[LAU] Prog rock instrumental, sort-of WIP

[Q]

Viktor Mastoridis wrote:
> Yes, I join the chorus of the others in enjoying this piece of Prog 
> rock. The organs are really amazing, as well as the sound of the 
> acoustic guitar - nice and clean and natural.
> 
> I personally like the 'eastern' hint in the melody and the attention to 
> detail in the structure and performance of the composition. Nothing is 
> left to chance (I like formality in music, I guess:-)
> 
> What I only personally miss is in the production domain (I downloaded 
> the flac) - it seems to me that there are not enough low frequencies in 
> the overall mix - I don't know how were you doing the master track, but 
> more bass presence (50-250hz) would give a warmer as well as more 
> contemporary feeling, I believe.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Viktor Mastoridis
> Music-o-Graph
> & Educator
> www.MediTera.Co.Uk <http://www.MediTera.Co.Uk>

Hello Viktor

Thanks for listening and commenting. And not just listening, but 
obviously listening closely, carefully and intently, too -- it is 
appreciated.

As I've mentioned in other replies, the "Hammond" is NI B4 II, which I 
picked up really cheap recently after Native Instruments announced its 
discontinuation, to be replaced by a sampled instrument (I can't 
understand how that will work well for something as complex as a 
Hammond). BTW, if you're interested, Dolphin Music and DV247.com in the 
UK were selling it at ~£64 -- everywhere else still had it at full price.

And Aeolus, well, it's just superb. I've never found anything like it 
for Windows, without shelling out serious amounts of money for large 
sample sets, which I can't think would be anywhere near as versatile.

Yes, the double harmonic/Arabic/Byzantine scale, plus the very similar 
Phrygian Dominant used in the final part, is very interesting and does 
have an "exotic" (to my uneducated, English ears) and Eastern tinge to 
it. Plus it easily gives rise to several tritones and if they're good 
enough for King Crimson (and Satan himself in the Middle Ages), who am I 
to complain!

Thank you for your kind words and also for noticing the attention to 
detail -- I don't consider myself at all knowledgable about, or skillful 
with, music and I'm never sure whether the details I obsess about are 
really that important or worthwhile bothering with.

I've heard people say that knowing how pieces are played, or how they 
were recorded, or analysing them in depth, detracts from the enjoyment. 
For me, being able to disentangle a mass of sounds into parallel 
streams, think about how each instrument is played, recorded, 
processed... it all adds to my appreciation and hence my enjoyment. 
Often my reasons for doing things the way I do is that I can't play any 
better or am too lazy to try, but ultimately that's still an artistic 
choice, for better or worse.

As I alluded to in my first post, I've done no 
mastering/post-processing. The four sections are spread over three 
Ardour sessions (recorded at 44.1 KHz), each of which was mixed and 
bounced down to a stereo, 32-bit float WAV. These were then placed in a 
fourth Ardour session, which was bounced down to a 16-bit WAV, with no 
processing besides running the TAP Scaling Limiter on the master bus to 
raise the level by 6 dB. If I were to run through JAMin, which I will do 
at some point in the future, I would almost certainly put at least some 
mild compression on the low end to bring it all up a bit in level.

I don't have a subwoofer (plus I know my monitors aren't that great 
right at the bottom end), so I tend to be pretty conservative about bass 
i.e. I highpass reasonably high, certainly no lower than 50 or 60 Hz on 
bass and kick drum only, higher up on other instruments, much higher on 
certain ones and don't tweak EQ very low down.

Ultimately, I'm not really bothered at all about sounding particularly 
contemporary (I consider 70s production values to be, on the whole, 
neutral sounding, timeless, classic and good) but I'll try experimenting 
with bringing up the low end a bit more.

Once again, thanks for your careful consideration of it and apologies 
for my lengthy ramblings.

Q