In Heaven For A Conference – 280511

Sponsored by the letters S and no letter at all.

The following message was sent to various Facebook contacts in relation to …HEAVEN:-

“Folks,

Sorry for disturbing your weekend (and for being a bit
presumptuous to boot), but you might be able to offer me some advice,
please.

If you’ve been following the progress on my current album project
(*of course* you have…) at optimism1experience0.wordpress.com, you’ll be aware
that I have had some problems mixing/mastering the track In Heaven For A
Conference. I have ended up with two different versions of the track. Only one
of them will feature on the finished album, but which one?

This is where
you come in. I have uploaded both versions of the track on Soundcloud. For the
purpose of this exercise, the tracks are entitled “Icehall” and “Tabular”. I’d
like you (if you have the time and inclination) to take a listen to the tracks
and let me know which one you prefer. A single-word response will suffice. Feel
free to make any other comments you’d like, but please bear in mind that any
comments re technical aspects of the tracks should be backed up with an ability
and willingness to provide assistance to me for free…;-).

The relevant URLs are
:-

http://soundcloud.com/reincheque/icehall and http://soundcloud.com/reincheque/tabular

Thanks in
advance and I hope this hasn’t annoyed you in any way (I’ve only contacted you
if there has been some form of meaningful correspondence between us in the past).
No annoyance was intended. Honestly…

Regards,

djp”

If you weren’t contacted directly, feel free to offer your own input here.

Regards,

djp

Still more Modernista

Sponsored by the letter S and no letter at all.

Modernista is now available for streaming on Last.FM:- http://www.last.fm/music/Daniel+Prendiville/Modernista

Regards,

djp

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/King Fidget/Modernista – 280411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Edited the bass parts in CE5. Considering the parts are relatively simple, there was rather a lot of editing required. But it got sorted eventually. I’m reluctant to mess around with the EQ on the bass, as I seem to have captured a fairly accurate facsimile of Roger Glover’s Rickenbacker 4003 bass tone from the classic Deep Purple Mk. II lineup…

…which is all the more remarkable when you consider that Glover’s Ric apparently had Fender Jazz Bass pickups…

I have now decided that the track will not feature on the finished album (no surprise…), but I plan to release a version of KING FIDGET as a promo EP, and I will use …LAKE…as one of the tracks. So you will get to hear it, folks.

I also plan to release some non-album material very shortly under the title MODERNISTA, as a kind of taster for the album. Details shortly…

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

Fly Me To Hecuba – 120411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Edited the Tele parts in CE5. After much to-ing and quite a bit of fro-ing, I isolated two alternating loops which I pasted throughout the track. Judicious use of the Chopper VST plugin (essentially, a tremolo/vibrato thingy – I could never tell the difference…) neatly covers up any guitar playing deficiencies on the part of moi.

Shortened the beats and the Reaktor 5 part.

All nice and cushtee (sp?). Time to move on…

Regards,

djp

The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn/No Position To Argue/On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/King Fidget/A Truth You Can Happily Accept – 040411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Did audio cleanup  on the relevant wavs in Cool Edit Pro. Should be finished this stage tomorrow.

Regards,

djp

People Who Look Like Other People – 210311

Sponsored by the letter S.

Recorded 9 different guitar parts on the Tascam 2488 using the 360 and the Pod 2.0. Very interesting results.

And that, my friends, would seem to complete the tracking of bass and guitar parts. Another project milestone reached!

Tomorrow, I hope to record an overdue bass session for Peter Fitzpatrick. That is, if the sky hasn’t fallen in the meantime…

Regards,

djp

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/Fly Me To Hecuba/Perp Walk

Sponsored by the letter S.

…LAKE…

Programmed two solo sections in  CE5, using the 4Front Rhodes VST plugin. Chucked a bit of tremolo on top and things now sound pretty good.

Attempted to sort out the Strat solo for the middle section. I had 6 working parts to work with (a seventh part was just buzzing). I started sliding the various parts around and, completely by accident, came up with a solo that sounds reasonably accurate. The finished version resembles, in no way, what it was I was attempting to achieve. So that’s alright then…;-)

The track sounds much better now, but probably won’t make the album. It depends on what the competition is like…

…HECUBA…

This track will  definitely make the cut. Sounds wonderful, even in unfinished form. Put together a rough mix for recording guitar parts next week.

…PERP…

Started re-arranging the various bass parts. Nearly there but not quite. More work required tomorrow.

Regards,

djp

Vichy Circles/Perp Walk – 030211

Sponsored by the letter S.

Busy and productive day today…

VICHY CIRCLES

Recorded 2 bass parts on the Tascam 2488 using the 4003 and the Bass Pod XT. The first part is a very brief intro, while the second part is a loop which gets repeated throughout the rest of the track. Initial checking indicates that the loop “loops” very acceptably.

While I was saving my files, I noticed on the DVD-RW (which was the original one I’ve had since I started working on this track in February 2007) that there was a wav entitled “vocals1″. Since the track has always (and only ever) been an instrumental, I was curious to find out what the “vocals” actually were. Turns out they were original and unedited synthetic vocals I’d used on the track DEATH TOLL TRAINEE off my 2008 album Raw Mesh. I’d obviously “mis-saved” them back in the day.

PERP WALK

Recorded 4 long bass parts again on the 4003. I have no real idea how the track will finally go, but once I have edited the various bass parts into a coherent bass line, I’ll be able to see where I’m going with this.

I plan to do the last bass tracking session for the album tomorrow. I’ve no idea what I’m going to do yet. Something odd, probably… After that, it’s into 6-string territory.

I’ll be out of the country for most of the week next week, so I’ll be taking a short (and possibly well-deserved and necessary) break from the project from Tuesday on to the following weekend. Hopefully I’ll be all invigorated, like…

Regards,

djp

In Heaven For A Conference – 291210

Sponsored by the letter S.

Alright, so I’ve jumped the gun here, but I had a bit of time on my hands and I thought I’d see how far I could take the track this evening.

Well, I was impressed…

First off, I reviewed the demo of the track and decided that the D-110 voice I’d programmed was rather naff, so I ditched it entirely.

The JV 880 voice I’d programmed (Ice Hall) was fine melodically,  but I hadn’t programmed it particularly well, so rather than mess around with editing the part, I re-programmed the part from scratch to a strict tempo (120 bpm).

I then added a new voice off the D-110 (Soundtrack) which worked fine.

I programmed beats using two different kits in the  HALion One VST plugin.

Finally, I added a voice off my Juno-D synth (Sawstrings 2).

All the MIDI parts were edited and, believe it or not, are ready to roll. Next week, I plan to record the MIDI parts as audio on the Tascam 2488. I have a nice idea for a bass line, which I propose to record on my Fender Jazz Bass. We’ll see how things go after that.

One handy feature of CE5 is the ability to manage the various voices on the D-110 and the JV-880 (as I mentioned previously, the JV-880 is rather awkward to navigate around, but CE5 allows me to locate its voices quickly and easily). The facility means that the voices of particular parts are “stored” and automatically recalled in an individual CE5 project file – this means that even if I were to change the voices on either of these modules, CE5 will automatically restore the voices I need every time. Neat, huh? Unfortunately, there is no facility that I’m aware of to manage the voices on the Juno-D. Must look into this…

Very pleased with the progress made today in a brief 2-hour session. If I continue to make progress like this…

Regards,

djp