Sponsored by the letters E, G and I.
The EP is now available for streaming from Last.FM. Here’s the link:- http://www.last.fm/music/Daniel+Prendiville/King+Fidget+EP.
Regards,
djp
Posts Tagged ‘I
01
Aug
11
King Fidget EP – 010811
Sponsored by the letters F, H, I and J.
Spent yesterday evening remixing and mastering …EVONY in CE5, Cubase VST/24 and AA3. For a track that isn’t hugely complicated, the mixing took me an age – sorting out the various competing EQs was a bit of a challenge, but I got there eventually. An improvement on the previous mix. One valuable lesson I learnt (accidentally) while mixing was that a lot of the pops I hear in tracks on playback are caused by the Phonic Firefly. If I don’t route my audio via it, but via my PC’s default soundcard, the pops go away. Don’t know why, but it’s one to remember for the future…
Spent this morning remixing and mastering VICHY… I still haven’t fully removed the bass rumble at the start of the track, but it’s sounds fine over earphones, so I’m not too worried (when you hear how badly a lot of modern music is mastered, VICHY…sounds perfectly fine to me). The remix is significantly different from (and better than…) the original mix. Another lesson I learnt during part of this process was that there are limits to the compressor/limiter I use in Cubase VST/24. It adds a certain strange audio effect to bass parts (something I’d noticed before, but which I thought was caused by unsympathetic MP3 encoding). At a loss for something to use as an alternative, I experimented with the processing presets included in AA3 and found a nice multi-band compressor which I will use in future (it’s not as if I actually know what I’m dong when I’m mastering, but this compressor sounds “nice” to me, so…).
Right – that’s it. I ‘m going to spend a bit of time putting together the album running order. I have a fairly clear idea of what I want to do, but I need to hear the finished tracks to be absolutely sure.
Nearly there now…
Regards,
djp
24
May
11
Artwork 01
Sponsored by the letters F, G and I.
I’ve been “tipping about” (as we say here) with the notion of artwork for the album. The album cover itself is sorted (the logo at the top of this page is a part of that), and I will use that design (but with the colour altered) for the King Fidget EP when that eventually comes out. Not sure about the font, though…I might do some further experimentation over the next while.
In the meantime, I hope to do some mixing/mastering tomorrow.
Regards,
djp
17
May
11
Modernista
Sponsored by the letters F, G, I and J.
Came back from NYC yesterday and was too tired to start working straghtaway on mixing and mastering tracks for the album, so I decided instead to release some instrumental material I’d prepared earlier, as a taster for the new album.
Ergo Modernista, which is available right now from Bandcamp:- http://tinyurl.com/6zzg96t.
Modernista is comprised of 8 tracks:-
- The Ones Who Were Never
- Arcticulate
- The Braking Power Of The Engine
- Kingdom’s Creator
- 6 Space 8
- Hospice Cocktail
- Personal Deluge
- A Bed For Lazarus
The first five tracks are backing tracks that I composed as part of a collaborative project with US underground artist Ken Clinger.
Hospice Cocktail is an out-take from my 2010 album HAPPY DAYS IN THE GULAG.
Personal Deluge is the backing track to a contribution which I have made to an R Stevie Moore album which has yet to be released.
A Bed For Lazarus was the soundtrack to the various podcasts I produced to promote HAPPY DAYS IN THE GULAG.
I plan to make the album available via a variety of online services over the next few days. In line with my current policy, the album is available only as a digital download.
I hope you enjoy the album. If you do, feel free to let me know.
I will resume work on OPTIMISM… next week.
Regards,
djp
Sponsored by the letters G, I and J.
Went hell for leather and edited everything today in CE5. It’s amazing how stuff sounds so “sorted” until you start pulling stuff apart, and then you realise that there are all these hidden issues with timing an’ting.
Lot of work to required to edit both the guitar and bass parts (I’m turning into quite the fusspot, rather like a French rugby referee at scrumtime) but I got everything sorted eventually. I even remembered to record a D-110 part (Warm Pad) that I’d forgotten. Go me…
This is quite a groovy little track – a neat little shuffle in 7/4 time. It’s definitely going to make the final cut.
This turns out to be the last of the tracks to be edited with guitar and bass parts. The other two tracks that I definitely have (Future Plans For Yesterday and Flood Plain) are all synth, so I should definitely be able to edit them by the end of the week…
…which will be a good thing, as Mrs. P and I are off to NYC next week for a few days, so this coming weekend I plan to put together rough mixes of everything I’ve done so far, so that I can review the album as a whole while we’re away and have a good think about running order and such like.
This also means that I should be able to start mixing and mastering towards the end of this month. Exciting times ahead, I’m thinking…
Time to move on!
Regards,
djp
25
Apr
11
Vichy Circles – 250411
Sponsored by the letters G, H, I and J.
Edited the track in CE5. Started off trying to match the bass parts (of which there are 2) to the “live” 360 part I recorded back in 2007 (hard to believe, that, but it’s twooo…). Much tweaking of the synth and Godman 12-string parts also. The joys of non-quantized incompetent musicality…;-).
Still, the track sounds great. Hope it’ll be considered worth the wait…
Time to move on (again).
Regards,
djp
17
Apr
11
Hosanna In The Hiace – 170411
Sponsored by the letters H, I and J.
Busy day today, mostly involving a quick dash up the M7/M50 to Ikea to get some bits and pieces for our guest room (German exchange student arriving in a couple of weeks). On our return, I had a quick editing session. Due to an ongoing custody battle between Elder Daughter and me (I?) for possession of my laptop charger, I had just enough juice in the ‘puter to finish off editing the bass parts in CE5. Sounds rather good, if I do say so myself.
Memo to self – really must sort out this hassle between Cubase and my PC.
Regards,
djp
Sponsored by the letters H, I and J.
More editing in CE5.
Sorted out the bass parts and started work on the Ebow Strat parts. Might’ve got a bit more done were it not for a call from Younger Daughter for an unscheduled driving lesson, and for Elder Daughter “appropriating” the power supply for my laptop. Major race to get stuff done before the laptop’s battery crapped out.
An hour or two tomorrow should see us right, so no complaints (much…).
Regards,
djp
Sponsored by the letters I and J.
Did audio cleanup on the wavs in Cool Edit Pro. Tedious work to be sure, but the quicker I get through this part of the process, the quicker I can proceed to the editing stage.
Roadtrip tomorrow and Friday. Catch youze later…
Regards,
djp
18
Mar
11
King Fidget – 180311
Sponsored by the letters F, G, H, I and J.
A challenging day to say the least.
I had a tradesman coming round today (not that he was unconscious or anything…), so I decided not to track guitar parts. Instead, I decided to address the issue of programming synth parts for King Fidget.
And it was going so well…
…I programmed up a nice little arpeggiated synth line in CE5 using the MinimogueVA VST plugin (Big Drift). Purely out of idle curiosity, I started messing around with the LFO settings and came up with some very interesting variations that I wanted to keep. I tried to record these as automations, but for some reason this wouldn’t work. Being prudent, and dreading the possibility of losing the synth line I’d already programmed, I recorded it to audio using the Behringer mixer and the Phonic Firefly.
I kept working at my LFO variations, but to no avail. Since the automation angle wasn’t working, I got the bright idea of recording the synth line to CE5 and adjusting the LFO ”live”, as it were. But as soon as I started trying to record the adjustments, all types of crap happened; either the adjustments wouldn’t “take”, or the Minimogue refused to work at all. Most frustrating. I tried to copy the MIDI part onto other VST plugins, but they either didn’t sound right, or they wouldn’t work – in any event, I couldn’t recreate the arpeggio off the Minimogue.
I even tried running the MIDI part through the Juno-D, but the LFO adjustments wouldn’t take. Total bummer. I couldn’t record the adjustments, but I could play them. Occasionally…
…it was very late in the day, when I finally got the bright idea to record the adjustments “live” onto the Tascam 2488. After much trial and error, I got things working smoothly. The only complication was the fact that I had to solo the Minimogue while making the adjustments, so I had no idea, while recording, whether the adjustments would work properly within the context of the track. When I eventually transferred the wavs in CE5 and played back my efforts, I found the adjustments worked well enough, for the most part. I may, or may not, run both synth lines together from time to time in the mix and at other times switch between the two.
Oh, and I almost forgot – I programmed 3 nice ambient-sounding parts off the JV-880 (JP Heaven) and recorded them to audio.
After the day’s efforts, I now find that the track has taken off on a somewhat unexpected direction – the power of synths, eh? Editing and mixing should be fun…
Regards,
djp
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