Production and Recording for Musicians
Task 5 - report
In my 5th task I recorded and produced a track titled Pwr Me Up. The main idea about the piece comes from the sound ‘Cloud Chords’, which give a huge, powerful sound to two of the most important places in the track: first and last chorus.
The track was divided into 4 main parts, each representing a different idea, and each varied in length.
The first part begins slowly and develops towards the first ‘chorus’ section, which incorporates ‘cloud chords’ among others (~ 1:16). I wanted this piece to sound electronically, with some additional acoustic elements (strings, brass, bass, cymbals).
There are 2 main drums section, which I had to merge down into one track, not only because of two ‘Stylus RMX’ instances I have used (CPU unfriendly), but also because these instances have 15 drum tracks together, arranged and used in this track. The ‘dirty’ or ‘distorted’ tracks which we can hear underneath come from the recording of the 4th Task. From that task I took drum recordings and put them into Recycle, which allows me to divide a particular sample into a desired number of ‘slices’. They, in turn, can be freely controlled by any other device supporting Recycle (or .REX format). For that task I used a ‘chaos designer’ built in ‘Stylus RMX’. This plugin allows me to control every separate slice of the loop separately. Most importantly it can generate a random sample slice, in proper tempo, and adjust it with with a ‘buzz’ effect (it spills out the short, stuttering, ringing sample slices).
On this drum track, I have also used a gate, flame effect, and reverb (in that particular order) which allowed to cut off the sounds at a particular threshold, then add a little bit of distortion, and after that - reverb, which extends the sounds a little bit.
One of the doubled instruments in this track is bass. The main one is ‘Upright Jazz Bass’ and it’s doubled with a fretless bass recoding. The actual melody line is not followed directly and exactly as it is in the Upright Jazz Bass, instead fretless adds more texture, as well as accidental notes.
In my piece, there is a lot of automation, not only volume, but also the reverb automation (on Bus sends), by which I control the depth of the sound, when that kind of gesture is required. The reverb automation allows me to change the perspective of the sound a little bit. For example, the sound of a piano; without the reverb a piano note can sound quiet and calm, but then automating the reverb, we’re extending the note and widening its sound. That mixed with a total fade out of other instruments, or sudden silence can have a great effect (~ 4:35). This one is also doubled with other instruments.
One of the most important things I always put a great deal of attention to is stereo placement. For me, the sonic space, that we have under our control gives a great freedom in terms of how to paint a picture with sound. Usually I start with putting sounds in middle to low range in the middle of the mix (drums, bass, main leads, piano). The next step is to put high frequency drum sounds (cymbals, hi-hats, rides) on either sides of the mix. I usually avoid extreme sound placing, but sometimes use it for very distinctive effect.
Middle range sounds (strings, pads, Rhodes piano) are places slightly on either sides of the mix.
The second part of the piece (~ 2:09) presents the ‘Brightest fuzz’ solo improvisational part, above a strong piano line. Then strings, glockenspiel and few more key sounds. That part finishes with a ‘propeller plane passing by’ sound (reminds me of a swelling cymbals), and that’s how its used over there (~ 3:02).
In the next part, the Reason rewire track comes into play. This part of the piece slows down a bit, leaves out most instruments, and presents this close, almost intimate feeling, with a piano and low guitar improvisation. In the Reason track I also used a vocoder, in which the synth sounds are triggered by drum sounds. So we can have sounds, triggered by different rhythmic patterns, in different chord configurations. This track also provides a variation of percussive sounds (shakers, rides), and a brass sound in the final part of the piece.
The whole piece finishes with a second chorus with additional brass sounds, after that the track stays with the piano, bass and shakers. As the last drum line fades out, the reverb is increased.
Please note, that You will not be able to see the automation process in the audio tracks. I have also tried to bounce down every single track of the piece, but there was no possibility of playing back the track without the Core Audio/ System Overload message. That’s why I decided to leave the instruments possible to perform in Logic 7.2 or 8. And also the automation processes can be seen over there.
The last step in creating this piece was to put ‘Channel EQ’ and ‘adaptive limiter’ in the ‘Out 1-2’, but I used it a little bit differently than in class. In ‘Channel EQ’ I lowered the bass frequencies and boosted high ones to give a little bit more of air and clarity to the overall mix. However in the ‘adaptive limiter’ i left the input scale on 0.00 dB (despite the fact, that it goes ‘over’ 0 of the margin) and boosted gain by 3.5 dB. This movement was intended, because if I had lowered the input scale and put up the gain more, the sound would have been more dynamic, going from low to high all the time, which I wanted to avoid. The way I used it, it more or less keeps the overall track density on a constant level, what in turn gives this powerful, almost ‘wall of sound’ feeling in the desired moments. And that was my intention from the beginning. Of course the out ceiling is limited to -0.3dB so the ‘output’ doesn’t distort in any way.
Thanks,
bk
