Some thoughts;
The more I work on this song, the more I connect with it and want to push the vision your music put in my head… The singer standing at the grave of a loved one singing soft and tender words of goodbye, as the rage and torment of sorrow well up inside, bursting out, yelling to the heavens as the physical pain represented by the screaming guitar, surge from the lower back, through the shoulders, up the neck and ripping out the top of the skull, competing with logic and reason of lyric, competing for space in the tortured mind. Finally, subsiding slowly to a true calm and past the insanity of the pain to a true softening and comforting of the heart with soft, sweet goodbye and the warm, low, relaxing sounds of nature offering acceptance…
Hmmm, having just written this, it occurred to me I didn’t push this hard enough in the mix. Funny, I never get this depth of feeling out of music I just listened to a couple of times on the forum. I just post something like …’Dig your tune, thanks for posting’.
Work flow;
Being a mechanical person by nature the tracks were thrown onto the grid to get solid footing. It was a real discovery process. First the time signature was cracked, what a surprise to see what my ears didn’t hear, ¾ and 4/4 time intermixed. Next, set the tempo track to follow the kick which was the top track which revealed in the inspector all the tempos that had been set. This was all new. An estimated average of the various tempos resulted in a decision to use 92bpm. Next, a break to think hard about doing the next step due to the fact that once it was started there was no stopping until done. Got a beer and set about syncing everything to the grid. Sorting the tracks was next. Setting up Group Channels was the ticket for that; Drum Master, Bass Master, Guitar Master and Vox Master. Checking Dave’s notes, the 2nd tracks were put beneath the 1st , there seemed to be extra tracks left over, kind of like building your children’s wagon on [name your holiday] and having extra parts left over. They were pushed to the bottom and muted for later if needed. With the house keeping done, the fun started.
The following is the track list in the project window. Arriving at the current end result was trial, trial and error, error, error.
TRACK NAME … DETAIL …[plug-ins are cubase unless specified, Pan-C unless specified]
Signature ¾….4/4…etc
Tempo - 92 bpm
Drum Master Multiband compressor-Drum 2 w/low boost, Gain adjustments to taste
… Kick –studio eq-rock bd-high flat, boost @ 60
… Snare-studio eq-rock snare, cut highs; roomworks-drum shine to taste; track advanced
1 tad for thickening-all snare hits are manually optimized for gain
… Snare2- eq-old school snare, cut highs, boost at 156
… Copy Sn2- “ “ “ “ “ ; retard timing 1 tad [thickening]
… Toms – L16
… Toms2-R17
… Hats-high shelf II at1744, -5
… Overheads 1 & 2-high shelf II 1219, -5
…Room – high shelf II- 1010, -3
Bass Master- eq; -7 at 61, -6 at 1050; auto at end of track
… Bass and Bass Amped-not touched
… Copy Bass and B amp- harvested 2nd to last riff, deleted the rest, aligned with last bass
riff to make bass chord.
Guitar Master-used for automation of macro gain
… Strat- pan L,
… Peerless-pan R
… Fern ac15-pan L50
… Lead-pan R50
… Lead 2
[all guitars have Yamaha channel strip w/e.guit. compression and one of
five different eq preset for guitar to simply give each guit. it’s
own space; the fern and lead 1 received their own gain
automation]
Master Vox-[added because I got in a jam] TC voice strip, MultiBand Compressor, Magneto, Studio EQ, RoomWorks
… Vox Master-used for automation of gain
… Vox high-pan L3
… Copy Vox high-panR3
… Vox low-pan L4
… Copy Vox low- pan R4…panning to create space for ‘screamin’ guitar solo[attempt]
[all vox was taken into melodyne to sync harmony etc.
Stereo Out-MultiBandCompressor-rock master 2; Reverence; GEQ-30; mixed to -6db
[If you can make any sense of this drivel…good on ya!]
Mono is an interesting tack to take by the way.
Since I’ve been playing everything in live I don’t work near as much to a grid as you can see. 