamping the drums after the fact could get interesting, although this isn't something I've played around with a lot yet.

-ben

-- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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