[MUSIC] 5 Years Ago

For those who don’t hang out in The Lounge, my 5th anniversary is tomorrow. Since men in general, and I especially, don’t have a reputation for being romantic I thought to surprise my wife this year. Beyond making reservations at a nice restaurant, I wrote this song that I will post on Facebook tomorrow in lieu of serenading her in the restaurant with my ukelele.

5 Years Ago

I still have a few hours tonight and tomorrow morning to made adjustments to it, and I’m sure I will listen to it several times before I release it to the world. If you have any comments they would be much appreciated.

Gear
Vocals = Neumann TLM103 with a Mindprint En-voice MKII tube pre-amp / compressor.
Ukelele = Cordoba Tenor (Model 20TM-CE)
Drums = Battery 3, created by Jamstix 3 with minor hand tweaking by me
Everything else = arranged by me using Kontakt 5. I did actually play the organ part, but the rest was hand composed in the MIDI editor

I didn’t intend for this to end up being Ska. It just ended up that way. I kept thinking of the Jack’s Big Music Show scene where Andrew Bird shows up in the clubhouse as Dr. Stringz.

Andrew Bird as Dr. Stringz

Way back five years ago / I married this girl
And she proceeded to rock my world
Now we have a family / And we all are happy
Can’t wait to see what the future holds

As the years have gone by / I know I’m a lucky guy
To have a girl like her in my life
And though I still don’t show / How I felt five years ago
I’m so happy you’re my wife

Solo

As the years have gone by / I know I’m a lucky guy
That our love still comes to life
I still feel and I hope you know / How I felt five years ago
I’m so happy you’re my wife

I’ve had the time of my life
I’m so happy you’re my wife

What a sweet song, hope you’re wife appreciates it! Michael

She loved it, which is unusual because she normally considers my work to have a dated sound. :smiley:

Really great, you guys are very blessed…this says it all congratulations!

Thanks for the compliments Steve. Honestly, the longest part of any song for me (from a composition standpoint) is the drum line and Jamstix makes this considerably easier and sounds a lot better than anything I can do by hand. The bassline was originally “prototyped” on a 2 octave MIDI controller based on what I heard myself playing on my Fender Jazz. Once I cleaned that up the combination of the bass + drums made the ukelele playing a lot easier. The horns repeat themselves in the song (so does the bass for that matter) so they didn’t take long either.

In fact the part that took the most was the vocal line and correction via Melodyne. (Yes, they sounded even worse than they do now.)

The uke cost $200, mainly due to the pickup and 2 band “EQ” (treble/bass). This isn’t incredibly expensive as uke’s go, and I saw several models that were $300 and up. So it was a midrange model.

The warmth comes mainly from the MindPrint EnVoice MK-II tube pre/compressor that I use. This is a single channel version of the dual channel MindPrint DTC that Tom Zartler has in his studio (if I recall correctly). Even though it has discrete logic 3 band EQ built in, I only use it for the tube and the compressor. The uke was DI into this, to the M-Audio 2496, and then into Cubase where I used the Soundtoys Little Microshift plug-in + 120Hz HPF EQ preset on the track and the Magneto + Maximizer plug-ins on the Master Bus.

Yeah, it sounds cool, mix sounds good overall and the thought is very sweet. I’m glad it was received well. :sunglasses:

VEEEeeery nice tune…a little twee but it’s supposed to be aint it…Kevin

Thanks for the compliments all, and thanks Kevin for teaching me a new word. I had to look up “twee.” :laughing:

You obviously have never met my wife. She doesn’t like most of the stuff I produce 'cause…

…it’s not Country. :laughing: