Napoli - mix 2

Very nice and mellow piece. That sweet guitar with the piano on top sounds very good! I love how acoustic guitars sound, they are so sweet.
Good composition and chord changes man, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I can listen to this for hours! Ear candy! Michael.

Kenny,

This is really a beautiful piece. Loving the guitar playing and the arrangement. Most awesome.

By the way, I’m going to be in Nashville this week. I’m going to play a few of my songs with the Jay Patton Band at Brown’s Diner Wednesday night. Hope you can come out.

Jay’s band is great!

I have a gig at Ibiza Night Club 15128 Old Hickory Blvd Nashville, Tennessee 37211 (615) 915-3843 weds from 8:30-12:00 We just play a few songs and everyone that comes in Jams after we play a few. There are some great players that show up if you feel like playing. What time is your gig with Jay? Is Rick playing? Also Tuesday I’m at Carol Ann’s with a great Sax player and we will Jam there too if you are up for it. Its a sleazy place but all the more fun :slight_smile:

Hit me up on Facebook so we can share info! I’m the only Kenny Zarider in the world lol

I’d really like to hear you and maybe hang out, Friday and Saturday is the Jefferson St jazz-blues fest also which is always fun if you’re staying

Thanks for the nice comment too
Kenny

Michael, thanks so much! No click just some chords and a Jam. I love playing with Marco, we recorded another one yesterday that was really good but it needs drums prior to posting.

I’m always up for some music that dispenses with the click-track :sunglasses:

Beautiful playing and composition, as always

As for the mix, the way that the bass is panned hard right bothers me a bit – it’s as if the two of you don’t really like that third guy :laughing: Also, I would have run the entire mix thru a bit of room verb (sounds like you actually did, but I’d add a touch more). Lastly, and this is again just a personal thing, I would have taken a bit of attack off the nylon –

OMG! Brown’s Diner! I REALLY need to get back down that way :sunglasses:

Yes, very nice and well played. :sunglasses: Have to agree re comments regarding the bass. It’s had to really put my finger on it but it kinda felt like it didn’t belong, a little detached… I guess that’s what Doug (Twilightsong) was eluding to… more so when played the bowed sound. May be just a panning thing… ?

You’re right… it IS a long piece!
:sunglasses:

Awesome… just awesome. I’ll leave the analysis to more qualified people. I loved it.

Thanks, hopefully this change in mix will help. Moved bass closer to center and I also tried to roll off a little highs from gtr also not sure if it’s enough but when the final mix comes Marco will probably take somewhere else to finish this so I’m not to stressed. As far as verb goes think I will that alone
Kenny

Thanks hopeful I fixed pan issue, and yes it certainly isn’t a pop piece but it’s not as long as Whipping Post either :laughing:

The first thing that I must clear up though, is that it should be a cello and not a double bass because the E to D above middle C are both out of range for a bowed double bass which can play the B below middle C as its highest note, so that’s one of the reasons that it sounds unnatural. When sherz said just above that it didn’t quite fit, this is the reason that he was essentially getting at. ;p The second thing is that the timbre/texture of a double bass being bowed that high just isn’t pleasant to hear, again it should be a cello which can add a nice expressive vibrato at that range and still have a fairly full bodied sound as opposed to the much smaller viola as well as a greater control over dynamics. And if it were a cello it could play some much nicer melodic legato lines.

Now that’s out of the way…

Really interesting intro and I’m loving the combination of the guitar and the piano. I’m also loving the guitarists performance, but I felt that the positioning of the guitar didn’t quite feel right and I don’t mean left or right, idk it feels like it’s more to the front too much than the piano, or perhaps the piano is too far back. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s nylon strings or what but it feels that way. I really like the expression in your performances, you have a very good sense of dynamics and expression, which I think is quite hard to achieve on piano.

I was thinking after the intro, what I’d love to hear is a plucked double bass and it certainly fills up the sound when it enters. The chords, harmony and melodic content are all really soothing in a dreamyish kind of way. The tone/mood of the piece seemed to resonate with me more than others, no idea why, it just does and that’s quite nice. A very enjoyable listen, well done (as usual.) Top tunes and a second of yours favourited, I really loved Someday and Forever.

@Jonathon…Thanks for that listen, I am not sure if you have ever listened to Edgar Meyer who many think is the greatest Contra Bass player of our time. Here is an example of his work. I think you may appreciate his command of instrument. You will find the range of bass quite different than you think. He also uses bowing technique that he plays from either D2 or E2 to A4 on this piece. You probably won’t like the composition but it’s very educational as to what an instrument can do…You should really listen to whole thing though. I go no where near this range. When composing using Vienna there is no possibility of playing outside an instrument range. You can select different bow technique that will extend the range by a few notes but that is it.

A little something easier on ears with yo-yo and a couple of great players from Nashville

Here are actual instrument ranges for Double Bass
http://www.orchestralibrary.com/reftables/rang.html
http://s813.photobucket.com/user/kzarider/media/ContraBassRange.png.html?sort=3&o=0

That said you are correct about gtr being to out front I am putting it in the same room as bass and piano. Its funny how it’s often harder to mix simple things for me. When we go to final print on this I will give to another engineer with better ears and equipment probably if budget allows me to.

Again thanks for the insight hope you enjoy Edgar’s playing, my friend Gary who played on 1000’s of sessions and played w/symphony showed him to me and told of the things that he does in extending the instrument. I know it is odd for Bass to play above a B3 but it creates a certain timber which I like lol. Let me know what you think of this stuff!

Hi Kenny, nice playing as always. Nice sequence, and the bass sounds very natural to me, maybe after you equalized it… Certainly within the range of the instrument. Used to hearing a lot of high bass parts around here since my son is a classical bassist, and all the solo work puts it way up there. Your friend Marco plays very cleanly; really can’t hear finger noise. Really enjoyed this one.

Oh, and thanks for the link to the Edgar Meyer!

Yeah, they are fantastic players and I know Yo-Yo Ma’s work of course. I liked parts of the composition but yeah, some I’m not so keen on. ;p Although, as a composer and performer I am, of course, in complete admiration of the high skill level that those musicians possess. Coming from a compositional and orchestration perspective; the thing is first of all at the time when the bass is playing an E above middle C it’s in unison with the violin, and I must admit that the combined sound is very pleasing. I think that if the violin weren’t playing and the bass was playing that part solo that high, it wouldn’t sound anywhere near as pleasing. That’s also due to the faster pattern that I think it has a more satisfactory tone as opposed to longer, sustained notes at that range and he’s not pushing it to absolute range either. He’s also striking bass notes before playing that unison too so it does sound more together as an arrangement because the different pitch ranges are filled in rather than just the single bass note you’re sustaining making it sound unsatisfactory in tone. I think when you have long, sustained bass notes that high being bowed just by themselves and bare that the tone is unsatisfactory. As far as composition goes, I think it’d sound better to have the bass lower and write at that range for a cello.

Absolute and practical range are two different things and of course it’s based on preference and taste as well as context. You know that I admire your talents and work, but I’m sorry, even if it were a live recorded bass the long, sustained notes that you’re bowing that high on the bass would still sound unsatisfactory in tone/timbre and I think most people would prefer to hear the expressiveness of a cello. But speaking of which, you have great writing and performance skills, couldn’t you write both cello and bass parts for this piece? :stuck_out_tongue: It’d be really cool to hear. :smiley: I should add that I did get mistaken with the range by an octave, so apologies there :stuck_out_tongue: But I still think that the bowed practical range for satisfactory tone is lower.

The Solo:

He’s very obviously a fantastic player, but I think bowed notes as high as he is going just sound very unpleasant and are out of the practical range in the context of a composition for multiple instruments for resulting in good timbre in the context of an arrangement and I think that the context is the most important thing when discussing practical ranges of instruments. I also think that in the piece Attaboy they’ve given thought to the high bass notes in unison with the violin and if he couldn’t strike those bass notes too I don’t think that they’d have had the bass playing that high unison either because the bass range would be empty. I may be wrong of course, but that makes sense to me because of the context of the composition. I think given the context of your intro, a plucked bass would sound nicer, even sparingly, and having the cello playing legato/sustained lines.

Saying that though, although the Attaboy piece is very good, exceptionally well-performed…I still prefer the feeling from the pieces of yours that I’ve favourited.

Found this very moving…a beautiful piece man…just beautiful, like the way you never go where I think your gonna go…thanks for putting this up…Kevin

Im not going to analyse this creation you have made , brilliant playing and production and it shows a wealth of experience and great knowledge for which some youngsters can not comprehend .
Great piece sir !!!

You are ,come down off that trip your on and except that yours ears are not the only ones in the world !

jonathan isn’t on a trip…he just gives his honest and frank opinion, his ears are the only ones he’s got and if we put up our work to this forum we can and should expect a wealth of differing opinions…that’s what makes this forum so good, your attempt to “put down” a “youngster” is not worthy of this forum…all opinions ( given without prejudice) are welcome …Kevin

“younsters” tend to have less experience than “mature” people don’t you think and this is a mature accomplished piece that “some youngster” may not understand ,doesn’t make it wrong .
Do you own the forum kevin ??? no ,and I think you will find I have as much right as you me old chum to post here ,so if you don’t mind I was not talking to you SIR !!!
kzarider ,it’s a very nice piano piece once again well done ! :wink: