16 Mar
2010
16 Mar
'10
3:44 p.m.
So here I am once more...
Hello everyone. First of all, advance apologies to people awaiting the
next instalment of Lovatnet, which I posted in October – this isn’t it.
Among other things, since that time I’ve been busy on a big project,
collaborating with a friend – that will make an appearance at some
point far in the future as there is much work still to do and work is
currently on hold.
To keep myself busy in the meantime, I decided to pick up an idea from
about 12 years ago, which was thrown together (it doesn’t deserve the
word written) on my old four-track with electric piano, bass, guitar and
the drum machine on a Hammond organ (so obviously not a proper Hammond,
sadly.
I’ve had vague ideas in the past few year about doing something with the
piece, but never got anywhere with it. I decided in December to try,
once and for all, to get somewhere with developing it and it seems that
in the past few months the time was right; the writing then turned into
recording and mixing and so, three months later, here we are. I’m not
even sure the original idea really deserved so much effort throwing at
it, but it’s been fun progging it up a bit and hopefully turning it into
something a little more interesting – it’s good to recycle :-)
It’s a short piece of instrumental symphonic progressive rock, the
opening section of what will be a longer piece – this part is finished
and I have a vague idea what the next section will be like, I just need
to put the work into writing and developing it. And after that, well,
who knows… but as always with me, don’t hold your breath.
I don’t think the mix could have been what it is without a few recently
discovered effects that came to be of critical importance (thanks to
Dave Phillips for the heads-up in LJ!), notably the EQ10Q and the Calf
and Invada compressors especially, without which some desired sounds
would have been impossible to achieve.
It’s turned into a bit of a monster really: if I counted correctly late
last night, the Ardour session has 50 active tracks and 28 busses, it
takes a good minute or so to load – even the mixing has become overblown
and pretentious, excellent! :-P It’s been an enjoyable pass-time and an
interesting and useful learning process though.
As always, general thanks to all Linux devs, but particular gratitude to
those involved with Ardour, Hydrogen, Linuxsampler, Wine and all the
LADSPA and LV2 plugins.
Full, geeky details of instrumentation and equipment etc are below for
anyone who might be interested.
I’ve done no post-processing/mastering beyond limiting to raise the
overall level a bit. I give you Beyond Triple Point (part 1):
FLAC (14.6 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_16-03-10.flac
OGG-10 (7.4 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_16-03-10.ogg
And much as it pains me... MP3 (6.2 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_16-03-10.mp3
Anyway, I hope you might perhaps enjoy it, short as it is.
Q
CAUTION! EXCESSIVE, SUPERFLUOUS & NERDY INFORMATION AHEAD
OS: Ubuntu Studio 9.10
Software: Ardour, Hydrogen, Linuxsampler (Jsampler with Fantasia
front-end), Cantabile Lite VST host running under Wine for B4 VST and
Oddity, all others run standalone.
Effects: EQ10Q has been used extensively as have the Invada and Calf
compressors. Also: SWH plugins; TAP Reverberator; C* plugins, mainly the
amp and cabinet sims; Matrix Spatialiser; some other effects from the
Calf suite.
Mics: SE Electronics SE2200A and AKG D3700 through a Focusrite Platinum
TwinTrak Pro (also used for DI) into an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
Drums: Native Instruments Battery Studio Drums
Bass: Squier Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Bass
Acoustic guitar: Freshman FA300 JEM
Acoustic 12-string guitar: Freshman FA1DC12
Lead guitar: Yamaha SA503 TVL
Rhythm guitar: Gibson Les Paul Studio
FX: Behringer EM600 Echo Machine
Amplification: Marshall JCM2000 TSL601
Pianos: Sampletekk White Sister; White Grand
Mellotron – Cello, Mk II Violins, English Accordion: GForce M-Tron Pro
Leslie (Mellotron processing): Native Instruments B4 II VST
Hammond: Native Instruments B4 II
ARP Solina: GForce Virtual String Machine
Trumpets and horns: BOB Orchestral Brass
ARP Odyssey: GForce Oddity
Bells: PMI Anvils & Churchbells
Glockenspiel: oops, not sure... either PMI Orchestral Instruments or
Prosonus Orchestral Percussion
16 Mar
16 Mar
6:33 p.m.
Evening Q!
Nice work. Very pollished, as the last time. You have a way with your final
versions. I wish I would put so much work and eye for the detail into it.
It's a nice experience reading the list of used instruments and then
listening to the song. I was able to actually perceive most of them, as such.
Only the brass section is lost on me, as a seperate instrument. Perhaps
another technique I should learn. I think I mentioned this with Lovatnet, that
I enjoyed the way you glued the sounds of several instruments together to one
big combined sound colour.
The akkordeon is a unique choice. I think I rarely hear akkordeo at all and
the mellotron version I've never heard before this song.
The guitar work (on all three solo guitars) is lovely. More on the intuitive
side, at least so it sounds for the electric guitar(s), which befits the
piece. It reminds me a bit of Carlos Santana - especially in the last section.
Well the mixing of the drums wouldn't have been my choice, but then it
wasn't me putting God only knows how many hours into that piece. So I shut my
trap. :-)
All in all: Throw part 2 at us. Or wait, perhaps first continue Lovatnet,
which you left hanging, with what - I believe - they call a cliff hanger. Can
you hear the imminent golumph of me disappearing in the river. :-)
Thanks for sharing this!
Kindly yours
Julien
--------
Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles)
======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ========
http://ltsb.sourceforge.net
the Linux TextBased Studio guide
======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: =======
http://www.juliencoder.de
7:47 p.m.
Julien Claassen wrote:
Evening Q!
Nice work. Very pollished, as the last time. You have a way with your
final versions. I wish I would put so much work and eye for the detail
into it.
It's a nice experience reading the list of used instruments and then
listening to the song. I was able to actually perceive most of them, as
such. Only the brass section is lost on me, as a seperate instrument.
Perhaps another technique I should learn. I think I mentioned this with
Lovatnet, that I enjoyed the way you glued the sounds of several
instruments together to one big combined sound colour.
The akkordeon is a unique choice. I think I rarely hear akkordeo at
all and the mellotron version I've never heard before this song.
The guitar work (on all three solo guitars) is lovely. More on the
intuitive side, at least so it sounds for the electric guitar(s), which
befits the piece. It reminds me a bit of Carlos Santana - especially in
the last section.
Well the mixing of the drums wouldn't have been my choice, but then it
wasn't me putting God only knows how many hours into that piece. So I
shut my trap. :-)
All in all: Throw part 2 at us. Or wait, perhaps first continue
Lovatnet, which you left hanging, with what - I believe - they call a
cliff hanger. Can you hear the imminent golumph of me disappearing in
the river. :-)
Thanks for sharing this!
Kindly yours
Julien
Good evening Julien!
Well, thank you very much for listening and also for commenting.
Polished is always a very nice one to hear -- I don't think anyone ever
wants to hear that it sounds like what it is, a bloke in a bedroom with
a load of sampled instruments, so that's a big relief.
I wish I could be more prolific and I suspect that that could be the
trade-off: the greater the attention to detail, the less prolific you'll
be. But even then I bet there are exceptions; sickening, hateful people
who are both amazingly detail-focused and amazingly prolific :-)
I must admit that the brass is often lost on me and I know where it is
and what it sounds like! That might be a hint to edge it up just a
little :D Eight bars from the end there's horn and trumpet come in, two
horns in unison panned slightly each side of centre and trumpet panned
halfway left. Then four bars from the end a second trumpet comes in
higher up, panned halfway to the right.
Having a nice coherent, "glued" mix is another one that's nice to hear,
thanks. I always think my mixes sound a bit messy, nowhere near as much
separation and clarity as other people's, but I think the biggest
culprit there is the sheer number of instruments I throw in!
I wonder how much my approach to reverb helps to glue things together: I
use the old "two reverbs, one short and one long" technique as it makes
a lot of sense to me. I use the TAP Reverberator with the Ambience
preset on a very, very short (much less than a second) setting.
Everything goes to this on sends, to varying degrees, to glue everything
together with greater amounts used to push sounds back in the mix to
create depth. The long reverb, usually a hall, is used to create the
sound of the space in which everything takes place.
The only Tron accordion I can think of off the top of my head is Watcher
Of The Skies and even then, I'm pretty sure it was Bass Accordion and
not the English Accordion tapes. Oh, and some Jarre, without digging it
out I'd guess at the last part of Equinoxe. I used it because my old
Farfisa home organ (which I still have, the Hammond went a few years
ago) has an accordion sound which fitted quite nicely, years later I got
the M-Tron and naturally gravitated towards that sound at that point.
I don't normally think of myself as much of a guitarist -- I certainly
doubt I'd be able to improvise a guitar part like I did twelve years
ago, all I did was learn it and fill in a couple of blanks and tidy it
up a bit. I spend way too much time noodling on keyboards these days,
it's less hassle to record and easier to reach for as the computer's on
anyway :D
Yeah, I spend way too much time programming and obsessing about drums,
only to go pushing them back in the mix. But I don't think they'd be
right if they were any more up front, plus something's got to be in the
background.
I'm not sure what I'll work on next. And that's assuming my
collaborator/friend doesn't crack the whip and decide it's time for me
to down my own tools and resume work on our joint venture.
Thanks again for listening and commenting :-)
Kind regards
Q
17 Mar
17 Mar
4:36 p.m.
Hello again Julien (and everyone else, too, of course!)
I've tweaked the mix a little bit, to bring the horns and trumpets up a
little. I didn't want to bring them up too far, as they shouldn't be too
obvious in the mix -- but on the other hand, they need to be audible!
I think they should be audible now, but then I know what I'm listening
out for, so I'd be grateful if you could lend me your ears again and let
me know whether it sounds better now.
FLAC (14.6 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.flac
OGG-10 (7.4 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.ogg
MP3 (6.2 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.mp3
Many thanks
Q
Julien Claassen wrote:
Evening Q!
Nice work. Very pollished, as the last time. You have a way with your
final versions. I wish I would put so much work and eye for the detail
into it.
It's a nice experience reading the list of used instruments and then
listening to the song. I was able to actually perceive most of them, as
such. Only the brass section is lost on me, as a seperate instrument.
Perhaps another technique I should learn. I think I mentioned this with
Lovatnet, that I enjoyed the way you glued the sounds of several
instruments together to one big combined sound colour.
The akkordeon is a unique choice. I think I rarely hear akkordeo at
all and the mellotron version I've never heard before this song.
The guitar work (on all three solo guitars) is lovely. More on the
intuitive side, at least so it sounds for the electric guitar(s), which
befits the piece. It reminds me a bit of Carlos Santana - especially in
the last section.
Well the mixing of the drums wouldn't have been my choice, but then it
wasn't me putting God only knows how many hours into that piece. So I
shut my trap. :-)
All in all: Throw part 2 at us. Or wait, perhaps first continue
Lovatnet, which you left hanging, with what - I believe - they call a
cliff hanger. Can you hear the imminent golumph of me disappearing in
the river. :-)
Thanks for sharing this!
Kindly yours
Julien
6:37 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 08:36:00PM +0000, Q wrote:
Hello again Julien (and everyone else, too, of
course!)
I've tweaked the mix a little bit, to bring the horns and trumpets up a
little. I didn't want to bring them up too far, as they shouldn't be too
obvious in the mix -- but on the other hand, they need to be audible!
I think they should be audible now, but then I know what I'm listening
out for, so I'd be grateful if you could lend me your ears again and let
me know whether it sounds better now.
(Mmm, definite traces of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez)
Still difficult to identify this as a real brass section, but
that may me due to some other reasons: I find it difficult to
'believe' in the sound - to hear it as something real and not
just coming out of a speaker. That may be because of the absence
of any room acoustics in the recording.
Ciao,
--
FA
O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
E guerra e morte !
6:51 p.m.
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
Thanks for listening.
(Mmm, definite traces of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez)
You don't say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Still difficult to identify this as a real brass section, but
that may me due to some other reasons: I find it difficult to
'believe' in the sound - to hear it as something real and not
just coming out of a speaker. That may be because of the absence
of any room acoustics in the recording.
Ciao,
I believe the samples are not close-miked and there is a discernible
room (recording studio live room) sound on the samples as I recall, but
that's not going to be evident in a mix like this, I realise. They are
sent to the same ambience and main reverb as everything else -- quite a
lot is sent, to push them back in the mix.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter whether your believe in them as a
real brass section or not, they are samples of real brass instruments
and they are there. They weren't audible before. They're a little less
inaudible now.
7:07 p.m.
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 10:51:41PM +0000, Q wrote:
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
Thanks for listening.
Because it's neither of those. But if you ever heard the
Adagio it's difficult not to notice it...
Ciao,
--
FA
O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
E guerra e morte !
(Mmm, definite traces of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez)
You don't say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
8:33 p.m.
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 10:51:41PM +0000, Q wrote:
Okay. It's just that the "Mmm" prefacing the remark suggested negative
connotations, but I'm glad the inference was wrong.
I played it with the local youth orchestra, second violin, getting on
for 20 years ago. Perhaps it has influenced it, but it certainly wasn't
consciously.
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
Thanks for listening.
Because it's neither of those. But if you ever heard the
Adagio it's difficult not to notice it...
Ciao,
(Mmm, definite traces of Rodrigo's Concierto
de Aranjuez)
You don't say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.
4 Apr
4 Apr
5:31 p.m.
Hello again
I bought myself a new toy on Friday, so I have re-recorded a part right
at the beginning of the piece I posted recently.
I was never altogether happy with the acoustic guitar -- although I
don't think it sounded too bad, it wasn't the effect I was after. But
now it is how I had originally envisaged it:
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_04-04-10.flac
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_04-04-10.ogg
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_04-04-10.mp3
Cheers
Q
Q wrote:
FLAC (14.6 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.flac
OGG-10 (7.4 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.ogg
And much as it pains me... MP3 (6.2 MB):
www.quirq.ukfsn.org/Quirq_Beyond-Triple-Point_Part1_17-03-10.mp3
Anyway, I hope you might perhaps enjoy it, short as it is.
Q
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Q