Week #38 - Neglect

Because of not posting again last week, I'm now 2 songs behind. I did however, go back this week and finish working on the piece for Neglect that was supposed to be done September 18th. I really do feel like some ideas are flowing again, and I hope to post the songs for Torment and Awkwardness at some point over the next few weeks as I try to catch up and remain on schedule for the rest of the year. In the meantime here is Neglect:



Description:

I've fallen a bit behind on this project, posting this song almost a month late, but I'm still at it. This piece is sort of a strange amalgam of sounds - mellotron cello samples, old school video game noises, 70s disco drum samples, a guitar with a huge effects chain, and organ and bass synths - that I tried to mold together and sculpt into an evolving soundscape that would conjur the feeling of being neglected.

Tools:

Ableton Live 7
Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Puremagnetik Microtron 2 and Blip Livepacks
dBlue Glitch
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
TbT Audio Octaver12B
KResearch KR-Delay CM
IK Multimedia Ampeg SVX UNO LE
BBE SOnic Maximizer
SPL Free Ranger
Krakli Software CMorg
Togu Audio Line TAL-BassLine
Retro Sampling Vinyl Dreams
Izotope Vinyl
IK Multimedia CSR Hall
IK Multimedia TrackS 3 Vintage Compressor Model 670
IK Multimedia TrackS 3 Linear Phase EQ
IK Multimedia TrackS 3 Opto COmpressor
PSP audioware Vintage Warmer

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Notes:

- 85bpm, riffs based around Dm

- I'm not sure what made me choose the sounds for this piece, and I know they're a very strange combination. I can say that everything started with creating the guitar sound and recording the riff that begins the piece. I used to play bass by putting an octave pedal on my guitar, and there's still something about that sound that I love so I tried to recreate it in software. Then I took it a step further by adding an octave above as well as the lower octave and putting a delay on the high frequencies only.

- The first thing I added to the guitar was an organ which seems kind of odd since the guitar has a kind of organ-y sound already, but the riff in the second section didn't sound right played on the guitar. I I came up with the organ sound by pushing all of the drawbars in and just experimenting with pulling out various combinations until I found a tone I liked. I added the Vinyl Dreams plugin to give the part an older, sampled feel.

- With the two main riffs down I just started brainstorming things to add. Having recently downloaded the second set of mellotron samples from Puremagnetik, I thought I'd try to the flute sound. The original line complimenting the guitar at the beginning was written with the flute, but I then changed it to the cello sound. I didn't really do anything with the sound, but in the C section I took the cello part and ran it through the Glitch plugin, experimenting with the sound mangling tools until I found a pattern I liked. This is my favorite part of the track.

- Next I decided that I needed some drums. I decided to use one of the standard kits from Reason - the disco kit. I ran it via Record instead of Reason so that I could process the sounds through Record's mixer. To give the beat a more lo-fi feel that would fit in with the organ, mellotron, and video game sounds, I used the Izotope Vinyl plugin.

- It occurred to me to compliment the beat in places with some old school video game sound effects since I've collected a variety of sample sets over the years and something about them seemed to fit with this feeling to me. I'm not sure why, but I guess I associate video games from my childhood with sitting in my room alone. These were actually quite tough to integrate into the piece, and I'm still only half satisfied with them.

- The final piece of the puzzle was a synth bass with a very simple sub-bass patch just to help fill out the bottom end. As there isn't a very thick kick drum, and I'd done so much to age all of the sounds that things had lost a bit of punch.

- The arrangement started out pretty standard - A-B-A-B-C-B with all of the parts in each section playing the whole time. I then went back and removed bits and pieces until I'd pared things down to where I liked how the track progressed. I feel it's kind of an organic instrumental even though there are definitely structured sections and transitions.

- As for mixing, I automated levels and set up reverb and compression on sends to get everything to gel together. I left everything in mono to fit with the old school nature of the piece. This left things pretty muddy in the mid-range, and there wasn't much top end so I used EQ to try an enhance the highs before running the whole mix through the Vintage Warmer plugin on the semi-driven tape setting for one last go at some old school grit and warmth.


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