In Heaven For A Conference – 250511

Sponsored by the letter J.

What an awful day that was!

You’d think a track with two synth parts, a guitar, a bass and a stereo rhythm track would be a piece of cake to mix and master. How wrong you’d be…

The day started off badly with my having a mild but annoying headache. It quickly got worse…

I had to do an emergency re-edit of the guitar parts. I’d cut and paste a few loops throughout the track, but they didn’t sync up properly, so I had to redo that. Then I found a glitch in the bass parts which seems to have been a bit of bleed from my headphones on to the 4003′s pickup. EQ sorted that. I was pretty much ready to rock’n'roll after that and took a bit of time getting a decent mix together. But when I went to master the pre-master track, the JV880 Ice Hall part kept distorting. I had to do a number of different mixes to get the distortion off the monitors, but no matter how I tried, the distortion was still present in the headphones – NBG.

I adjusted levels and adjusted EQs. All to no avail. I then decided that the thing to do was to re-record the Ice Hall parts, but more cleanly – take out all the effect that were present by default on the part in the JV880. For some reason, I couldn’t record MIDI in CE5 for an hour or so. Then the software sat down on me completely – not before I had a repeat of the missing transport bar problem I’ve mentioned before.

When I finally got that sorted, I had to try and edit the Ice Hall part on the JV880. Not an easy task – it would be easier (and more logical) for an amoeba to give birth to an elephant, However, I prevailed and finally edited the part to my heart’s consent. When I finally got that sorted, I recorded the part to CE5 using the Behringer mixer and the Phonic Firely – only to find that the part still sounded crap.

At that stage, I made the fateful decision to find an alternative to the Ice Hall part. I decided to try out a few VST instruments and, after much trial and rather a lot of error, I stumbled upon the Tabular Bells voice in Kore Player. A lovely voice, but it completely changes the mood of the track and it exposed a certain clash between the MIDI part and my bass part. I had no choice but to edit the MIDI part to fit the bass.

Things sound much better (if rather different now), but I still haven’t mixed and mastered it. A job for tomorrow…

16 bloody mixes and all of them crap. Grrr!!!

Regards,

djp

King Fidget – 210511

Sponsored by the letter A.

Now that all that MODERNISTA nonsense is out of the way (how are you enjoying it, by the way?), it’s time to get back on track with the project.

I spent most of the day mixing two versions of KING FIDGET in CE5 - the album version has a lot of business going on at the start of the track and this is edited out from the single version. Other than that, the mixes are identical.

The mixes were based on a rough headphone mix I did recently, which wasn’t too bad at all – just needed some tweaking. I had fun with setting pre-fader delay volumes – got that sorted eventually. I also had to patch up a bit of a hole in the middle of the track. I had originally proposed muting/unmuting the JV880 (JP Heaven) part, but I couldn’t do that precisely using the mouse, so I ended up slicing up part of the part (if you have me) and muting/unmuting by deleting every other slice. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it works effectively enough.

The two versions were compressed/limited in Cubase VST/24 and the wavs were tidied up in AA3.

The next tracks I intend mixing/mastering are …LAKE and BRAILLE…. I’ll chuck the three tracks out on an EP around August time in advance of a September album release date. I might even include the rough headphone mix of KING FIDGET mentioned above in the EP.

Oh, well, onwards and upwards!

Regards,

djp

The Tree Of Idleness – 200411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Edited the guitar parts in CE5. Only three parts to work from, and it all came together very easily. Dropped a section of the JV880 Dig Rhodes part. The arrangement works much better now.

One more done. Time to move on…

Regards,

djp

The Tree Of Idleness – 190411

Sponsored by the letter R.

Edited the bass parts in CE5. Came together nice and easy. Track sounding rather fine and, more importantly, “key” to the album.

Had to re-record the JV880 Dig Rhodes 2 part as I detected a crackle close to the start. There’s a lot of electrical kit in the house and sometimes my recording setup picks up these crackles, but  they often manifest themselves while monitoring rather than while recording. If the same crackle appears at the same point in a track every time I monitor it, then I know there’s a problem, as was the case today. No hassle to rectify, though…

More work tomorrow.

Regards,

djp

The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn – 200311

Sponsored by the letter R.

Programmed up a number of MIDI parts in CE5 using the JV-880 (String Synth) and edited a number of eccentric elements of the rhythm track that were, frankly, getting on my wick.

Recorded the JV-880 parts to audio.

Not fully convinced about the D-110 organ tone. Might try something off the Juno-D, because I don’t really like the organ tones on the JV-880.

Picky bugger, eh…?;-).

Regards,

djp

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

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

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

Flood Plain – 180111

Sponsored by the letters V and W.

Thought I’d have a crack at this, which is meant to be an ambient sort of track. Somewhat influenced by (but in no way derivative of) ”Moss Garden” of Bowie’s “Heroes” album.

Started off programming the Suriya JAM voice in Reaktor 5 on CE5. Needed to tweak the voice to eliminate a number of annoying features, but I reckon I’ve got it pretty much sorted.

Moved on to programme the Strobe-J voice on the Juno D and then the String Synth on the JV-880. Decided there wasn’t much more I could put into the track, so I recorded the Juno D and JV-880 parts as audio.

Track’s pretty much sorted. Love working this fast!

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