Halfway through, my 'A&R' head said "I wonder if it'll go to full kick & snare?". And you did. It's all great as it is. And I know you aren't asking for feedback, and it's probably too late anyway; so you'll hate me for saying this: But, my hyper-critical 'Producer head' would have added in some groove/loosened quantize on certain aspects of the original 4bar drum pattern. Sounded way too strict for me. Obviously I can't speak for him, but I'm friends with Andy Gangadeen, and we've had chats re. this sort of thing, and concur on techniques. Good stuff. Well done!
Thanks for the feedback! Very nice observation! In fact I've been struggling with "groove templates" and the like to achieve what you mentioned (even opened a thread two days ago on this subject here at AS). I think I will have to play my snares on a pad from now on, as groove templates are still too static as they just apply the same variations over and over (and end up being too repetitive).
Don't get me wrong; sounds great! This is very subtle stuff we're talking about here. I'm gonna pm u with a few techniques. I didn't necessarily mean adding 'groove templates', but just moving some notes, thereby adding groove generally. I agree; groove templates per se are not really what u want. And if u were to add the same one to different percussive aspects, it can suddenly become pointless because there's nothing to groove against contextually!
I like it a lot, though in the direction that The Smooth One mentioned, the drums could be less locked up. Do more, you guys could grow together.
I think the female vocs could be louder (especially in the last part) and I find the stereo distribution of the drums (too extreme) and vocs (too small or too wide) a bit irritating. But nice to listen to a completely different genre here.
