Burn It All Down Never Look Back

[vomitHatSteve]

Yooo! I'm on a "songs about mortality" kick apparently. I made a number of intentionally unconventional decisions on this one, so I don't know how much the mix can be refined. Also, it's surprisingly few tracks for me.

But if you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Mix 1

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack1.mp3

Mix 2

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack2.mp3

Mix 5

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack5.mp3

Code: Select all

Burn it down; never look back

Intro
C / D

verse
Em7 / C / Am Em7 / D Em7

chorus
D Em7 / C C5 C x2
Am D / E6 E7 x3
Am D / E

bridge
C / D
Em7 / C / Am / Em7
C / D / Em7

verse
Em
The older I get the more obsessed I am with music
C
The harder it is to find like-minded peers
Am                          Em
Everyone is getting married everybody has careers
D                                 Em
All my friends are having kids responsible out of the ears

chorus
D               Em             C
Yeah, won't you join me in the van, my friend
D                    Em               C
We'll travel far and wide across this land, and then
Am              D     Em
We'll die broke and alone
But knowing we made our mark
And jumped the chance to make it big
Before we jumped the shark

verse

It's not that I have a problem working
Or wouldn't like to have a family
But how can I look at their faces, knowing I could rock them off
And not just program their computers wearing matching ties and socks

chorus

Yeah, won't you join me up on stage, my friend
We'll vent our insecurities as rage, and then
We'll drink 'til we pass out
and wake up on the floor
Then drive 6 hours to the next gig
and do it all once more

alt verse 6/8
Em
One of these days, I am going to outgrow my haircut
C
If it will not happen emotionally
Am
When my decrepit body starts to break down
Em
It's just going to happen physically
C            D      Em
I want to live forever?

I hope I die before I get old
I hope I grow up before I die
I hope I'm old before I grow up
I hope for these things but don't know why
I want to live forever

chorus 4/4

Yeah, won't you join in the refrain, my friends
We'll barrel through the chorus once again, and then
If it stops being fun, well maybe we'll retire
Or maybe we'll keep rocking out, until we both expire

Yeah, won't you join me any way you can
This music is the only thing I understand
We'll scream at the abyss, the only sound it knows
And harmonize most wretchedly, with our own echoes

[Lt. Bob]

Coincidentally I've been thinking about physical issues taking music from me at which point I will cease to be so it's a subject I'm familiar with.
like the song a lot ..... like the words ..... dislike the strange out of time drumming in places.

[JD01]

Good song, Steve. I won't say too much about the mix as I've been in the sea a lot this weekend and my ears are a bit fucked.
Couple of things though - vocal is really good, love the Queen tribute.
There seems to be a really piezoish acoustic in there.
I kept wanting it to explode VHS style but it was pretty restrained for you, that's not a bad thing and probably suits the theme of the song... but maybe for one of the choruses. Or maybe the 2nd to last verse, those lyrics might suit you rocking out a bit more.

Having an existential crisis, Steve?

[vomitHatSteve]

Thanks, guys!

Maybe I'll tell the drum fill no triplets to see if that ends up more coherent.

Yeah, it's a piezo acoustic. I decided I didn't want to mess with microphones.

I'll ponder if there's more shenanigans I can add to the last choruses

[vomitHatSteve]

Mix 2 in the OP

"Steve," you may find yourself saying, "why is the drum sound completely different on this one?"
Well, that's one of those "intentionally unconventional decisions" I referenced before. I've made some tweaks to my percussion randomizer, so now I can tell it to play a specific beat with randomized kick/snare/hat in addition to playing a randomized beat with a known set of samples.

Anyway, cleaned up the fills and added some bonus percussion to the last chorus

edit: case in point here is a re-randomized version of mix 2 with no other changes

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack3.mp3

[WhiskeyJack]

I can dig this.

Honestly, i don't love the acoustic all DI sounding guits. It cheapens your sound if that makes sense. If you are going to do a whole sadboi glitch punk acoustic ballad i wanna hear some acoustic acoustic. The rest of the moving parts all have a smack of what we love about VHS but i think you can do better than the robotic sounding DI acoustic.

this is also probably one of the most relatable songs i have ever heard from you too man.

[rayc]

Mix 2...cool song, fun/deep lyric.
The acoustics seem a little out of synch in the 1st verse.
Occasionally the phrasing had me head scratching where emphasis was on "the" rather than the associated noun etc. The last line of the 1st verse also seems to go into Woody Guthrie folk extra longness BUT it works.

[Manslick]

man this will sound odd but this reminds me of Paul Simon in his African phase.
I guess the timing.

hmmm

Listing now to the Wed Aug 31, 2022 9:13 am post.
Seems smoother.
Still got the Graceland (Simon) flavor.
Just for fun, I like to play drum to that record - not easy.

Yes the Wed Aug 31, 2022 9:13 am is very well done in all aspects.

[JD01]

Steve, I only just noticed that there's a Mix 2 of this. I still don't like the piezo acoustics.
Just listening again now, the bass is way to quiet and missing the trademark VHS abomination.

I really wanted the abomination to come in after the Queen section.

Really good song though and I think most of us can relate to it.

[TripleM]

The vocals and keyboards are cool. They sound real good.

I agree on the DI'd (or DI sounding) acoustic guitars. They sound a little dull and lifeless.

I think the kick is a little heavy sounding. I like the sound a little better in mix 2 - the kick in mix 1 seemed to have distortion on it. But they're both real heavy. The bass gets heavy in spots.

Those were the only things I noticed. Mostly it sounded real good.

[Armistice]

Ha ha - nice stuff. Unlike everyone else, I don't mind the piezo acoustic - I don't think that it's primarily what people will be listening to.

Maybe rough it up a bit with a saturator plug or something though?

Definitely think v2 works better rhythmically than v1.

[Greg_L]

I don't have a problem with the DI guitars. It's not typically a good way to do it, but it works for me with your weird quirky sound and style. A big lush vintage Martin recorded with a Neumann wouldn't work on a mix like this.

The only nit I got is a lack of bass guitar presence. It's pretty indistinct. I can tell there is something bass-ish in there, but I'd like to hear it better. Otherwise I think it's a better-than-usual VHS mix.

[vomitHatSteve]

So I added some bass and did a new mix.

I'm not super-excited about the drum choices the randomizer made tho, so I'm gonna try it again

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack4.mp3

Edit: Ok, the randomizer went again, and I'm happier with the results, I have that in the OP as mix 5.

[WhiskeyJack]

So I added some bass and did a new mix.

I'm not super-excited about the drum choices the randomizer made tho, so I'm gonna try it again

BurnItAllDownNeverLookBack4.mp3

Edit: Ok, the randomizer went again, and I'm happier with the results, I have that in the OP as mix 5.

Okokokok, I'll get to the mix in a bit but first i gotta ask.

this drum randomizer thing? Does it do something different each time you open a project to work on it or press play. Or does it just shit something out per project? I want ot think it just shits something out once for you and that's that. But when you say that it gave you something different when you did a new mix my required scratching.

IS that how that works?

I like this last mix the better-est. It's sounding pretty smooth and digestible. And there is some good bass sitting in the but it swallows up your vocals from about 1:20 onwards. Unless that stuff was supposed ot be swimming around in the back ground like swirling thoughts. things come back alive around 1:40 when the stacks of VHS clones all chime in together.

[vomitHatSteve]

Okokokok, I'll get to the mix in a bit but first i gotta ask.

this drum randomizer thing? Does it do something different each time you open a project to work on it or press play. Or does it just shit something out per project? I want ot think it just shits something out once for you and that's that. But when you say that it gave you something different when you did a new mix my required scratching.

IS that how that works?

I like this last mix the better-est. It's sounding pretty smooth and digestible. And there is some good bass sitting in the but it swallows up your vocals from about 1:20 onwards. Unless that stuff was supposed ot be swimming around in the back ground like swirling thoughts. things come back alive around 1:40 when the stacks of VHS clones all chime in together.

I do usually have some elements that are done at random when the program loads. (e.g. my main drum tracks usually have a stack of miscellaneous crash cymbals on a randomized round-robin, but I bounce that down to a final, canonical version during mixing)

But the actual randomized stuff is on a separate computer (Regdar himself). I do the main mix of all the other instruments on my DAW, then I bounce that to a stem with enough head room and migrate that to Regdar. Then Regdar has the arrangement of the song sequenced in a ruby file (along with some guidance on drum and synth choices). He generates the randomized parts, and another script mixes them with the stem and applies a mastering chain.
This allows me to generate a customized remix and remix kit for every backer on the project Patreon. They each also have a unique seed number, so ostensibly if I have to go back and adjust a mix, their randomization won't actually change.

[WhiskeyJack]

Okokokok, I'll get to the mix in a bit but first i gotta ask.

this drum randomizer thing? Does it do something different each time you open a project to work on it or press play. Or does it just shit something out per project? I want ot think it just shits something out once for you and that's that. But when you say that it gave you something different when you did a new mix my required scratching.

IS that how that works?

I like this last mix the better-est. It's sounding pretty smooth and digestible. And there is some good bass sitting in the but it swallows up your vocals from about 1:20 onwards. Unless that stuff was supposed ot be swimming around in the back ground like swirling thoughts. things come back alive around 1:40 when the stacks of VHS clones all chime in together.

I do usually have some elements that are done at random when the program loads. (e.g. my main drum tracks usually have a stack of miscellaneous crash cymbals on a randomized round-robin, but I bounce that down to a final, canonical version during mixing)

But the actual randomized stuff is on a separate computer (Regdar himself). I do the main mix of all the other instruments on my DAW, then I bounce that to a stem with enough head room and migrate that to Regdar. Then Regdar has the arrangement of the song sequenced in a ruby file (along with some guidance on drum and synth choices). He generates the randomized parts, and another script mixes them with the stem and applies a mastering chain.
This allows me to generate a customized remix and remix kit for every backer on the project Patreon. They each also have a unique seed number, so ostensibly if I have to go back and adjust a mix, their randomization won't actually change.

This hurts my head to even think about but it's pretty badass!!! How long have you been doing it this way? How often do you go reinventing oyur own wheel? Or is this like, the place you wanted to be with how you make your own music?

[JD01]

#AreYouAWizard? .gif

[WhiskeyJack]

It's ok JD i got you.

[JD01]

Yup. Thats how I feel.

[vomitHatSteve]

This hurts my head to even think about but it's pretty badass!!! How long have you been doing it this way? How often do you go reinventing oyur own wheel? Or is this like, the place you wanted to be with how you make your own music?

The initial idea for the randomization as part of my process was 2008. Every Regdar recording since then (except for my alt country mini rock opera) has featured at least some of that.
The first live version of it was 2009.
The idea of making it run offline so that it could re-randomize for different applications was 2015 or 2016.
I did a total rebuild of the whole system in 2016.
A functional version of generating the random parts offline for mass mixing was 2017.

Since then, I've done a bunch of iterative changes while maintaining backwards compatibility: giving the synthesizers unlimited virtual oscillators; an interactive "write" mode to let me demo the randomized parts while I work on them; the ability to build the randomized part itself randomly letting Regdar participate in the songwriting process; etc.