Speaker 1: 0:04

What is happening? Everybody, this is Dave Croft, and welcome to a 52Q's Q review, where I feature a Q written by a member of the 52Q's community and provide feedback and critique like you might hear from a music supervisor or a library. And this week we have Salem with the Cosmo, written by Brian Morales, for our week 29 weekly feedback thread. So we are going to take a listen to Salem with the Cosmo, to Kitchy Jazz Q, and then we're gonna talk about it on the other side. Alright, that was Salem with the Cosmo by Brian Morales. Brian, thank you so much for sending this along.

Speaker 1: 2:33

I absolutely loved this Q and what I really love about. First of all, I'm a huge fan of Esquivel, which is an early kind of Kitchy Jazz electronic music composer, and the only thing missing from this was like some, some zoos, and I think it would be really cool if you add maybe add some like zoos. And if you've not checked out Esquivel which, hearing this, I would be surprised if you hadn't heard of Esquivel, but I would encourage you to check this out. A couple of things. It was really loud. Now, I did pull this off of your SoundCloud page, so it's entirely possible. It's entirely possible that that SoundCloud did something a little funky in the. In the translation, I think it squashes it down to, you know, 256 or 128, and that's this is why when we, when we do the Q reviews, there's this huge gap. There's this 18k drop-off and that's the MP3 compressor, which is fine. I'm not giving you super extensive mix notes, but things did sound distorted, feels like we're clipping, and if I actually show the output bus here, we were getting into into some clipping here, yeah, there we go. So we're starting starting to clip the output bus. So we want to set our ceiling on our, on our limiter and our mastering chain at you know, no, no higher than minus point two, I would put it at minus one just to be safe.

Speaker 1: 4:30

And and so it felt like it was distorting, felt like it was too loud, and when the vibraphone comes in, it feels like first of all, mallet instruments, especially marimba, but also vibraphone around the mid-range. As soon as you start playing thirds or really any intervals in the mid-range beyond a fifth or an octave, then they love to distort, and I think it's just the physics of mallet instruments or whatever. On top of that, the vibraphone sounds like it's kind of in the range of the guitar. ["guitar R&B Music"] Ish, maybe I mean, but they're right on top of each other, and do I hear ch-ch? ["guitar R&B Music"] Love, love, that's Chef's Kiss. That is so good, ch-ch. Now, rhythmically speaking, you should absolutely lean into a bossa feel here, instead of the cross-sticks, because we're playing, you know. ["guitar R&B Music"] Boom, boom, boom, chick, boom, boom. So instead of a boom, chick, boom, boom, chick, boom boom, do a check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. So the bossa pattern. ["guitar R&B Music"] Two, three, pop, pop, pop, pop pop pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Ch-ch, check, check, check. Okay, and so that was a clave pattern, just a straightforward clave pattern. An actual bossa pattern would be ["Guitar R&B Music"] Ch-ch. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. So pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, right, and so I think that would be a little bit more authentic. But I would lean into a straight ahead bossa here. I think ["Guitar R&B Music"], ["guitar R&B Music"] and the flute's pretty good. I mean, I could tell that it's a program midi flute, I think ["Guitar R&B Music"]. This, yes, 100% During this A section.

Speaker 1: 6:59

And let me pick on your drums a little bit more. Go to the hi-hat or stay on the hi-hat. Save the ride symbol for the bridge, okay, because we have, you know, the ride symbol is a more sustaining sound, and so you want that kind of more flowy type sound, but this should be hi-hat in the A section. And another thing if you want, really if you want to go full Joe bean, instead of playing the hi-hat here, have a brush on a snare drum playing side to side, or even a shaker Right. When I play kind of authentic Joe bean bosses? I don't, I'll use a brush and just sweep it side to side on the snare drum. Now, I know you're probably not recording your drums. Let's stay hi-hat here. You could start off with the ride symbol at the top but then move to the go to the hi-hat in your verse, in your B section, go to the ride symbol, love all of this. Yes, yes, yeah, yep. And this is when I was like, okay, this, this guy listens to Escavel because that that sounds so good.

Speaker 1: 8:36

If that's a plugin, well done. I want to know, let me know in the comments what plugin that is. I would that little melody, I would do vocals, Yep, or layer it in. That would be so cool. The brass sounds amazing. Another little bucket of fish at the end. If you want another cool thing to do on that last note, if that's a guitar, do a neck bend or if it's a plug-in, just pitch, bend it just barely. I don't think you need the bucket of fish. This coming from the drummer. I don't think you actually need the bucket of fish here. I would leave it. That gives a nice button, or at least make a version without the bucket of fish. The bucket of fish is the bucket of fish. That's the bucket of fish. I call it a bucket of fish fill.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Brian, thank you so much for sending this along. Like I said, this was sent along during our week 29 weekly feedback threads and we put weekly feedback threads together all every week over at 52 cues, and so if you want your cue featured on the 52 cues YouTube channel, then head over to 52 cues. Why don't you join us and why you're there? You can check out some other things. So head to 52 cuescom and if you found this feedback helpful and you would like feedback on some of your cues, please head over to 52 cuescom slash coaching. I would love to help you out and give you feedback from the form, structure, melody, mix, even the titles. Brian's title for this one was sailing with the Cosimo, or maybe the Cosmo. I think that I thought I liked the word Cosmo better. But if you want feedback on your own cues and you would find that helpful, then head over to 52 cuescom slash coaching. But that's gonna do it for me until next time, peace.

Speaker 2: 11:33

Henceforth may we forgive too.