Private Sector Weather Forecast Service – 130311

Sponsored by the letter A.

Been busy for the past few days on “real life” issues, but now I am ready to re-commence…

Spent a while programming VST plugins in CE5 to “sit on top of” the bass parts. For those of you interested in such trivia (that means you, Scott Brookman…), the plugins and voices used were:- Redium (Sinecrack), Spook Keys (Whistling), Prologue (Xanadu) and Cosmo Girl 2 (The Cosmo Girl).

The idea is that each plugin part will tie in with a particular bass part and will appear wherever that particular bass part appears in the track. There are 6 bass parts in the track, so that means I have another 2 plugin parts to program before the track is finished. Work for tomorrow.

Track sounds pretty good thus far.

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

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

A Truth You Can Happily Accept – 100111

Sponsored by the letters K, L and M.

Another new track, begad…

Ran up a rough rhythm track in CE5 using various rhythm kits from HALion One.

Recorded four different bass partson the Tascam 2488 using the Jazz Bass and the Bass Pod XT. The parts weren’t particularly difficult from a melodic point of view, but there were a lot of stops, and I’m not particularly tidy in me stops, so there was an awful lot of takes and retakes. What I have should edit out OK, (I hope…).

More bass work tomorrow, hopefully.

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet/Private Sector Weather Forecast Service/The Tree Of Idleness – 090111

Sponsored by the letter J.

Weather much nicer today – cold but sunny – so yesterday’s meteorologically-influenced gloom has lifted. Thank goodness for that!

BRAILLE FOR THE FEET

Reviewed yesterday’s work and deemed it not as bad as I had dreaded over night. Took about one minute off the running time and edited some of the MIDI parts in CE5. Things looking and sounding a whole lot better, and when I get around to tracking bass and guitar parts, I reckon the whole thing will hang together quite nicely.

PRIVATE SECTOR WEATHER FORECAST SERVICE

Went looking for some suitable storm-like voices to add to the mix. Couldn’t find anything worthwhile on the D-110 or the JV-880*, so I poked around the VST plugins. Some interesting potential choices here, but since I haven’t actually arranged the bass parts into a “tune” per se, I have no idea where to add the plugins, so I’m temporarily bunched until I sort the bass line out.

In the course of looking for suitable plugins, I came across the Ganges Pad voice on the Prologue plugin which comes with CE5, and it inspired me (ooh, get ‘im…) to start on another new track called The Tree Of Idleness. Slow and stately it will be, with a rather nice bass line.

Busy morning then…

Regards,

djp

* As I was typing up this post, I started messing around with the D-110 and found the ThndrStorm voice which I knew to be in there somewhere (used it eons ago on the track Cologne off GOOD RIDDANCE). Oh me of little faith…

Braille For The Feet – 080111

Sponsored by the letter I.

Dull, miserable and uninspiring sort of day today, so I thought I’d have a go at running up a new track in CE5. Not sure if it matches the mood of the day, but we’ll persevere with it for the moment.

Programmed a repetitive “pizzicato” part using the MinimogueVA VST plugin (Soft Mini Sweep). Detuned two of the parts and built a loop which will drop in and out of the track as it progresses. Programmed beats using HALion One. Found a nice strings voice on the JV-880 (SoarinString), the arrangement of which I built up and then reversed. I also used the ElecPiano3 voice on the D-110. I hope to put a nice tremolo effect on that when I record it to audio eventually.

Some nice ideas are coming together for the bass and guitar parts.

I’ll stick with this for a while.

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?/Fly Me To Hecuba – 030111

Sponsored by the letter C.

Try and get out of your head the mental image of me mooching around the house all day in a ratty old dressing gown and imagine instead an artist hard at work on his latest oeuvre…

WHATEVER…

Took a listen to the demo I’d programmed a while back. The “tune” was good, but I couldn’t get a grip on the tempo. After some trial and error, I re-programmed the main bed of the track using the  JV-880 (X/Y/Z) in 6/4 time at 60 bpm.

Couldn’t come up with any suitable voice in the D-110, so I found a nice voice on the Juno-D (Strobe-J). I also decided to hit the VST plugins, using the 7th Follower voice on the Majken’s Chimera freeware plugin.

Did a rough stereo mix for transfer to the Tascam 2488. I think I might do some Ebow guitar parts and very simple bass parts in due course.

FLY ME TO HECUBA

Wha’…?

This is the third demo I worked on recently. Didn’t do anything with it really other than give it a title. Who/what is/was Hecuba? Click here to find out. No significance really, just a bad pun…

Regards,

djp

In Heaven For A Conference – 010111

Sponsored by the letter A.

I suppose I can finally say that I have “officially” started the album today.

Didn’t do much, other than to record a rough stereo mix of what I’ve done so far. Because I’m using the D-110, JV-880 and Juno-D, which are not “in the box” as it were, I had to physically record their audio  (ordinarily, if I were using VST plugins exclusively, I’d just generate a “master”  in CE5 which would automatically incorporate the plugins’ outputs). I did this by running the audio signal from the Behringer Xenyx 1202 into the Phonic Firefly and recording the result in CE5.  I’d never used the Firefly to record directly into CE5 before, and it worked rather well today. Not perfect, but adequate for the job.

The plan is to transfer the rough mix onto the Tascam 2488 and record guitar and bass parts during the course of this week. In the meantime, I may look at editing some of the existing MIDI parts so they are not all “on” all the time. If I do an edit, then I’ll record another version of a rough mix.

Sounds simple when I put it like that, innit?;-)

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