journal
3 Down: "The Water Discipline" Completed
By Dave on Sunday, September 11th 2005 10:05 pm
Finally had some time to wrap up the guitars on this. Here is a rough mix.
mp3: The
Water Discipline Update: See the mp3s
page for selected tracks and a sampler of Abstract Expression.
For those who haven't read Frank Herbert's Dune series the title of this song is a reference to those. But whether you have read the books or not this song is about whatever you imagine it to be about. I have to call them something and let's face it, Sonata #1 for Guitar in A minor would sound pretentious.
The Water Discipline
By Dave on Tuesday, September 6th 2005 2:17 am
Spent the long weekend working on "The Water Discipline". This song is based on a section that was cut from "Seven Falls, Eight Rises" on the last Electrum CD.
I elected to give it a sort of ambient trip hop groove. Being my first time venturing in to that arena it took forever to get the feel and sound of the drum parts right. Then I decided to take the keyboard part which used to have a classic synth pad sound and arrange it for strings. That effort paid off huge as the strings bring a ton of richness to the piece.
I've tracked the guitar synth and acoustic guitar parts. All that is left is the electric guitars which I should get tracked during the week. I think I'll skip bass guitar on this since the string double bass and cello should cover the bottom end.
Started another piece
By Dave on Thursday, August 25th 2005 2:43 am
Well I wasn't planning to write any more material until the songs I had were all recorded, but well that didn't happen.
I've been wanting to experiment with alternate tunings on acoustic guitar so I've started a piece that is intended to incorporate Michael Hedges style tunings with an Echolyn style acoustic/electric vibe. Might give me a chance to use those strings again too.
Its in the larval stage now, just a basic structure for the first 4 minutes or so. Still need to work on more melodic ideas before it is worth anything.
PS. New Echolyn record: lyrics a little too dark for my tastes but the music is amazing.
Internal Combustion
By Dave on Monday, August 22nd 2005 1:39 am
Here is a half decent mix of Internal Combustion. My wife was teasing me about the gaggle of guitars I have collected down here and it made me realize I actually used all of them on this piece.
mp3: Internal Combustion Update: See the mp3s
page for selected tracks and a sampler of Abstract
Expression.
So this string orchestra is in my computer
By Dave on Sunday, August 21st 2005 1:24 am
So I finally broke down and picked up the Sonic Implants Symphonic Strings. Yeesh these samples sound really really good. I picked up the "mini" version which is a mere 7 CD roms worth of string samples. Sonar with VSampler was able to deal with the large files without much trouble. Though I did work on the string parts in their own file and then imported just the resulting audio into the song I'm using them in. I'd like to do more strings arrangements in the future.
I've completed the guitar parts and just about everything else for "Internal Combustion" so I should have a demo of that posted soon, and then you can hear how good these strings sound.
Oh by the way if you have been thinking about picking the sonic implants stuff up, do a little shopping around. You can save at least 100 bucks by getting them through a third party vendor. I got mine from Midi-Classics.
Catching Up part 5
By Dave on Monday, August 15th 2005 12:59 am
mp3: Don't Mind Me (very rough mix) Update: See the mp3s
page for selected tracks and a sampler of Abstract Expression.
And so it begins...
Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 we began tracking drums for the album. I came home from work a little early to get the acoustic treatment setup and attempted to get some AC pumped into the sweltering temporary studio. About 5PM Bryan came over and we hauled in his drums. We had reserved this day solely to setup and get some drums sounds and make sure that I could get a click track and headphone mix to him to play along to. The following day we would track the drums for "Don't Mind Me". Setup went pretty smoothly and by 7:30 we ran some test tracks.
After Bryan went home I spent some time making a rough mix and found our snare drum sound lacking. We had elected to go with a piccolo snare but for some reason it was lacking that "crack" that a good snare drum sound should have.
Bryan returned the following evening and we spent a lot longer than planned dealing with this snare drum issue. New mics were tried, we swapped out drums, and eventually ended up right back where we started with only some minor tuning changing from the previous day.
Once the sound was all sorted out it took all of 3 quick takes to finish the session.