Cant Keep A Good Man Down - Topvega

@TopVega
I liked the feel of this. The guitar is my favorite part it sounds like several instrumental groups of the 50's for example Lonnie Mack. I think it could stand a break or some tangential excursions, but a vocal may be just he tonic for it. Good job, vig

I'm playing my [imaginary] guitar. Hehe. And I'm singing along to the [imaginary] words. Rockin and a groovin this one is! Good work. Nope! Can't keep a good man down. :-)

Nice Song topvega :)

You know - a voice that might work in this one is Mark Ratcliff (ratridge). Just a thought. Would love to hear a vocal in this one. Best - Dan

I get a Psychedelic Frisco sound meets ZZtop. Awesome gritty and clean, amazing that you could do that.
Cru

Wish i was at woodstock listening to this one dude.The feel is spot on.long live the blues.

This is a time machine for me, brings me back to the late 70's and I love that.

I liked this a lot so I played my Native American style flute to it. Best I could do cuz I can't sing. I had a blast! Makes me want to listen to your other tracks and see what comes up. Check out my profile tracks to hear it. Thanks!

This is great.. Really love the blues. You got me singing at 2 am in the morning. Great music.

Awesome track topvega! All the elements you used blended together perfectly and created a great blues track. The mix sounds pretty good too. I really enjoyed listening to this. It's a Fav. Nice work.

This is pretty jammin my friend! It does remind of if the Doors had a second guitarist or something. The drums have a pretty vintage sound to them which is nice! Before you add to the kit, remember that old blues and blues rock groups often had pretty minimal drum kits. That said, adding some more drums could give a more updated sound. I really enjoyed listening! Faved for sure!

Hi TV,
Good to see one of your tunes here...
I have to second what the others said: your production has improved. You still manage to keep that "live-played" feeling that I appreciate so much in your work, but this song is more polished.
Adding voice to this is not "strictly needed" as it works well also without, but I have to admit that I would be really curious to see what can come out of this with the right vocal track on it :-)
Take care, Domenico

To adjust velocity of your drum parts, should be just that you open up the MIDI part on your sequencer's timeline. Under all the notes, you'll find parameter data and 'velocity' is probably the default one you're shown (though you can choose to see others too eg pitch). You should be able to select a bunch of notes and increase them all by a certain number of points (the range is 0-127) or do things such as specify maximum and minimum levels, which can be useful when you want to keep their relative levels to each other intact. I hope that makes sense, though I guess if it doesn't you'll probably just discover it for yourself anyway.


One way to view the addition of a second kit is that it's just a bit like saying 'add more physical drums to your one, single kit' a bit like someone such as Neil Peart of Rush does (his kit has loads and loads of toms and cymbals). Having two snares can be cool, for the obvious technique of using one for one section, one for another (eg verse/chorus).

I use multiple kits on pretty much all my tracks. For a hard rocking track that might suit you, check out Debt Black Hole as it has 4 kits on it and a lot of complex, layered drumming in styles ranging from jazz to extreme metal.

Good luck with vocals. I would also love to find vocalists but would much prefer to work with some in person rather than do online collaboration. If I'm going to collaborate, I don't want it to be via sending emails back and forth, needs to be together in the same room.

Good to see you're using Addictive Drums - something you said you would a couple of months ago. I was thinking about this just the other day.

Instantly I would recommend lowering the velocity of that kick. Maybe turn it down but I think the problem is more that it's playing at pretty much the top velocity. Ask if you're not sure what I mean.

Your drums could do a bit more as they're a bit simplistic and you might think about having a second kit for variety ( I do it a lot).

The rest of the playing is good (and my kind of thing)though maybe you should go with just the one guitar at certain points as maybe it's a bit too intense doubling the pair up. You do do this (drop one of them) but I think it might help to do it more often in this track.

Are you looking for a vocal for this?

If so and you get a good and distinctive one, it could be a really classic track.

Blues is close to home territory for me TV so you gotta know I liked this one....blues and your rock style go together like they were meant to....reminds me of some good times...(I think good-time blues are legal now)....Right on....Ed