Galveston

[drathbun]

Since Glen Campbell's passing last year, I've been working on and learning many of the songs he has made famous. I was never a big Glen Campbell fan but I used to watch him on the Smother's Brothers and on his own show "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour". I remember liking the sound of songs like Wichita Lineman and Gentle On My Mind. I especially remember liking the sound of that baritone guitar. However, I never really gave the song lyrics or musical structure much thought. That was probably because I was only 14.

 

In learning these songs, I've come to really appreciate their careful construction both musically and lyrically. Jimmy Webb wrote three songs made famous by Glen; Wichita Lineman, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and Galveston.

 

With Galveston, again, I never really hear the story of this song or appreciated the structure of it when I first heard it. The way Webb paints images through his lyrics is amazing. I've never been to Galveston Texas but you know from the lyrics that it has to be a beautiful, seaside city with blowing winds, crashing surf and flying seabirds, not to mention beautiful dark-eyed girls. But he abruptly switches from the crashing surf to the flashing cannon in Vietnam. The lover, turned soldier, cleans his gun and dreams of his home and remembers walking the beach with his girl in an interlude that dramatically shifts from F to Ab (D to F with the capo at 3). Then returning to F (D capo 3) for the last verse where he is afraid of dying. His fear of death isn't selfish however as he only wants to comfort his lover who is crying for her far away soldier.

 

In the final verse, Webb moves through the descending bass line (seabirds flying in the sun) to the surprising D chord for the penultimate "Galveston" only to return to the original F for the final "Galveston".

 

I don't know enough about music to know whether this change to D is a brief modulation or just a surprising shift in chord but it is thrilling nonetheless.

 

In my cover version I've moved the capo down to fret 2 as Glen's tenor voice is a bit high for me.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFRfH6u7DZw

[uncle fester]

Hey dr - really liked this. One thing I notice about your stuff is the fullness of sound, always sounds BIG (and good). Your voice definitely has it, and the overall production as well. What level of editing / effects do you use on the recordings?

 

thank you for posting.

[Murph]

Very nice.

 

Quite a challenging vocal piece, it seems.

 

You pull it off.

[fortyearspickn]

Three Thumbs Up !

[kidblast]

Nice Doug!

 

Glenn was on of my first child hood inspirations.

[drathbun]

Hey dr - really liked this. One thing I notice about your stuff is the fullness of sound, always sounds BIG (and good). Your voice definitely has it, and the overall production as well. What level of editing/effects do you use on the recordings?

 

thank you for posting.

 

Thanks, bill! Getting feedback like this is very much appreciated. All I hear are the flaws! ;)

 

I usually like to multi-track my recordings and then just mime playing the parts for the camera after. But Buc's videos of him playing and singing live for the camera got my courage up to start recording live performances instead.

 

However, for this one, I played the guitar part first and then recorded my voice over it as the vocal requires a little more effort which totally screwed up my playing. I've only been playing this song for a couple weeks.

 

As for the production; the guitar audio was captured by my iRig Acoustic Stage pickup into my DAW - Studio One 3. Then the vocal was recorded over captured by my Rode NT1A condenser mic. This resulted in two tracks; a vocal and a guitar track. I duplicated both tracks and hard panned them each left and right. Then I added different levels of compression, EQ and reverb to each. I used a different reverb on the right and left tracks for each of the pairs of tracks.

 

Then I took the video I shot of the guitar performance in my iPhone 7 Plus and dropped it into my video editor VideoPad. I added the stereo WAV file generated by Studio One to the video, sync'd it up with the video and deleted the iPhone audio track.

 

Thanks again for the feedback.

[drathbun]

Three Thumbs Up !

 

[lol]

[uncle fester]

Thanks, bill! Getting feedback like this is very much appreciated. All I hear are the flaws! ;)

 

I usually like to multi-track my recordings and then just mime playing the parts for the camera after. But Buc's videos of him playing and singing live for the camera got my courage up to start recording live performances instead.

 

However, for this one, I played the guitar part first and then recorded my voice over it as the vocal requires a little more effort which totally screwed up my playing. I've only been playing this song for a couple weeks.

 

As for the production; the guitar audio was captured by my iRig Acoustic Stage pickup into my DAW - Studio One 3. Then the vocal was recorded over captured by my Rode NT1A condenser mic. This resulted in two tracks; a vocal and a guitar track. I duplicated both tracks and hard panned them each left and right. Then I added different levels of compression, EQ and reverb to each. I used a different reverb on the right and left tracks for each of the pairs of tracks.

 

Then I took the video I shot of the guitar performance in my iPhone 7 Plus and dropped it into my video editor VideoPad. I added the stereo WAV file generated by Studio One to the video, sync'd it up with the video and deleted the iPhone audio track.

 

Thanks again for the feedback.

 

Thank you Doug. In the editing world I'm good with Pan and Reverb, but haven't figured out compression and EQ yet. Compression I can follow the guidelines and add it, I get a different sound, but have not developed an ear to say what is better. On EQ - as I understand it it's to get a different position to the instruments (Front to Back)... I've had no luck playing with that.

 

This is a cold weather exercise though, so will put this conversation in my back pocket and may come back to pick your brain when it cools off outside.

 

Thank you again and great stuff!

[drathbun]

Thank you Doug. In the editing world I'm good with Pan and Reverb, but haven't figured out compression and EQ yet. Compression I can follow the guidelines and add it, I get a different sound, but have not developed an ear to say what is better. On EQ - as I understand it it's to get a different position to the instruments (Front to Back)... I've had no luck playing with that.

 

This is a cold weather exercise though, so will put this conversation in my back pocket and may come back to pick your brain when it cools off outside.

 

Thank you again and great stuff!

 

 

Before I learned how to use EQ in mixing, I had assumed it was just an elaborate tone knob. However, once I discovered how different instruments block each other’s sonic range and hence muddy the sound, I’ve had some better success with my mixes. Recording single guitars is easy, but when you have multiple instruments, getting them out of each other’s way is important.

 

An acoustic guitar properly EQ’d should sound thin when soloed in a large mix. You roll off the bass to allow the bass to show through. Those lessons were all ear openers for me.

[uncle fester]

Those lessons were all ear openers for me.

 

 

I agree, it's a fun process to learn each step, and see the progress... but it's a learning curve, and for those that have walked this path for a lifetime, there's no substitute for experience, and it truly is evident in all of your work ;)

[drathbun]

I agree, it's a fun process to learn each step, and see the progress... but it's a learning curve, and for those that have walked this path for a lifetime, there's no substitute for experience, and it truly is evident in all of your work ;)

 

That's a wonderful thing to say! Thank you so much! :D

[MissouriPicker]

Nicely done, Doug. That is a tough song to do well. I think your music really has a pro sound to it, without sounding like a million others, yet still sounding personal and intimate. [thumbup]

[drathbun]

Nicely done, Doug. That is a tough song to do well. I think your music really has a pro sound to it, without sounding like a million others, yet still sounding personal and intimate. [thumbup]

 

Thanks, MP! Much appreciated!

[Cougar]

....In learning these songs, I've come to really appreciate their careful construction both musically and lyrically....

Yes, that was certainly more complex than Tom Petty's Learning to Fly (which is a great song nevertheless!). Well done!

 

....in an interlude that dramatically shifts from F to Ab (D to F with the capo at 3). Then returning to F (D capo 3) for the last verse where he is afraid of dying. His fear of death isn't selfish however as he only wants to comfort his lover who is crying for her far away soldier.

In the final verse, Webb moves through the descending bass line (seabirds flying in the sun) to the surprising D chord for the penultimate "Galveston" only to return to the original F for the final "Galveston".

 

I don't know enough about music to know whether this change to D is a brief modulation or just a surprising shift in chord but it is thrilling nonetheless.

I'm not sure if I follow, but in a change from D to F, the F is essentially a Dm7 (without the D note).

 

 

[Buc McMaster]

Yep......that's a tough one, Doug. Be good to see you forego the multi tracking and just go for it live now and then. Got to be fun, though, putting together the parts and layering things. Definitely produces a superior result! Good work, sir.

 

I don't know much about music theory either, but it seems that a Dm and an F chord do work together and seem to be somewhat interchangeable. In the video I did of Maneater there are two passes on the chorus....... Ignoring the capo position and reading the chord shapes as played on an open guitar, the first pass is Am-G-F-E-Am, but the second pass is Am-G-Dm-F-E-Am. Playing the second pass just like the first is nearly indistinguishable from the first and the melody sings just fine over it, though the Dm does add some "flavor" to the second pass. One of those theory things I can't explain.

[dhanners623]

Nice rendition but I, too, would like to hear it with less processing. You have the voice and guitar skills to pull off a more natural sound.

 

For what it's worth, when Webb does the song, he slows it w-a-y down. He's noted that it's an anti-war song and was meant to be done slowly and somberly, and he makes it work like that. Then Glen Campbell sped up the tempo and made them both rich....

[Leonard McCoy]

Less is more. You employed so much postprocessing that it resulted in an underwater voice.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szOieN-svlo

[BluesKing777]

I liked it, Doug!

 

Very clear and smoothly done. The Boss was listening in too and said you made it a Neil Young version and should possibly do more NY tunes.

 

I am fairly used to the really slow version, so it could have been a touch hurried and I don’t think you really liked the key in parts. (I am not sure capoing up more will help - you might run out of guitar real estate. In Chordie.com, there is a GC version in Cowboy E location, maybe run through those chords in various capo spots with the line’when I left Galveston’ until you are comfortable?) Just a suggestion, ignore me if you like!

 

On the Beachfront Bargain Hunt TV show, Galveston Beach appears to have great value real estate, $90K gets a decent shack with sea view. They didn’t mention the yearly rebuild after the hurricane comes sailing through.....

 

 

BluesKing777.

[Lars68]

I think that was very well done! You really know how to put together a tasty home production. With that said, I too think it would be cool to hear a rawer version, but I realize we are all chasing sound ideals in our heads that are different. So you should go for ”your” sound, not somebody else's

 

Lars

[drathbun]

I think that was very well done! You really know how to put together a tasty home production. With that said, I too think it would be cool to hear a rawer version, but I realize we are all chasing sound ideals in our heads that are different. So you should go for ”your” sound, not somebody else's

 

Lars

 

Thanks Lars. It is great to hear all these opinions. I'm going to give a more "live" recording a shot (as I'm working on a 14 track version of "Galveston" LOL). I'm working on Jim Croce's song "Photographs and Memories". I'm going to try a multiple microphone and pickup combination.

 

My problem with totally live recording is that I screw up so often, it takes a 100 takes for me to get a keeper.