Family Photos | Somewhat Incognito

Current Status- Structure complete : Out for first round feedback on Reddit.

About the track

This weekend, my wife forced me into doing family photos at 9am Saturday morning. It ended up being a nice morning, but its what prompted the idea for this track.

I thought this lyrical concept worked for the music because family photos day was happy and wholesome, however there was also this tension around the day and leading up to it. The instrumental and vibe works for this (i think…).

Once I had the overall lyrical concept decided, I pinged some friends on the IMF discord asking if anyone had ‘sounds cameras make’ that I could use.

Sure enough Pultixima delivers!

I ended up using 4 of these 5 in various ways. 2 of them are mostly untouched and layered in, slightly time stretched. Except for the electronic stutter click multiple – i stretched this out out a lot to turn it into that odd kind of panning pad electronic drone noise that flys around at times.

I started this one by picking up the Gibson acoustic for the first time in a while. I plucked away and came up with the simple 2 chord plucky riff that sounds far in the room in the mix. I may change the way this one sits in the mix, but I do think I want the acoustic room sound for it.

This was my fathers Gibson J45.. its old, probably from the late 60s to mid seventies for its manufacturing date if I had to guess. It still sounds and plays pretty well, I’ve never used it for a recording on a Somewhat Incognito track…. until now that is.

I already have some feedback around that guitar, its the only one I got on it but I have a gut feel about the sound not sitting exactly the way I want yet so I’m taking it as a sign to mess with its eq a bit more:

I played around with a lot of combinations of Guitar Rig 5 and Reason Amps and stuff on the bass parts.

I used a Squire electric guitar for the electric guitar parts , this guitar my wife got as a teenager wanting to learn to play, but never really picked it up. She did keep the guitar over the years tho and I have been using it for a while. My Ibanez SDGR 6 string bass is used for the bass parts.

The electric bass is most of the time running in 2-3 layers of the same part with varying EQ’s and effects.

The drums are done with 2 umph retro beats, and an EZ drummer each played in with the MPD218 finger drums and then quantized and adjusted around.

The core drums is the EZ drummer. Funk Zappa is the doing tight center kick drum, and a high snare sound that layers into the ez drummer one a bit.
The Bengal is just that cowbell kind of thing. I may remove it.

The Vocals:

Im still working on how these sit, its not quite right in a few places and needs some work but this is the set up as of right now.