allcoms wrote: Thanks for taking the time to listen and comment -- glad you enjoyed it! I'm not aware of anyone ever dying from a surfeit of Tron, although it can't be long before the health police start calling for a Tron tax to stop people bingeing ;-) No doubt second-hand smoke from the ceremonial burning of recalcitrant Trons is dangerous too :D Q

Ken Restivo wrote: Aw, you're just trying to make me blush now! I wish I could sing like Wetton though, I love his voice, especially on Starless. Fortunately for eveyone everywhere I can't break out my violin (which I haven't touched in about 18 years) because the bridge looks to be in danger of collapsing. Funnily enough, on the way to work this morning, after listening to this (I know it sounds vain, but I find the complete change of scenery good for giving a mix a critical listen) I queued up both Larks' Tongues and Red, no doubt inspired by Allcoms' mention of it last night. Bruford's drumming was a definite target to aim for with the drumming in this. I'm a big fan of much of his style, I love the stilted, subtle work in Starless, the wonderful little off-kilter shuffles he uses, bouncing between kick and snare and the endless paradiddles for fun and profit! I'm also a fan of some of Fripp's guitar tones, again a target for some of the guitar in this, namely that seems best achieved by the rhythm pick-up of a Les Paul with the tone backed right off, for example in the first part of Starless and the outro of Exiles (one of my favourite Crim tracks, again with superb Bruford stick work). And the Tron in the first section might have had a teensy bit of inspiration from Starless of course ;-) Overall though, in spite of being able to point to specific bits and pieces that were inspired (or nicked!) from Crimso, I wouldn't have said they were a huge influence, given the structure and instrumentation (heavy on the synths, aa fair amount of church organ and a touch of Hammond). There are other bits I can point to snippets of Camel, Dire Straits, Arena, maybe a touch of Floyd and even the Red Dwarf theme music, but I'm still have no clue as to what this sounds like to me. Which is perhaps a good thing :-) Were the 20 tracks of Tron strings in the Egyptian Massed Mellotron Orchestra not sufficient for you :-P Best wishes Q

Cedric Roux wrote: Hi Cedric Thanks for listening and I'm glad you liked the solo. The solo is the same all the way from when it comes in until the end. It's a Gibson Les Paul Studio, rhythm pick-up, tone backed all the way off. It went through first a Behringer CS100 Compressor/Sustainer (Boss CS3 clone), with attack halfway and sustain up to the maximum. Then through a Behringer CL9 Compressor/Limiter (TC Electronic Compressor copy), attack towards minimum and sustain towards maximum. I was going to track it through a phaser, but it didn't sound great and there wasn't really enough time to try either phaser in different parts of the signal chain so it did sound right. Given the amount of comping it's perhaps as well that it wasn't printed with phaser anyway. The harmony lead guitar (Les Paul, treble pick-up) was tracked with a small amount of phaser (Behringer SP400 Super Phase Shifter; Boss PH3 clone), although I'm beginning to regret that now. The amp is a Marshall JCM2000 TSL601 on the lead channel (gain 6, volume 3, master volume 4 -- I often track louder than this if I can). Treble max, mid and bass at about 4. It was mic'd with an sE Electronics sE1a small diaphragm condensor and an sE2200a LDC at different points on the cone and mixed to taste. It was mixed with a small amount of Invada Stereo Phaser (about 25% depth) panned fairly narrowly, a bit of mild EQ using EQ10Q and bussed in parallel through Invada Delay Munge (tempo sync'd) and fairly drastic LPF and HPF. I could go into details, but I think it's really a question of tuning the parameters so that it sounds right in the mix. For the playing style and overall sound, think Slash without any fast widdly stuff -- smooth and melodic high-gain sound with lots of bends (oh yes, nearly forgot, it's drop tuned a semitone to assist with bending). The harmony part is tonally more in the style of Dogs by Pink Floyd though. It's no bother and I hope this helps. Q

Roberto Suarez Soto wrote: Hi Roberto Thanks for listening and commenting, especially if prog isn't your sort of thing. Sorry, this is probably going to turn into a mammoth post! Crimson can be weird, Van der Graaf Generator definitely on occasions, the American band Maxwell's Demon certainly. Then there's really weird and challenging stuff in some of the extreme/math/post-rock/prog metal circles or even things like Zeuhl, none of which I'm into, but me?! Weird is not a description I ever expected to hear, so thanks for a genuinely surprising experience :-) Yes, basically I sketch things out, recording very quickly (and hence roughly) bits and pieces of ideas, which will often get cut up and moved around whilst trying things out. I tend to use a drum loop once I know what time signature I'm in until the drums are done, which is often very late on so that they can be composed around what all the other instruments are doing. I'll then go and record everything properly once I'm done writing. Sometimes bits of solos are done by improvising over the backing tracks, but mostly everything is carefully considered and written in a very slow and deliberate fashion. Even the improvs will sometimes be cut up and re-ordered to keep the best bits. I've heard of spontaneity, but I don't think it's for me ;-) The piece is spread over three separate Ardour session I assembled the mixdowns in another session. I'll break up the recording into smaller sections within those original sessions to make it easier, but generally, most instruments come and go anyway rather than being ever-present throughout. Even then, Part 1 has a few changes of tempo and a change of meter near the beginning. Part 3 has many changes of meter, flicking between 15/8, 16/8 and a couple of measures of 11/8, but I don't find this particularly challenging because I always have the tune in mind and what comes next for that part. For instance, I think the bass in Part 3 was recorded in five, maybe six, passes, but that was partly because it changes pickups at different points. There's a lot of work involved and it takes a long time, partly because I just seem to work very slowly. But the third section I've been working on the "proper" recording and mixing of it since the middle of February (when time allowed between gardening, starting a new job in April etc etc -- although I was unemployed before so had time on my hands). Yes, I try to keep my mixes clean, where I want them to be (the drums in Part 3 are treated fairly heavily with the Invada Tube Distortion, for example). After recording everything, I'll spend time editing, trimming the ends of files and chopping them up to remove noise. This is mainly for anything mic'd, so guitars, bass, flute. Sadly, it isn't practical to share my mixes: the folder for Part 1 is 5.3 GB, Part 2 is 2.4 GB and Part 3 is 10 GB! I counted and there were 103 tracks before bouncing to save CPU and 43 busses. 8-O Regarding the guitars. All are a Marshall JCM200 TSL601 mic'd with condensor mics. Part 1 is all a Yamaha SA503TVL, which is basically an ES335 copy. It maybe was going through a compressor pedal, but there's a ton of parallel comp in Ardour. The Yammy was also used in Part 3, around 5.21, with a Behringer Slow Motion pedal (automated volume swell) and from 5.49 with the TAP Tremolo. From 5.26 is a Les Paul with an EBow, picking up from the Yamaha. All the rest of the electric guitar in Part 3 was a Les Paul Studio: the solo I detailed in a post to Cedric Roux yesterday. For the power chords from 4.33, four separate takes, two panned hard left, two hard right. The quaver rhythm that follows uses an echo pedal. The bass is recorded direct and then the DI'd sound processed in parallel with the sound through an amp sim. Sorry for all the text, I hope this helps though. If you want to know anything else, just let me know -- I love talking about this sort of stuff, as you've probably gathered :-) Best wishes Q -- A musical collaborator: "Lethargy, hm really? Then it will be time for me to get over there and just accidental idea the $h!t out of you"

El 01/06/11 23:34, Q escribió: Not a problem for me ;-) Thanks for all the explanations. I'll reply you off-list (in a while, after work) to ask for a few more things. We don't want to monopolize the list :-) -- Roberto Suarez Soto Sorry if I'm a freak, but I want to bath in your mystique

On 6/2/2011, "Roberto Suarez Soto" <talkingxouba(a)gmail.com> wrote: No worries, I'll look forward to hearing from you. I'm just quickly checking my mail before I start work, so it'll be a long while before I could reply anyway! Q