My first ever album

[Timbale]

Hey friends -- so I have been a musician for most of my adult life, predominantly playing drums in other peoples' projects.  I have just released my first ever album of my own music, playing everything myself.   I thought I'd share a song here if you care to check it out.  :)

 

 

 

[blackhawkrush]

Interesting lyrics. Music not my cup of tea, but good luck in your future endeavors.   

[JARG]

On 7/26/2024 at 9:59 AM, Timbale said:

Hey friends -- so I have been a musician for most of my adult life, predominantly playing drums in other peoples' projects.  I have just released my first ever album of my own music, playing everything myself.   I thought I'd share a song here if you care to check it out.  :)

 

 

 

A lovely song. The drum fill that brings in the last chorus had a slight "In The Air Tonight" feel.

What are all the instruments used in the song?

In what order did you build up the song, trackwise? Did you start with the drum track?

[Timbale]

On 8/13/2024 at 8:59 AM, JARG said:

A lovely song. The drum fill that brings in the last chorus had a slight "In The Air Tonight" feel.

What are all the instruments used in the song?

In what order did you build up the song, trackwise? Did you start with the drum track?

Thank you, Jarg - much appreciated.  Yeah, that fill is very much in the "In the Air" world...it's kinda the same fill offset by one note, which didn't totally strike me until after I'd done it, haha.  I knew it was a "Phill-esque" fill... and the drum machine is also more than a little reminiscent of that song, too.

A lot of the song is made up of Mellotron sounds.  I am not fortunate enough to have access to one of those in real life...I use quite good digital samples of the original tapes through an app called the M3000HD.  The kind of main chordal part is a mix of mellotron flute and I think oboe, which was the first thing I came up with.  I then put that drumbox beat to it, which fit the mood well, I thought, and carried on from there.  There are some synthy sounds - including the bass - that are a Moog synth called Animoog, and then I think a sound or two that are from a digital replication of a Prophet synth.  The kind of high, etherial sound in the song is a synth sound I used a lot on the record - sometimes, if you play it with two notes and bend them down, it almost creates a lap steel effect.  The album has no guitar on it...I wanted to make a sort of singer/songwriter album but without either a guitar or piano at the centre of it.  It's not that I have anything against those instruments, I just thought it would be interesting sonically to not have something so familiar in the middle. The drums themselves were the last thing to go on, actually.  As soon as I got a little ways into the song, I knew I wanted the drums to have that Collins-like thing with no hi hat or ride cymbal keeping time.  

 

Thanks for listening to it!

 

 

Edited August 14 by Timbale

[Timbale]

On 8/9/2024 at 11:45 PM, blackhawkrush said:

Interesting lyrics. Music not my cup of tea, but good luck in your future endeavors.   

Thank you, Blackhawk.  The lyrics are a response to a piece of art about the colonial residential school system in Canada.  https://witnessblanket.ca/

 

 

[JARG]

On 8/14/2024 at 3:19 PM, Timbale said:

Thank you, Jarg - much appreciated.  Yeah, that fill is very much in the "In the Air" world...it's kinda the same fill offset by one note, which didn't totally strike me until after I'd done it, haha.  I knew it was a "Phill-esque" fill... and the drum machine is also more than a little reminiscent of that song, too.

A lot of the song is made up of Mellotron sounds.  I am not fortunate enough to have access to one of those in real life...I use quite good digital samples of the original tapes through an app called the M3000HD.  The kind of main chordal part is a mix of mellotron flute and I think oboe, which was the first thing I came up with.  I then put that drumbox beat to it, which fit the mood well, I thought, and carried on from there.  There are some synthy sounds - including the bass - that are a Moog synth called Animoog, and then I think a sound or two that are from a digital replication of a Prophet synth.  The kind of high, etherial sound in the song is a synth sound I used a lot on the record - sometimes, if you play it with two notes and bend them down, it almost creates a lap steel effect.  The album has no guitar on it...I wanted to make a sort of singer/songwriter album but without either a guitar or piano at the centre of it.  It's not that I have anything against those instruments, I just thought it would be interesting sonically to not have something so familiar in the middle. The drums themselves were the last thing to go on, actually.  As soon as I got a little ways into the song, I knew I wanted the drums to have that Collins-like thing with no hi hat or ride cymbal keeping time.  

 

Thanks for listening to it!

 

 

Interesting that the drums came last given that you're a drummer. I don't think the lack of guitar hurts the song in any way (and that's saying something coming from me!). Are you using a physical synth, or plugins?

[Timbale]

1 hour ago, JARG said:

Interesting that the drums came last given that you're a drummer. I don't think the lack of guitar hurts the song in any way (and that's saying something coming from me!). Are you using a physical synth, or plugins?

For a lot of it I used the actual apps on an ipad to play the parts.  I also used a controller to trigger those app sounds for some of it.  On the whole album, I think I used one plugin sound - a synth arp (which I only layered into an existing arp I had already played) - it just wasn't an avenue I went down...although I know it is an almost endless source of sounds.

 

I know it seems kind of weird to do the drums last.  With every song on the album, I just ran a very simple drum loop to create over top of, knowing I would be replacing it with a real drum performance and auxiliary percussion.  It's sort of the one thing I'm actually confident with as a performer, haha, so I left it 'til last.   Although saying that... I went through a cancer diagnosis and treatment last year, and the drums were all done during and just after chemo...so it was unbelievably challenging and physically really hard.  But, it also, emotionally speaking, gave me something to focus on during that time, which I really needed.  (Sorry if that's TMI...)