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“My Old Man” opens with a reference to looking in the mirror, and hinges on the phrase “I’m seeing more of my old man in me.” There are other lyrics, too, but, really, the whole story is told in that one line.
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He does it when he pits the innately good-natured, easy-going tone of his music against the hint of sorrow in his lyrics. At the same time, he doesn’t allow the music to be too sterile or clinical he goes for the feels, too, and sometimes even hits ’em. DeMarco recorded this one with essentially just voice, acoustic guitar, synthesizers, and drum machines-so you could just as easily liken it to the homespun vibes of early Paul McCartney solo work or even to the rigid, one-man funk of early Prince-yet the algorithmic nature of these synthetic arrangements captures some of the melodic precision that DeMarco likes in his Steely Dan. These two reference points might seem like an odd sort of axis upon which to chart DeMarco’s own gifts, yet it’s not impossible to hear both influences pop up on This Old Dog, his third full-length album. He also noted that he was a Steely Dan man, admitting that the latter group didn’t tug at his emotions quite so much but that he nevertheless takes pleasure in their intricacy and their precision the sensual delight implicit to their music was described by DeMarco and Maron as being almost pornographic in nature. The Canadian singer/songwriter was perhaps duty bound to mention The Band, whose ragged charms, DeMarco said, always hit him right in the feels.
#Mac demarco this old dog on the level mac
Lastly, turn on the Chorus I effect to complete the sound.Days before the release of This Old Dog, Mac DeMarco appeared on WTF with Marc Maron and took a few minutes to talk about his musical influences. To set the vibrato speed, set the rate fader in the LFO section to 1.24 Hz with a delay time of 0.23. This controls the amount of pitch modulation, and finding the sweet spot is the key for many patches. Set the decay fader to 7, sustain to 0 and release to 5.5.įor the pitch vibrato, set the oscillator’s LFO fader (at the top-left) to 1.3. To create some movement in the patch, set the filter’s env fader (envelope modulation) to 2 and set the VCA switch to env, which will set both the filter and the volume to be controlled by the ADSR envelope. Set the main VCF filter’s frequency fader to 6 and resonance to 4, which will filter out some of the high-end, but still leave plenty of high-mids. Raise the HPF filter to halfway, which will filter out some of the bass-end frequencies.
#Mac demarco this old dog on the level Patch
The patch can be created in TAL-U-NO-LX, a fantastic and inexpensive software emulation of the similar Juno synths.įrom the default setting, turn on the square wave DCO and reduce the sub-oscillator volume to halfway. The Chamber of Reflection lead synth was recorded on Mac’s Roland JX-3P, a vintage synth with a highly recognisable Roland chorus sound. The melody and chords are interpolated from the Shigeo Sekito song The Word II, reworked with vintage synths.
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Chamber of Reflection stands out on Salad Days as the only song that replaces Mac’s signature chorused guitar with swirling layers of synthesizers.