Everything (is on fire)

This is an old song, but it only uses two chords (well, okay, so there's a third, brief chord, but still), and it's taken me four years to get around to the massive amount of hiss reduction the song required to make it postable. Because I'm lazy.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by The Great Big Mulp (14 comments total)

I love this one. The recorders are great, and the "I'm oblivious to the implications of the fire surrounding me" tone moving to a "Oh, well, now it has engulfed my equipment" moment is terrific.

So good.
posted by umbú at 5:31 PM on April 15

AHHHHHHH! This is AWESOME. It's pretty damn scary how the recorder brings back so many TV memories of my childhood (not Courtship of Eddie's Father, but same time period)...and then the dissonant crazy part is a lot like changing the channels on old TVs. This is a total Time Machine for me!

(No, not hitting acid or shrooms, in fact just starting my second bottle of beer.)
posted by snsranch at 7:28 PM on April 15

This is the perfect song for the end of a playlist!
posted by theiconoclast31 at 5:15 PM on April 16

It was about time that you came back. What? you think we don't notice when you are gone? geez.

As for this song...what can I say? I'm a fan and of course I love it. It sounds a bit more groomed than other stuff, did you abandon the "I won't record something I won't finish in one seating" policy?
posted by micayetoca at 8:36 PM on April 16

Wonderful.

But:
(well, okay, so there's a third, brief chord, but still)
Heathen!
posted by chococat at 9:31 PM on April 16

Yeah, the recorders are pretty great and the beatboxing is awesome. Fun, with just a tiny dash of menace there at the end.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 1:51 AM on April 17

... did you abandon the "I won't record something I won't finish in one seating" policy?

I'm trying to, and I think this was a good exercise in that direction. Also, over the past couple months I've accumulated a few partially finished songs. I want to start scheduling time to sit down and work on them on a regular basis -- maybe just in small blocks to prevent myself from trying to rush through and finish things all in one go.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:02 AM on April 17

Awesome. How did you reduce the hiss? I felt like it was really very clean.
posted by Corduroy at 11:59 AM on April 18

There's a fine line between meddling in other musician's processes and giving honest feedback to someone whose music you like, but since you know that I like your stuff and that this doesn't mean that I'm thrashing what you did before (or how you use to do it), I'll go ahead and just say it. The difference shows, and this recording sounds very good. I don't know if you did more takes than usual or if you worked harder on the mix, but whatever you did, it was good for the song.
posted by micayetoca at 2:50 PM on April 18

This is very pleasing. Recorder + beatboxing = win. And the ending? Geniusness, baby.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:54 PM on April 18

How did you reduce the hiss? I felt like it was really very clean.

I used the noise/hiss reduction filter built-in to Cool Edit Pro. It took a while -- I'd never actually tried this sort of ... really meticulous ... uh ... thing before, so it took a lot of finagling to not remove half of the song itself along with the hiss. I don't think I still have a copy of the original, noisy version online, anymore, else I'd link to it.

And, micayetoca, thanks very much! I take that as encouragement to continue to put a little more effort into song ... uh ... creation.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:19 PM on April 21

Mulp, I hadn't heard this until the podcast, but I love it! Thanks.
posted by gemmy at 8:08 AM on April 22

Holy crap, this song's in the podcast! Yay!
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:25 PM on April 22

Congrats, that's awesome!
posted by snsranch at 1:35 PM on April 22