People Who Look Like Other People/Future Plans For Yesterday/Flood Plain – 030511

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

The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn – 020511

Sponsored by the letters D and E.

Edited the bass and guitar parts in CE5. The bass parts were fine, but I had some issues with the guitar parts which required rather more attention than I expected. Still, they sound great now.

I also discovered that I’d never recorded the D-110 Elec Organ 3 MIDI parts to audio, so I remedied that.

Track sounds fine now. It’s a “possible” for the album rather than a “probable” – I’ll just have to see how the sequencing sounds closer to the day.

Time to move on…

Regards,

djp

People Who Look Like Other People – 240311

Sponsored by the letter A.

Finished programming the 4Front Rhodes VST plugin in CE5 and programmed a number of parts on the D-110 (Warm Pad). I’ll leave a bit of editing to be done when I’ve finally put all the guitar parts in place.

And that, folks, marks the end of the “principal photography”, as it were. From here on in, we’re looking at audio cleanup, editing, tweaking, mixing, mastering and release (with a spot of graphic design thrown in for good measure). I don’t think I’ve ever come so far so quickly on an album before. Hope it turns out to be worth it…

Something I might do pretty soon is  run up some rough mixes of all the tracks and start playing around with the running order. There are some tracks which are likely to miss the final cut, but which ones, dear reader…?

Regards,

djp

No Position To Argue/The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn – 190311

Sponsored by the letters M, N and O.

…ARGUE

There’s rather a lot going with the track guitar-wise, so I just programmed up a nice ambient-sounding part in CE5 using the Reaktor 5 VST plugin (SonntagsgeraeuchJAM), and left it at that.

…COP CAR…

Programmed a variety of different parts using the D-110 (Elec Organ 3). Not quite finished yet, and I may leave the final decision on these parts when I have all the guitar parts edited together, as there’s some tricky timing stuff with the guitar that I want to mirror in the organ parts. Do a bit more tomorrow, perhaps…

Regards,

djp

Perp Walk/A Truth You Can Happily Accept – 170311

Sponsored by the letter E.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all…

PERP WALK

Recorded the previously-programmed JV-880 (JP Strings) and D-110 (Recorder) MIDI parts to audio in CE5, using the Behringer mixer and the Phonic Firefly. The track is now ready for audio clean-up and editing.

…TRUTH…

Programmed 4 MIDI parts off the JV-880 (Arasian Morn) and recorded them to audio as above.

Also programmed 1 MIDI part off the D-110 (Windbells) and recorded it to audio.

For some mad reason, I recorded the metronome to audio as well. No particular reason why – maybe I’ll drop it in and out of the mix (rather like King Tubby’s signature “tone” – anyone who knows what I’m talking about will know what I’m talking about).

Finally I programmed a section using my old favourite VST plugin – Majken’s Chimera (the Ultraslow voice). For some odd reason, when I open up the voices in Majken’s Chimera for editing, I can neither move the editing screen around nor close it down. So in order not have a stonking great big screen blocking my view, I had to record the section to audio and then delete the plugin altogether. Not what I’d normally like to do, but since I was just holding down one note, it’d be no biggy to recreate if necessary.

That’s enough for one morning, I think…

Regards,

djp

Perp Walk – 280211

Sponsored by the letter A.

Programmed 2 parts off for the D-110 (Recorder) in CE5. Also recorded an extra MIDI track for modulating the 2 Recorder parts.

More programming required, but I have enough shape on the track for the purpose of recording guitar parts later in the week.

Regards,

djp

In Heaven For A Conference/Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?/The Tree Of Idleness/On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline – 180211

Sponsored by the letter J.

…HEAVEN…

I’d planned to track bass parts with the Jazz Bass, but for some reason I couldn’t get it tuned properly. The action is pretty high on it, so it probably needs to be set up (the casualty list is growing…). I decided to bring in the 4003 from the subs’ bench, which is a rather nice option to have, don’t you think?

Quickly recorded 10 parts on the Tascam 2488 using the Bass Pod XT. Hopefully this should edit out nicely…

…EVONY…/…IDLENESS…/…LAKE…

Threw together some rough mixes in CE5 for guitar tracking next week.  Where …IDLENESS… was concerned, I had to record some MIDI parts as audio before making the rough mix (D110 - Warm Pad/JV880 – Dig Rhodes 2). …IDLENESS… is sounding particularly fine even thought there’s a need for some heavy editing of the bass parts. …LAKE…still sounds rather odd, but not as odd as it used to sound before I tracked the bass parts.

Time to introduce a new weapon from my musical arsenal. All will be revealed on Monday (hopefully…).

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet – 250111

Sponsored by the letter F.

Recorded 7 different bass parts on the Tascam 2488 using the 4003 and the Bass Pod XT. Tough going, but I think I managed enough to be able to edit out a nice comp’d bass line. I also did an unexpected bass solo – don’t quite know where to put it, but it’ll have to fit in somewhere.

I may have to change the MIDI part for the D-110 ElecPiano 3 voice to tie in with the bass line. Or not. Time will tell.

Regards,

djp

The Tree Of Idleness – 170111

Sponsored by the letter U.

I should’ve known from experience (as in “the triumph of optimism over…”) that when I wrote “tomorrow” last Friday, I wouldn’t actually get to do any work on the track on Saturday.

As it happened, I was surprised with the offer of a night away in a nice out-of-town hotel Saturday night. Came back home yesterday tired but happy. No position to work on the track yesterday either.

So I made up for it this evening by programming the Dig Rhodes 2 voice off the JV-880 in CE5. Programmed two parts, but I might only use one. I also programmed an additional Warm Pad part off the D-110. Finally I programmed some tasty beats using the HALion One VST plugin.

Pretty much ready for recording bass and guitar parts. This week? Who knows? Should I tempt fate?

Regards,

djp

The Tree Of Idleness – 140111

Sponsored by the letter R.

Edited the Ganges Pad voice on the Prologue VST plugin in CE5 and added a bridge section. Nice.

Added a section using my old favourite  Warm Pad voice off the D-110. I also experimented with (but didn’t program) the Dig Rhodes 2 voice off the JV-880. A job for tomorrow, perhaps?

Regards,

djp