“Coming Back to Life” (Pink Floyd)

prufroc8

Member
I have been working on tones from the Pink Floyd album The Division Bell for as long as I can remember (not quite literally, but close to it). There are certain sets of tones that I have in my mind as archetypal, pure reflections of something I would like to one day achieve. Tones Gilmour had on songs like Wearing the Inside Out and Coming Back to Life are on that list. It has felt recently like I am close (particularly since obtaining the Axe Fx within the past couple of years), but there is always something missing. I am sure part of it is the proverbial "hands" factor.

Nonetheless I think I am getting closer. I was trying some backing tracks recently to test out my latest revision of an axe fx preset for these lead tones, and I realized that crappy backing tracks weren't helping. So I decided to recreate the song. The original plan was to just use a midi file and some virtual instruments for a quick and dirty version that sounded better. But then it felt like that was not good enough either. The drums were off, the bass was fake. So it led down the road of attempting to recreate the song mostly from scratch, other than the keys that I imported from a midi file and modified.

This is what I have come up with so far. I am relatively new to attempting full mixes, I am learning how to get things to sit. There are definitely things off (my bass recording does not have the same body, the drums don't pop out the same way they do on the original, etc), but it is getting there as well. I am fatigued on fixing all the little imperfections at this point (vocal pitchiness, I gave up on trying to get the organ effects, etc). I added some variations (the biggest one being doubling the length of the outro solo and starting to do my own thing) so it is definitely not note for note.

Feedback is welcome.

 
Great job! One of my fav PF songs!
Going to see Brit Floyd in another week. :)
 
Thanks for the comments. I have attached the main patches used (my axe fx is downstairs so I am not absolutely certain, but I am pretty sure these are the main ones). The clean tone is a slight variation of a patch from Tyler Grund. I was not getting the clean tone right, so I looked up that old patch and found that he had compression and treble way higher than me, which is closer to the original sound. The lead tone patch is definitely not based on Gilmour's gear. I believe this patch may have arisen from a "sound on sound" patch from a long time ago that has been tweaked.
 

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  • Gilmour Back To Life.syx
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Great playing and sound, what model, year and pickups are on your Strat.
Thanks for the presets. can you post more presets.
 
It is actually a cheap Indonesian Squier strat, I'm not sure of the year. But the pickups are the fishman fluence strat set, so perhaps that balances out a bit. I tried to upgrade the guitar with locking tuners, a new neck, a Tusq nut, etc but only got so far. I could not get the new neck to work, no matter what I did it fretted out everywhere. I did get the neck from ebay, perhaps that was the issue. It was the first time I tried to mod a guitar in any substantial way, the fishman pickups were on a preloaded pickguard so that was not too difficult. I do like the fishmans, perhaps I will put them on a better guitar one day.
 
It sounds really good, especially when listening in isolation. I feel a bit unqualified giving any other feedback since you play it way better than I would be able to and your tone is way better than I would be able to make... but I won't let that stop me!

I went and toggled listening to yours and this:


In the initial part, his tone is thicker (more low/mid frequency content?), which seems to provide a bigger foundation for more treble on the pick attack. My initial feeling listening to yours was that the pick attack was a bit more prominent/trebly (before I did any external comparisons), but I think if the rest of the tone were a little thicker it would support the same level of pick attack/treble as you presently have. Maybe a little more bass in the tone, or increase the low frequency resonance in the cab? Maybe lowering the Q a little bit on low frequency resonance to spread out where the bass is reinforced? But then might have to balance out being too thick for deep notes, by increasing low freq cutoff in cab a little? Or maybe just a tiny bit of bass increase and then increase the input trim in amp block to thicken up the sound?

What you have is already excellent, and I'm just giving feedback best I can as a wannabe player and tone chaser, so take my comments with a grain of salt ;)
 
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