Nicholas Toone

Original Music

This is the stuff I write, preform, and produce

  • Thank You, Good Night!

    Not quite what you’d think. Some acoustic venom with a bombastic ending.

    Link To Lyrics


    Thank You! Good Night ©2024 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    This origins of this song can be found in this post from March 2022. As mentioned, I had purchased a hangdog of a classical guitar from a local thrift store. It cost me $75 and it came with a case. I don’t know why I bought it. It just felt like the thing to do.

    Let me tell you, once I got a new set of strings on it, it sounded pretty fucking great.

    It was around that time that I managed to snag a couple of second hand SM-57’s and they lived up to their reputation. The guitars on this recording are the ones from the linked post where I say: “The SM57’s are, hands down, the best for close micing the classical guitar. It may be that they’re the best for the cheap classical I have. I don’t know. I don’t have anything better to compare it with”

    Well, all this time later I can say: Who cares about comparisons? In the past I literally setup the used mics, spent a few minutes improvising on a beat up, thrift store guitar to get a test recording and now, well over two years later, “Thank You, Good Night!” is that test recording as it was originally played.

    To reiterate: this is not a rerecording. The acoustic guitar in this finished song is that original, one take test recording. Only some very mild EQ and reverb were added.

    The heavy solo section was built on top of the strummed chords I’d originally recorded. The electric guitars and bass were played through the ToneLib GFX plugin when I was still using Linux. The synths are all SURGE XT presets. This is the first track I’ve done without an actual drum set. The drums are SSD5 Free 1 played manually via my Oxygen 25.

    Lyrics were somewhat difficult. I had a hard time coming up with melody and a theme. What you hear was written and performed in about a day. I was coming up with lines on the spot, recording scratch tracks, and then ran through the final vocal recording while changing words and/or phrases on the fly.

    Finally, mixing was … almost non existent. Most all of the tracks were done with some minor tweaking via the Mixbus channel EQ and compressor. I routed the drums and bass through my standard NYC comp bus (which employs the ACE EQ and compressor) and the vocals were touched up with the absolutely wonderful Flying Delay.

    All in all, I’m super, super pleased at how this one turned out. There’s just something about it that hit all the right notes.

    Note: The artwork is a from the hip photo I took in NYC back in 2011. It was late at night. It was raining, hard. I was walking through Times Square after seeing a play, trying to stay dry with the five dollar umbrella I’d bought from one of the street corner dudes selling five dollar umbrellas. The lights had this ethereal glow to them. I pulled out my phone and snapped a shot… just as a limo came crawling past. Out of all the “in the moment” pictures I’ve taken, this is probably my most favorite; so spontaneous, so accidental, yet it captured that moment in time perfectly.

    1: I enjoyed SSD5 so much I bought the full version when it went on sale at the end of November. It really is a great piece of software. My only gripe is that they use fucking iLok however, you don’t need the stupid USB dongle, just an iLok login. That, and the fact that it’s a one time purchase allowed me to bend a little. If SSD5 was subscription (and/or if it needed the stupid USB dongle) I wouldn’t be writing this paragraph. This is why I’ll never use the Slate Virtual Mix Rack; it’s subscription and it requires the stupid USB dongle for fucking iLok.

  • Oh! What A Time To Be Alive

    “Oh! What A Time To Be Alive” is this thing in completed form. It took a bit (especially for a two minute song) but it was worth it in the end :)

    Click here for lyrics.


    Oh! What A Time To Be Alive ©2024 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    A long, long time ago, early in the mystical year of 2020, I found myself messing around on my hi-hats. I was trying to mimic that style one hears in trap/pop/hip hop by doing quick buzz rolls on 1 and 4 and filling in the 2 and 3 with simple 8th note single strokes – all on top of a simple four on the floor kick. I eventually settled into the pattern you hear on the song and decided to record it in Reaper, and save it with the working title “Cidada Hats” 1.

    I would come back to it a few times over the years. At some point I came up with that funky bass line (recorded via my Ampeg PF-350 before I sold it) and added some basic, clean, delayed guitar and even some shakers and a tambourine. And… it sat on my drive.

    I came back to it this summer in a big way. I was going through my folders, doing a cleanup and saw the silly Cidada Hats directory and decided to see if there was anything there and, as the post from August details, I ended up doing some surgery:

    1. Deleted the clean/delayed guitar outright.
    2. Deleted the shakers and tambourine.
    3. Edited the fuck out of the composition. The original had three verse sections (each verse double what they are now) and four choruses and running about five minutes. It basically followed a pattern I was stuck on for my last two releases. It was too much. So I cut/moved/rearranged the drums and bass into the structure you hear now. Short, simple, to the point. The track is now just a shade over two minutes.

    Once the editing was done, I added heavy guitars guitars to the choruses via  my Ibanez played through ToneLib GFX. Again, nice and simple. The final bit was some synths using SURGE XT presets. One of these was a preset that I tacked on to the back end of the verses as a goof but I wound up enjoying it so much that I figured out how to play on guitar to add as a double to the synth. The guitar double is not super obvious in the final mix, but if you listen carefully, it’s there.

    A more recent thing I fixed up was sound of the kick. It was lifeless. Hollow. Of course it was recorded using the old Intex kit I talked about here. I didn’t even try to EQ it into something. I just replaced it with a sample. Sometimes it’s the best and/or only option. I then added the snare, toms, and splash in the chorus using the SSD5 Free plugin played manually via a midi controller 2.

    The hi-hat, on the other hand, is the original I put down way back in 2020. Thankfully I’d direct mic’d it with a GLS ES-57 3. It was easy to compress and ratchet up the high end to give it that crisp, trap like buzz right where I wanted it to.

    The lyrics and vocals were the easiest of the three I recorded on the rented equipment.  I’d had vocal pattern nailed down and the lyrics about 90% complete since the early summer 4.

    Note: The artwork is a heavily edited stock photo by Pavlofox on Pixabay. The logo font is DymoFontInvers by Manfred Klein and [smartphone] by woodcutter Manero – both downloaded from FontFreak, my go to site for wacky fonts of all shapes and sizes.

    1: I chose the working title of “Cicada Hats” because of this stupid fucking video where Rick Beato whines about the sounds of the hi-hats in an Ariana Grande song and compares them to the sound cicadas make.

    2: I managed to snag a used M-Audio Oxygen 25 Third Gen from Kijiji for like twenty-five bucks.

    3: I did record overheads as well, but they were shitcanned even before I’d started to edit the song structure. They were really serving no real purpose at all.

    4: It all started when the “heaping dose of shit” line came to me one day during a company all-hands that was, well, not fun. It took me maybe a day and a half to come up with the rest. From there it was simply tweaking and editing in the name of cadence.

  • Your One, Short Life

    Wow, it really has been a bit. I posted Gods, Prophets, or Slaves wayyy back in January 2023.

    Here we are then. Enjoy “Your One, Short Life”

    Click here for lyrics.


    Your One, Short Life ©2024 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes (There’s a lot to say this time)

    The main body of the tune is in F … something? I can’t remember F what. The only scale I know by heart is G major (yeah, I’m looking at right at you post-solo Master Of Puppets). I stumbled on the main verse of this song while fucking around with the scales section of the All Guitar Chords site and it kinda just went from there. I just hit up that site, load up some different scales, play around with them, and piece together whatever sounds good.

    This was one of those pieces that I worked on for an inordinate amount of time. I finished the composition and recorded the guitars in the mid summer of 2023; was still storing a friends axes, tube amp, and cab and used them to lay down the various heavy bits (the clean parts were played on my Ibanez).

    Recording the drums was bittersweet because what you hear on this track is the very last recording of my kit before I sold it.

    I laid the tracks down in about an hour, then put the kit up for sale on Kijiji. It was gone three days later.

    I gave it all rough mix, had a listen was pleased and…

    … then the tune just sat there. Yes, yes life was busy and all that, but the main issue was that I just could not come up with a melody for the verse sections. Everything I tried just plain sucked. Sometimes I’d listen to it on repeat in the car and nothing I tried clicked.

    Late one night, at the beginning of October, I woke up with a start. Without even thinking about it, I picked up my phone, opened my mail, sent myself the following message:

    … then put my phone down and went back to sleep.

    As I talked about in my post from the middle of last week, I decided to rent a pro level mic and preamp and get the vocals done for some tunes I had lying around. This was the first one I tackled and I took my email to heart.

    While it’s not a complete ripoff of Once In A Lifetime, you definitely hear the influence in there. As I moved deeper into the song, I stared jamming more words in there until the third verse is a near breathless block of words that pretty much sums up the overall subject. The choruses flowed naturally out of all this and took on a somewhat “marching” cadence with just a smattering of melody (and a whisper of harmonies).

    The mixing didn’t take as long as normal; I’d been playing with the instrument mixes on and off over the past year and the vocals we not difficult at all. I attribute this to the SM7B/NV1 setup I employed this time around. After all my whining about “top of the line” and how you don’t really need it, I feel like I have to walk that back a little.

    Yes, you can work with inexpensive, sometimes bargain basement equipment but there is a reason these expensive, top of the line options are so lauded: they do work as advertised. Now, top of the line equipment won’t compensate for a shitty performance. If anything it accentuates shitty performances. If you’re competent, however, top of the line equipment can make your recording effort a little bit easier.

    Remember though, work with what you can afford. Rent what you can’t afford (if at all possible).

    With all that being said, enjoy this new tune!

    Note: The artwork for this track is a photograph I took of a stray dog Manzanillo, Mexico in January 2019. Text effects were added via Affinity Photo.

    NoteNote: The drums are 90% the recorded kit. I did have to blend in samples for the kick and snare as my playing is not what you’d call consistent. Recording this track is probably some of the best drumming I’d done at that point, but I still qualify as an amateur.

    NoteNoteNote: I remixed this song on 1/1/2025. You can find the original mix over here.

  • Gods, Prophets, or Slaves

    Dropping another new track: “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves”.

    Click here for lyrics.

    N. Toone - Gods, Prophets, or Slaves
    ©2024 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    The bones of this song have been around for at least five years; I’ve been messing around with the main bass groove 1 since early 2017. It’s been through a few variations over the years and last fall I decided that this was the first one I was going to record entirely in Linux.

    I scrapped the original takes I’d done in Windows and re-recorded everything in Fedora on Reaper and Mixbus 32c using native plugins. 2

    As of the beginning of December last year, all it needed were lyrics and vocal tracks, which were all completed in the past few weeks.

    Main plugins used:

    • ToneLib GFX. My god I love this plugin. “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves” was the final test; once I had the guitar tracks laid down, I bought GFX without a second thought.
    • Flying Delay by SuperflyDSP. While it sometimes forgets its settings after you close out a project, this is a great delay, especially for vocal effects.
    • EQ10Q LV2 Plugins. I use the EQ10QM Equalizer on most channels as a compliment to the Mixbus channel strips. I also use it, along with the CS10Q Compressor on my “NYC Compression” bus.

    All in all, Linux is pretty solid for recording something from start to finish. While there is not as many options for native plugins as there is for Windows or Mac, it’s a reminder that it’s always better to use what you have rather than spending your time looking for “the perfect plugins”. Remember: it’s not the plugins alone that make the song, or the sound.

    So here it is in all its nerdy glory: “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves”.

    1: Fun note: The working title of this song was “Spy Hunter” because my main bass groove reminded me of the 8 bit music version of the Peter Gunn Theme from the 1983 arcade game.

    Side note: An early version of this tune can be heard in one of the LBL YouTube videos (starting at around 03:35).

    2: Tracks were recorded into Reaper, stems exported to Mixbus 32c for the final mix. I record in Reaper as it’s lightweight and easy with the latency. Linux in Reaper is not overly great for mixing simply because  it just does not like LV2 plugins or having ToneLib on more than one track.

    For mixing, you just can’t beat Mixbus 32c. Not only is the inline EQ and compression on each channel strip so damn good you could get away with not using plugins, Mixbus just sounds better. While I don’t have “golden ears”, I do hear a pretty big difference between the output of Reaper and Mixbus.

  • They Knew You Before You Were Famous – The Just Stop Messing With It Mix

    Here is a song I titled: “They Knew You Before You Were Famous”

    Click here for Lyrics (Yes! Lyrics!)

    They Knew You Before They Were Famous
    They Knew You Before You Were Famous ©2022 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    I’ve been working on this track for far, far too long. My problem is that I just can’t settle. I tweak and tweak and re-do and tweak some more. “If I just add this one more little bit…”

    I need to learn to stop fucking with things and just get the songs done. Less is more, as they say.

    So here it is. I finally just stopped where I was and decided to put it out there. Maybe there will be another mix at some point but, for now, it’s done.

    This one was started on Windows and finished on Linux. I really tried to get the song going in Mixbus, but ended up making a righteous mess of it all. No matter, Reaper was  here to save the day. The final mix was done using Reaper Plugins (mostly ReaComp and ReaEq) and Room Reverb from ElephantDSP.com.

    The big thing about this tune is that it has vocals. This is the first time I’ve written lyrics and actually sang anything (other than backing vocals) since early 2013. It took a while for the words to come, but once an idea formed, I put pen to paper and it all came together.

    Now that this one is done, I’ll work to complete the next tune, which is only lacking finished lyrics and recorded vocals. I’ve promised myself that I’m not going to keep tweaking and just get it done. Hopefully I’m not lying to myself; especially since there are another thee songs in half finished states that need my attention.

    For now, enjoy “They Knew You Before You Were Famous”

  • When Something Appears

    Here is the newest tune.

    Bandcamp link: https://ntoone.bandcamp.com/track/when-something-appears

    This track started out as  a silly little guitar thing I came up with last April while I was drinking beer. It then morphed into the GLS Test I posted back in September. Over the course of the past few months, it was reworked it and recorded from scratch using the following:

      For mixing I only used the EQ and compression on the Mixbus channel strips and the only plugins used were the included ACE reverb and delay. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and see what I could get without relying on a ton of plugins.

      All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the end result. Hopefully the next one won’t take as long.

    • Millbrae Exit

      So I did this thing. It’s pretty off the cuff and rather ridiculous. It was born out of practicing recording techniques and trying to remember anything I learned while taking drum lessons. I setup a Soundcloud account because I think I’m going to do more ridiculousness.

      I shitcanned Soundcloud. Here is the Bandcamp link: https://ntoone.bandcamp.com/track/millbrae-exit