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Will Work For More Money
The Best of the 24-track Years
Released April 2014
Tracks:
Drive You Home
Blind Date
In The Bushes
Pop And Chips
Hard At Work
Busted
Take What You Need
Leave After Dinner
Let It Steep
Whistle Blower
Want Me For My Brains
Get Out
Availabe at
CD
Baby;
iTunes
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When I put out my first "Best Of"
Will Work For Money back in 2008, it was because I retired the 4-track
and was looking forward to new stuff with my then-newish Tascam 2488.
Same thing with this one: after 6 years of a fun learning curve, I had to
retire the old Tascam 2488. Unfortunately, thing's just get old. Its
replacement, a Tascam DP-32, isn't much of a replacement. or half the
machine the 2488 is. So while I'm looking forward to doing new songs,
I'm not really keen on using the DP32 for it.
The other reason I'm doing another Best Of is that I redid some things to
make the songs better. Most noticable are the drum tracks redone with Roland
V-Drums. The original versions used a Korg S3 for the drums (played, not
programmed). Also, I went and applied an AutoTuner to all the vocals. Don't
worry, it's not a Cher/current Pop singer kind of autotune - it's not that
obvious. And, not on all tracks, was effect-looping some guitar solos into
the CE-20 Chorus Ensemble to make them sit better in the mix.
And finally, after all of these years, I started to use the PC to do some of
the mixing to clean up things like lip smakcs on a vocal track or muting
white noise. So now, for example, there isn't any audible breathing on
the talkbox tracks on Pop and Chips. And the mixes have been improved since
the addition of some proper reference speakers.
See? Everything gets better with time.
Picking what songs would make the A-list wasn't as easy as I thought. For
one, I didn't want to have an 80 minute CD because that's way too long, so I
kept it under an hour. Some are obvious picks, some aren't. There are some
bonus songs but those are only for those who buy the CD; there's a link for
a couple of free downloads for things like Scared and Ransome Note. Oddly
enough, there are no songs from Hits The Spot; that's the first CD I made
with the 2488.
Originally everything was mixed by December 2013 but I've always had this
high pitched ring whenever low frequencies were played. After a bit of
tweaking (it's always a setting, isn't it?) I got the ring to go away and
also could export as a hi res file. Beautiful. On January 13, 2014, I
started remixing everything again and by February 3rd, I got the mixes done.
Drive You Home
Not a bad way of starting things off. This was going to be the opener back
in September when I thought of actually doing this.
Changes: Drums; vocals; longer fade
Blind Date
It must be my most popular song because I still get people saying, "I can't
get that stupid song out of my head when I hear it." To make it that much
better, I faded it before it gets to the outro part.
Changes: Drums; vocal; fades early
In The Bushes
My first song about stalking. I redid the drums even though I probably
didn't have to, but the new take is better. Better enough to have the
tambourine brought down in the mix.
Changes: Drums; autotuned vocal
Pop And Chips
Still pretty fun and I'm still not sure if I'd classify this as an
instrumental.
Changes: Drums; vocals
Hard At Work
This originally wasn't going to make the cut because it felt like I just put
out the under-advertised Hard At Work CD. Realizing this, I had to include
it.
Changes: Drums
Busted
This is the only one I added a guitar track to. It's the guitar in the right
ear. Originally, the guitar with the solo was in that ear but I wanted to
keep the solo in the centre so I kept only the solo and redid a rhythm
guitar. That solo got put through the CE-20 too.
Changes: Drums; vocal; extra guitar
Take What You Need
One of the better things I've done.
Changes: Drums
Leave After Dinner
A late addition. And on listening to it while mixing, I wondered why it
wasn't on the A list in the first place.
Changes: drums; ran the lead guitar through the CE-20
Let It Steep
It's my CD and I can do whatever I want.
Changes: drums, vocal, bubbles
Whistle Blower
The original mix was in mono but this one's in stereo. It's still the same
train sound effect.
Changes: drums, vocal, now in stereo
Want Me For My Brains
Sure it's a throw-away tune but how many songs out there are about zombies?
Changes: Drums, vocal
Get Out
After going through all of these oldies, I came to the conclusion that this
is probably, overall, my best song. Still makes me laugh.
Changes: drums; added wind to make the song scarier.
There were a couple of other songs that were going to make it: Scared, Alien
To Me, Ransom Note, Dirty Tricks but I ran out of CD room so there's a link
in the CD (
you
have to buy the actual CD) to download the extras. Both are available in
wav or mp3. For me, next is where the fun begins: new stuff.
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