Entourage Jesse Lewis
EntourageForum Replies Created
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Hey paul!
First of all, I love that picture you attached! Is that by chance from your current travels? Amazing!
Secondly, thanks for sharing this beautiful recording. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first long-form track I think I’ve heard you share, which is nice because there’s so much room from an arrangement standpoint.
I love this song, and I think the vocal sounds so soulful and beautiful. I’m sorry about the loss of your friend. What a beautiful tribute to see the track through.
I wanted to mention a few ideas and things I heard on my first listen through, some big picture and some small things as well. as always take it with a grain of salt because they’re just my opinions, but maybe helpful as I’m listening with fresh ears.
Some of my main comments are about the instrument (specifically samples/MIDI) choices, and how they fit with the larger vibe of the production. The vocal in the beginning brought me right in. Great vibe! As the organ enters I’m further pulled into your organic, soulful, and down home world . But when the piano comes in at :16 it hit me as too digital sounding and it kinda took me out of the moment a little bit. I wonder if there’s a different piano sound you could find that fits the mood and blends with the organ a little bit more? Additionally I felt the same way about the guitar when it made its entrance at :25. the sound felt too “DI” to my ears, I wonder if there’s a way for you to process it so it feels more acoustic? I mention these two things because they took me out of the moment that you had so perfectly set up from the beginning of the song. And I wanted to stay in that world you had invited me into! I felt the same way again about the midi bass sound that entered around 1:59. Would it be possible to find a different sample? or even possibly have somebody record the part live?
One production/arrangement idea I had was when the heavy guitar riff comes in at around 1:00 I wonder if you could add a big country/open sounding bass drum to support those downbeats? Possibly even adding some more drums or percussion as the song builds? just an idea to maybe experiment with…But I also kind of dig that you didn’t add more drums, if you know what I mean…
One small thing I noticed, at around 1:28 when the background vocals “oohs” Make their entrance there is a downbeat that is missing the same fullness that the other ones have. I wonder if the bass is missing from that beat? just give that a listen.
Finally, I could imagine some sounds having a touch of reverb or space added to them. I feel like I remember you mentioning in one of the forums that you don’t care too much for reverb, and I definitely am coming from a place where I dig using reverb at times, but I thought that some of the electric guitar could use a touch of space. maybe not reverb per se but maybe just the feeling that it was in a room. I felt that the vocals might benefit from that as well.
Again, really awesome music and hopefully a couple of these ideas make sense!
Keep them coming!
Best,
Jesse
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“Alone On The Water” video for you viewing pleasure:)
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Thanks man!!! Next time you’re in NY we must take the boat out for a spin:)
I’ll add the video to the other thread now, too.
JLew
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Hey man!
That’s so cool! Yes of course – use and abuse anything of mine that you want haha
Love,
JLew
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all good Homie! I can’t wait to see whatever you cook up as I’m sure it will be extremely educational and helpful. In the meantime, I’ve been having a lot of fun utilizing RX on my track, hopefully in a subtle way, mostly using the different types of spectral repair.
The RX plug-in is one of the most insane tools I have ever encountered. I feel like I’m just only scratching the surface of what it can do, but it’s so far beyond even just fixing issues with sound. I’m finding it to be an incredibly sophisticated, on demand dynamic EQ and even tone and note shaper.
For example, There were a couple of instances where I played kind of wimpy sounding notes and I was able to go in with RX and raise the gain on those notes — but only targeting the fundamental frequency and the first few harmonics, which really made the note i was trying to address sound a lot stronger. It’s such a deeper more fine tuned (and more time consuming haha) way of editing sound then just using clip gain, which if I understand correctly, would raise every bit of frequency content equally within the clip. Similarly, I’ve been attenuating certain frequencies that were bothering my ear, sort of using RX like a EQ, but only on certain notes, and very specific frequencies that I can see are out of balance with the rest of the harmonic frequencies of a note.
Finally, I’m realizing what a powerful teaching tool it can be to help train my ears to hear different frequencies because I can guess what frequency I think needs to be addressed but then so easily go into RX and see clearly what is actually happening with the sound.
I guess using a dynamic EQ or such is a much simpler process – but the RX can just get so granular it’s crazy! I’m totally floored!
Best,
JLew
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ur. heavy.
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Paul! This arrangement is already feeling much better to me! I felt much more “in it” and I wanted to stay there.
I hope you have the best trip ever! Enjoy.
Best wishes,
Jesse
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Thanks, Paul!
Hope you’re doing great! Happy fathers day to you!
JLew
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ohhhhhhh!!! I can’t wait to see it!!!
That DPA is just the standard clip on one, often used for guitars, basses, violins, etc. I believe it’s the 4099. It belonged to Ike but it was broken and he gave it to me. I sent it to DPA for repair and they fixed it! It was clipped on to the body of the guitar down by the end pin/bridge. Sort of looking towards the sound hole about 6 inches away. The other mic was positioned looking more at the 12th fret. I was hoping that between them, I could get a cool mixture of sounds. I know we’ve discussed that situation before and you said usually it’s best to combine them into one mono track, but I ended up panning the fretboard mic a bit to the left and the DPA a bit to the right and putting the iPhone audio in the center, figuring I could get away with more stereo because the track only had guitar? Not sure if that was the right call? I didnt sem to be getting too much phasing issues when I panned them…
Can’t wait to see how you approached all of this!
Happy fathers day, bro!
JLew
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I rx’d it a little to attenuate the squaks a bit. Nothing over the top but i think its less abrasive now. Should I go for even more?
RX is one of the coolest tools ever. pure magic.
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Sweeeeet! Just uploaded! Eagerly anticipating watching your RX magic! Thanks, Homie!
3 raw stems
JLew
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Thanks so much, man! I really appreciate this feedback from you and Jeremy and will get right on it!
One quick question about RX – I currently have my three mics going to a guitar bus, which is all getting processed together. Would you recommend dragging the bus audio into RX (pre-master) and doing the edits first and then dragging that back in to the session and applying my mastering chain? Or would it be OK to just take my current master as it currently is, and bring that into RX and export it as my new RX’d master version of the track? Just curious what you would do in this case?
Thanks again, man. I filmed this one too I can’t wait to share the video with you all so you can see the space. It’s incredible.
JLew
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Yo! Thanks so much, Jeremy! I’m glad to have your feedback on the EQ, and I will definitely check those frequencies out again. I also thought about drenching those birds in reverb as the song faded too, so cool that we’re on the same page with that as well. I’m gonna give that a try. It was definitely a very cool moment when those birds started going at it right as I finished the song. I definitely need to keep that in there hahaha!
Thanks again, man!
Best wishes,
Jesse
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Paul!
Thank you SO MUCH for all this info, this really clears everything up for me! How did I know you’d be just the person to ask about this haha!!??
That’s also very interesting about your -6 db tick. That’s so cool! And it makes perfect sense too, but I never would’ve thought of that.
As far as getting TWO monitors to run in stereo, I usually consider myself lucky if I can even get one for myself and I don’t have to carry it! 🤣 still not baller level yet!
Thanks again,
Jesse
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Thanks for this Dana! This is SUPER helpful!
❤
JLew