I built this song in chunks finishing one section before moving on to the next in a progression. It begins in Am very sparsely arranged, and gradually moves to C major as more instruments are added - the idea was to begin with a sort of absence and then end with a fulfillment of it. A slow tempo, minor chords and sustained tones seemed the obvious place to start for this feeling...
Read more...
Description:
...I had used a mellotron string sound from a (Puremagnetik Livepack) with some extreme EQ on an earlier project (Week #11 - Disappointment - around 1:37), and I immediately thought to go back to that to begin this piece as it had a sort of mournful quality that I thought would evoke longing were it slowed down and sustained. I came up with a chord progression, and the low end of a virtual clavinet seemed to fit with this. My next thought was a strummed acoustic guitar. I kpet the clavinet, but as it didn't work as well with the busier strumming when it goes major, I switched to an acoustic bass patch instead. I then brought the mellotron back as a lead part a well.
Tools:
Ableton Live 7
Propellerhead Reason 4
Big Tick Ticky Clav
PSP Audioware Vintage Warmer 2
BBE Sonic Maximizer
Waves MasteVerb LE
Takamine acoutic guitar
Audio Techinca AT2020 microphones
Presonus FireStudio interface/preamps
Notes:
- I also wanted to add an electric giutar for the final section, but I just didn't come up with a part I was really happy with, and I'd rather leave a song incomplete than include substandard parts.
- I approached mixing this very simply. As there aren't a lot of parts - at most 3 playing together, I didn't think it needed much. I set up a reverb on a send and put everything through it in various amounts. Then I used some compression and EQ on the master channel to blend thing together. And that was really it.
- I feel like I'm getting better with recording the acoustic guitar. This sounds to me like my best attempt yet anyway, though I'm still searching for the perfect setup. I simplified things this time which at least made mixing what I got easier, and I'm sure I could have improved it slightly with EQ had I been so inclined. I think I'm only going to do so well with my cheap Takamine guitar, but I"m itching to attempt recording my archtop.
Share on Facebook
2009-07-31
2009-07-24
Week #30 - Greed
I really wanted to write lyrics to this. I had a melody in mind (for the verses anyway) but just couldn't come up with the words unfortunately. So at this point it's a very simple, straightforward piece - just guitar, bass and keyboard all pretty much playing in unison. Perhaps I'll get back to it someday, but here's where it stands thus far:
Read more...
Description:
For the feeling of greed I wanted something in a minor mode, and I ended up in Aeolian which tends to be my default I think. I also thought the song should have a driving feel, and even without drums, I think I accomplished that. I also thought the piece should be very focused. I thought getting too complicated or fancy with the parts didn't really work for this emotion since greed can be to all consuming so rhythmically everything is pretty locked together after the intro. So that harmony and rhythm. As for timbre, I stuck to my familiar palette of sounds. I'm reasonably happy with the clean, delayed guitar and slightly phasy electric piano, though overall the song could use a bit more dirt. A lead part would help too.
Tools:
Ableton Live 7
Line6 POD Farm
AAS Lounge Lizard
PSP audioware Nitro
Waves MasterVerb LE
SPL Free Ranger
Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp
Kjaerhus Audio Classic Compressor
Notes:
- The intro is pretty free form. I had the giutar part, just douled the low note on the bass and improvised the rhodes part around it.
- The structure is:
Intro - Chorus - Verse - Verse - Chorus - Verse - Middle 8 - Chorus - Chorus
- The chords are:
Chorus: Em | Em | G | G | Fm | Fm | Bm | C Am |
Verse: Em | Em | G | G | D | D | Em | Em |
Middle 8: Em C | Em C | Em C | Em |
- I took a modal approach to the chorus the first 2 times, sticking to an E in the bass. At the end the bass follows the root notes of the chords. I also altered the bass part on the third verse to make it a bit busier.
- The progression for the verse was taken from Pink Floyd's Time, taken down a step.
Share on Facebook
Read more...
Description:
For the feeling of greed I wanted something in a minor mode, and I ended up in Aeolian which tends to be my default I think. I also thought the song should have a driving feel, and even without drums, I think I accomplished that. I also thought the piece should be very focused. I thought getting too complicated or fancy with the parts didn't really work for this emotion since greed can be to all consuming so rhythmically everything is pretty locked together after the intro. So that harmony and rhythm. As for timbre, I stuck to my familiar palette of sounds. I'm reasonably happy with the clean, delayed guitar and slightly phasy electric piano, though overall the song could use a bit more dirt. A lead part would help too.
Tools:
Ableton Live 7
Line6 POD Farm
AAS Lounge Lizard
PSP audioware Nitro
Waves MasterVerb LE
SPL Free Ranger
Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp
Kjaerhus Audio Classic Compressor
Notes:
- The intro is pretty free form. I had the giutar part, just douled the low note on the bass and improvised the rhodes part around it.
- The structure is:
Intro - Chorus - Verse - Verse - Chorus - Verse - Middle 8 - Chorus - Chorus
- The chords are:
Chorus: Em | Em | G | G | Fm | Fm | Bm | C Am |
Verse: Em | Em | G | G | D | D | Em | Em |
Middle 8: Em C | Em C | Em C | Em |
- I took a modal approach to the chorus the first 2 times, sticking to an E in the bass. At the end the bass follows the root notes of the chords. I also altered the bass part on the third verse to make it a bit busier.
- The progression for the verse was taken from Pink Floyd's Time, taken down a step.
Share on Facebook
2009-07-17
Week #29 - Bulgarian Chicks Remix
I'm getting away from my script again this week. Ever since they made the tracks available a few months ago, I've really wanted to try my hand at remixing the song Bulgarian Chicks by Balkan Beat Box. You can hear the original at either http://www.balkanbeatbox.com or http://www.mypace.com/balkanbeatbox. I haven't had time to work on it, but I wasn't very inspired to write something new this week, so it seemed like the right time.
It hasn't been mixed yet, I'm still fiddling with fills and edits, and the guitar and keyboard sounds need work, but as an arrangement I think it's pretty much finished. After meticulously cutting up the original tracks and pulling out about 20 or so clips I had a go at putting the song back together again. I recorded my own bass, guitar, keyboard and drum parts, to go with the horns, vocals and percussion from the original. And here it is so far:
Read more...
Description:
As I haven't done much in the way of remixing before, I wanted to keep pretty true to the original while giving it my own treatment. As such I didn't do to much editing of the clips from the original on my first pass. Instead I took those bits and built my parts around them. Once I had an idea of what worked together and came up with a structure, I started evolving my own parts and bending the originals to mesh with them.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record beta
Propellerhead Reason 4
Propellerhead Recycle 2.1
Fender Jazz bass
Epiphone Les Paul electric guitar
Notes:
- As mentioned above, this still needs a lot of work to become a finished track. Aside from the bass, I'm not satisfied with the sounds.
- The guitar tone is wrong for most of the track. I think I need to actually use different amp/FX setups for different sections.
- I also need to automate the delay/reverb on the keyboard as it's really doing different things in different parts of the track.
- I'm not certain I like the drum kit I used so I might switch out those sounds, and I need to work on fills and edits to the beat.
- I might add more percussion or replace some of the percussion lifted from the original, at least in certain sections. Another alternative since I recycled the loops would be to use the original clips, but play in new parts for them via MIDI. i did do a bit of editing to the original in this way, specifically around some transitions.
- I'd also like to do more with the horn clips from the original. As is I didn't really touch them.
- I'm not sure about the vocals. The longer sustained parts are okay, but the verses didn't work out so well. I split the original vocal into 3 parts and tried to work them out sort of like verses, but only one really worked so I ended up using it all three times.
- And then there's mixing which I haven't even begun. General levels and pan and a touch of reverb here and there, but for the most part it's still raw. The bass is compressed, but little else is, and I haven't touched the EQs outside trying to get the keyboard and guitar to sit together (to no avail).
Share on Facebook
It hasn't been mixed yet, I'm still fiddling with fills and edits, and the guitar and keyboard sounds need work, but as an arrangement I think it's pretty much finished. After meticulously cutting up the original tracks and pulling out about 20 or so clips I had a go at putting the song back together again. I recorded my own bass, guitar, keyboard and drum parts, to go with the horns, vocals and percussion from the original. And here it is so far:
Read more...
Description:
As I haven't done much in the way of remixing before, I wanted to keep pretty true to the original while giving it my own treatment. As such I didn't do to much editing of the clips from the original on my first pass. Instead I took those bits and built my parts around them. Once I had an idea of what worked together and came up with a structure, I started evolving my own parts and bending the originals to mesh with them.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record beta
Propellerhead Reason 4
Propellerhead Recycle 2.1
Fender Jazz bass
Epiphone Les Paul electric guitar
Notes:
- As mentioned above, this still needs a lot of work to become a finished track. Aside from the bass, I'm not satisfied with the sounds.
- The guitar tone is wrong for most of the track. I think I need to actually use different amp/FX setups for different sections.
- I also need to automate the delay/reverb on the keyboard as it's really doing different things in different parts of the track.
- I'm not certain I like the drum kit I used so I might switch out those sounds, and I need to work on fills and edits to the beat.
- I might add more percussion or replace some of the percussion lifted from the original, at least in certain sections. Another alternative since I recycled the loops would be to use the original clips, but play in new parts for them via MIDI. i did do a bit of editing to the original in this way, specifically around some transitions.
- I'd also like to do more with the horn clips from the original. As is I didn't really touch them.
- I'm not sure about the vocals. The longer sustained parts are okay, but the verses didn't work out so well. I split the original vocal into 3 parts and tried to work them out sort of like verses, but only one really worked so I ended up using it all three times.
- And then there's mixing which I haven't even begun. General levels and pan and a touch of reverb here and there, but for the most part it's still raw. The bass is compressed, but little else is, and I haven't touched the EQs outside trying to get the keyboard and guitar to sit together (to no avail).
Share on Facebook
2009-07-08
Week #28 - Ambivalence
I finally got to beta test Propellerhead's new software, Record this week so I ended up using it to put together this week's piece. As such, this piece was part exploration of feeling and part exploration of software. I want to try it out the program in different applications. The first was as a song sketchpad, and here is the sketch:
Read more...
Description:\
I admit this song doesn't really make sense. I like the verses, and I'll probably try to develop a further song out of them, but the other parts are kind of random. I somehow thought tritones would be a good device for this feeling so I was just trying out a couple of riffs using them. The results were...meh.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record beta
Propellerhead Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty electric guitar
Audio Technica AT2020 condenser mic
sE Electronics Reflexion Filter
Notes:
- Lyrics:
Everybody knows what you're gonna say
Every time you open your mouth.
Everybody know the kind of games you play,
The rules that shift and change with your truth.
One thing stays the same and it's constant change,
Delirious from spinning around.
Do you think that if you stop, if you don't turn the page,
Maybe someone's gonna make you account.
Hopelessness wasn't ever born out of fear.
It's the unknown that keeps us staring in space.
If we fill up our lives with distractions galore
Who's to say we won't get lucky in grace.
For Time's a man with a gun in his hand,
And he's hunting us down each in our turn.
The blood on his shoes is a visceral sign
Of our eventual impending return.
- Chord progression:
Verse: Dm - Am | G - Dm | Dm - C | G - Dm | x2
Chorus: Dm - Dm/B | x8
Break: unison riff (sort of in Dm)
- I wanted to record a bunch of things so I set this up as a pretty standard guitar/piano/bass/drums/vocals, rock-band type track. The drums (which I left out of the final mx) and the spaced out piano are from Reason, while the bass, guitars and vocals are audio recordings.
- The vocals aren't processed with much more than reverb and compression, but I like the way they came out. Simple, but I think they fit the atmosphere.
- Lyrically the words just sort of came to me as I was playing the upper guitar part. They're probably kind of obvious, but I like them.
- The piano was fun. I basically just improvised parts and ran them through this space effect.
- I'd like to add acoustic guitar at some point, as well as write a really good hook for a chorus.
- I had this wacky drum part going early on, but in the end decided it didn't work. I might bring it back in a future version, but if I add drums at some point, I'd likely redo them completely.
Share on Facebook
Read more...
Description:\
I admit this song doesn't really make sense. I like the verses, and I'll probably try to develop a further song out of them, but the other parts are kind of random. I somehow thought tritones would be a good device for this feeling so I was just trying out a couple of riffs using them. The results were...meh.
Tools:
Propellerhead Record beta
Propellerhead Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty electric guitar
Audio Technica AT2020 condenser mic
sE Electronics Reflexion Filter
Notes:
- Lyrics:
Everybody knows what you're gonna say
Every time you open your mouth.
Everybody know the kind of games you play,
The rules that shift and change with your truth.
One thing stays the same and it's constant change,
Delirious from spinning around.
Do you think that if you stop, if you don't turn the page,
Maybe someone's gonna make you account.
Hopelessness wasn't ever born out of fear.
It's the unknown that keeps us staring in space.
If we fill up our lives with distractions galore
Who's to say we won't get lucky in grace.
For Time's a man with a gun in his hand,
And he's hunting us down each in our turn.
The blood on his shoes is a visceral sign
Of our eventual impending return.
- Chord progression:
Verse: Dm - Am | G - Dm | Dm - C | G - Dm | x2
Chorus: Dm - Dm/B | x8
Break: unison riff (sort of in Dm)
- I wanted to record a bunch of things so I set this up as a pretty standard guitar/piano/bass/drums/vocals, rock-band type track. The drums (which I left out of the final mx) and the spaced out piano are from Reason, while the bass, guitars and vocals are audio recordings.
- The vocals aren't processed with much more than reverb and compression, but I like the way they came out. Simple, but I think they fit the atmosphere.
- Lyrically the words just sort of came to me as I was playing the upper guitar part. They're probably kind of obvious, but I like them.
- The piano was fun. I basically just improvised parts and ran them through this space effect.
- I'd like to add acoustic guitar at some point, as well as write a really good hook for a chorus.
- I had this wacky drum part going early on, but in the end decided it didn't work. I might bring it back in a future version, but if I add drums at some point, I'd likely redo them completely.
Share on Facebook
2009-07-04
Week #27 - Frustration
I think Funk trumps Frustration, but I'll let you be the judge:
As seems to be the theme in recent weeks, this is a very simple arrangement of an idea that came together rather quickly. Like the last couple of songs, I think this is a good start to something, but it needs more development to get in the ballpark of a complete piece. It's really just one idea that needs more to make it complete. Whether that's lyrics, more sections, additional parts/orchestration, I'm not really sure, but I'm happy with this start.
Read more...
Description:
Frustration was the theme, but funk was the vehicle. I'm not sure why, but when I sat down to get started this week, I was taken over by this groove. The final product may or may not evoke frustration, but it definitely sprung from my ruminations on the subject. It started with the lower rhythm part at the beginning, but before I knew it I was layering up guitar tracks, adding bass, and scrambling to get a rough drum track down before I lost the feeling. I didn't even use any FX during recording, not even an amp sim.
Session #2 was spent fiddling with the FX and arrangement - setting up amps, EQs and compressors, editing the parts down to my favorite bits (and adding a few new parts), and trying out arrangements. Session #3 was all about getting everything to blend together. I almost started adding more parts - lead guitar and clavinet - but in the end decided to keep it simple.
Tools:
Abelton Live 7
Studio Devil Virtual Guitar Amp
Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp
PSP Audioware Vintage Warmer 2
BBE Sonic Maximizer
Waves MasterVerb LE
Waves TrackPlug LE
Audio Damage Rough Rider
Aixcoustic Creations Electri-Q CM
Sanford Phaser CM
Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty
Fender Jazz Bass
Notes:
I really tried to keep things simple this week. There are only two guitar tracks, bass and drums, and I only used a handful of plugins as I felt it would help the parts blend if everything was running through the same processors. To that end:
- I used the same Electri-Q EQ (with different settings) on each track. I put the EQ at the beginning of the chain on the guitars and bass.
- All of the tracks have some combination of Vintage Warmer, Sonic Maximizer and TrackPlug at the end of the device chain.
- I used the Studio Devil amp sims on both guitars and the bass. I also put the higher guitar part through a the Sanford Phaser before the amp sim, using it like a stomp box.
- Everything went to the same MasterVerb reverb.
- Finally, I used parallel compression on the whole mix to beef it up. I set up Rough Rider on a send with the NY compression preset, sent everything fully to it, and then gradually brought up the send level to a suitable level.
- There are no mastering effects on the master buss. This is still a pretty hot mix, and I'd probably need to bring down some levels if more parts are added (vocals, keyboard, etc.) and/or it were to go on to be mastered.
Share on Facebook
As seems to be the theme in recent weeks, this is a very simple arrangement of an idea that came together rather quickly. Like the last couple of songs, I think this is a good start to something, but it needs more development to get in the ballpark of a complete piece. It's really just one idea that needs more to make it complete. Whether that's lyrics, more sections, additional parts/orchestration, I'm not really sure, but I'm happy with this start.
Read more...
Description:
Frustration was the theme, but funk was the vehicle. I'm not sure why, but when I sat down to get started this week, I was taken over by this groove. The final product may or may not evoke frustration, but it definitely sprung from my ruminations on the subject. It started with the lower rhythm part at the beginning, but before I knew it I was layering up guitar tracks, adding bass, and scrambling to get a rough drum track down before I lost the feeling. I didn't even use any FX during recording, not even an amp sim.
Session #2 was spent fiddling with the FX and arrangement - setting up amps, EQs and compressors, editing the parts down to my favorite bits (and adding a few new parts), and trying out arrangements. Session #3 was all about getting everything to blend together. I almost started adding more parts - lead guitar and clavinet - but in the end decided to keep it simple.
Tools:
Abelton Live 7
Studio Devil Virtual Guitar Amp
Studio Devil Virtual Bass Amp
PSP Audioware Vintage Warmer 2
BBE Sonic Maximizer
Waves MasterVerb LE
Waves TrackPlug LE
Audio Damage Rough Rider
Aixcoustic Creations Electri-Q CM
Sanford Phaser CM
Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty
Fender Jazz Bass
Notes:
I really tried to keep things simple this week. There are only two guitar tracks, bass and drums, and I only used a handful of plugins as I felt it would help the parts blend if everything was running through the same processors. To that end:
- I used the same Electri-Q EQ (with different settings) on each track. I put the EQ at the beginning of the chain on the guitars and bass.
- All of the tracks have some combination of Vintage Warmer, Sonic Maximizer and TrackPlug at the end of the device chain.
- I used the Studio Devil amp sims on both guitars and the bass. I also put the higher guitar part through a the Sanford Phaser before the amp sim, using it like a stomp box.
- Everything went to the same MasterVerb reverb.
- Finally, I used parallel compression on the whole mix to beef it up. I set up Rough Rider on a send with the NY compression preset, sent everything fully to it, and then gradually brought up the send level to a suitable level.
- There are no mastering effects on the master buss. This is still a pretty hot mix, and I'd probably need to bring down some levels if more parts are added (vocals, keyboard, etc.) and/or it were to go on to be mastered.
Share on Facebook
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
