Pick Me Up Again (Peter's Story)

Well, I’m really surprised.
haven’t been to the forum since about July (with deepest apologies to Shadowfax, Polgara, Bane et al.)
2014 was a great year for weather in the UK and I was either in the garden, up mountains or on my mountain bike. Can’t be in my studio when the weather is good!!
Anyway, I’ve packed the gym in as a fallback option to good weather. I was missing my music too much.
So here is my first track of the year & first post. I apologise for not keeping up with your various tracks on the forum (I’ll catch up, promise).
Spent Christmas in the Scottish Highlands and took my tablet with me with various Cubase video tutorials & forum notes. I’m back into music.
So here’s a track based on the Cubase 7.5 studies I did. It’s not bad (for a 61 year old anyway)
Appreciate some feedback.
Oh and a belated “Happy New Year” :slight_smile:

It’s a bit of a trance/EDM/club track using purchased vocal samples, lots of Cubase bits, several Nexus, Vanguard, Omnisphere, Kontakt & other synths plus a lot of Vengeance effects alongside the Cubase effects.
Learning curve? - Track presets, EQ sweeping, audio track automation, midi sends (to other synths), limiting & compression.

https://soundcloud.com/neil-buxton/pick-me-up-again

I think Bane may get the “Peter’s Story” element of the title from the lyrics.

Neil B
(Nice to be back)

liked it a lot… well put together regardless of age! thanks for sharing

frank

Excellent track…d’ya fancy letting me have a go at putting a vocal and lyrics on it… :slight_smile: just love the sound of the backing track, hope you don’t find this insulting, it’s no reflection on the track, just seems a pity to have a ‘‘bought un original vocal’’ on it…

just pm me…get lost Kev or ok Kev… :laughing: :laughing:

best Kevin :slight_smile:

PS… Bane seemed to disappear around the same time you did… :frowning:

Welcome back Neil ,glad you have been enjoying yourself .very good recording , the tune is great, very spell binding, very nice mix and some nice mixing tricks ,well done .
i dont understand how it works with the vocal samples because you mention a story line in the lyrics, how can you tell a story from vocal samples ,do you buy individual word samples which have been pre sung.... :question: . Sorry for being so dumb . there will be some simple explanation im sure.the voice is very good by the way.(that`s not the program with tom jones )

Really good track here. The vocalist’s accent is quite lovely too. Rather hard for me to comprehend the verse lyrics, but definitely feelin it in the chorus. Melodic and upbeat all the way through!

Been busy as hell last several months (full-time enrolled student, relationships, etc), really missed you guys. Had a weird urge to come back today and see whats up. Cubase 8 and HALion 5, Steinberg has been busy in my absence haha! Need to catch up with alot of your guy’s tracks on my soundcloud dashboard.

Great track! Really enjoyed the production. Did you side chain the effect sweeping left and right? Very balanced mix and vocals sit will in the mix. Lots of energy. Just as an arrangement it might be nice to hear a big bass and kick drum enter when you go into that second to last or final chorus just for variety imo.

Hi all,
Sorry for the delay in replying. yesterday was manic & today I watched Andy Murray self-destruct (again)!!
Thanks for all your positive comments. I feel encouraged.
Some answers then:
Kev - I’ll pm you - but will it be OK or get lost ?? :slight_smile:
Polgara - there are many sample libraries about with vocals. This particular one was Voice 3 from Industrial Strength Records, via Loopmasters.
This particular pack has 10 “construction kits”. The track had a few vocal audio files - wet & dry, verse & chorus.
There was also a couple of music audio files - a backing track, bassline and lead - none of which were used. There were also 2 midi files - the lead riff and the bass riff. I discounted the bass riff but admit to liking the lead riff enough to keep it in the track.
There was also a demo “full” track lasting 1 min 2 secs (just enough to play the verse and chorus with the backing).
So basically I kept the dry vocals and the lead midi and constructed the rest around it.
This included my own drum/perc tracks, strings, sidechained strings & white noise plus additional basslines and a synth line on the “buildback” section. And some other bits (not got it in front of me)
In terms of the vocal line, I extracted and looped bits of them within Kontakt 5 and used these in midi initially.
Off topic slightly, but one of my previous submissions (I Am Love) was based on a sample pack of vocal lines & phrases only (Black Octopus & Veela). No music in that pack, so that was fully self-constructed with the additiona of various phrases & lines to make the song up.
With the vocal lines in this track I also made use of variaudio to repitch some of the words.
Hope that answers your questions.
Bane - nice to hear from you. The vocals are basically walking alone along the shore and through crowded streets until “you caught me”. The pick me up again shows repeat “failings” by the vocalist. If I remember correctly, you’re a worship leader, and these lines reminded me so much of Peter. Walking along the shore etc. And the falling could so easily be “denying” and so pick me up again. Or it could also be any of us. Hence the title having Peter’s Story in it.
In a sense it’s MY type of gospel or worship song.
If I’m right about you being a worship leader (I’ll trawl through the forums) then it may not be so weird to have had an urge to come back for a visit today :slight_smile:
Hopefully my little Christian explanation has not offended others.

a:MUSEd - The answer is “Yes”. I took a patch in Vanguard that I created - just white noise and a bit of midi CC to alter the cutoff from time to time. Hidden in the track was a straight 4-4 Kik audio, pre-fader so it can still pump without being heard, and if I remember correctly it was sent to “no bus”, so it wasn’t sent anyway :slight_smile:
Used the same sidechain on a Nexus strings but I put slight autopan on the white noise.
The other main effect prior to verse 1, 2 and the final chorus could have been done in (at least) 2 ways:
Most common I believe is to have the eq on the stereo out sweep, using say eq 2 or 3 as a parametric, automated and sweeping the whole mix up and back. As I wanted to put a little bit of eq on the output anyway I chose to use PhiltaXL from Vengeance as the first insert & I automated a sweep with that.
I agree with you about the build into the final chorus but I chose not to use a bass & kik to build it. One of the string patches would’ve clashed with the lower strings and a Kik would’ve clashed with the side-chain strings.
In hindsight, a kik or snare roll may have done it but I chose to use an additional synth line running alongside the main synth riff to add the build and then sweep/filter the whole mix again with the stereo out…

Hope that answers all of your questions. I enjoyed writing it and learned a lot of new tricks with a few new toys as well, so thanks again for all the positive feedback.
Neil B

Hope Wimbledon wasnt Andys swan song .
i have only made a couple of electronic type tracks and i forgot how time consuming it can be sifting through samples.So i think i got the jist of it, you used pre existing words and phrases and and tried to juggle some kind of sense or story out of them, i think thats what you`ve done.

Correct :slight_smile:
I have got EWQL Symphonic Choirs as well and with these you can write the words too (long-winded)

Hey Neil,

Okay at first I didn’t know where you were going with that about me understanding the lyrics and Peter’s story. Your memory serves you right, I’m still a worship leader and I can definitely see the tie-in to that concept lyrically.

If you don’t mind I’d like to have an MP3 of this so I can jam to it in my car, don’t get on Soundcloud much. But if you have reservations about that I totally understand (being an artist myself)! :slight_smile:

My pleasure - blast it out! use it in the worship group :slight_smile: Better than Hillsong !?!?!?!
Neil

Sorry Bane - just realised that I haven’t tagged it for download on Soundcloud.

Can anyone tell me how I can change this track on Soundcloud so it can be downloaded?
If not I’ll PM you Bane.
Apologies for that
Neil

hi Neil ,log into soundcloud ,click on the pencil icon under the song ,you are now in edit mode, then click on the permissions tab and then enable download and of course save the changes.

True, though doesn’t Soundcloud’s compression carry over to the downloaded file?

if you want a good copy its best to have something like dropbox then you can upload a wav and download a wav , lovely.Hi Bane you were just asking Neil for an MP3, theyre compressed aren`t they .

Hey my man, yes indeed but everything sounds a little worse on soundcloud. Thought I’ve heard about that carrying over to the downloads. But I don’t claim to know what I’m talking about in that respect :slight_smile:

Thanks - download enabled.
I can do something on Dropbox too if required.