This one is getting close to that amazing spot where I can get it done.
Another hot as hell day here in Portland - I think the sun is closer in orbit than when I was a kid. I was in my basement, which hardly ever gets over 70 degrees, and even though I shave my head, my headphones were sliding off from the sweat. Sheesh!
It takes me some time but I finally pump out the last lyric for this song. Its one of those things that have been banging around in my head for weeks, but I was able to ignore it until the music got done. It was the final stumbling block, but that was going away, thankfully.
One thing I have noticed over the years is that what looks good on paper doesn't always work. I came up with the gem of this idea while I was coming home from work - like always, it just pops in.
I write it down and loop the phrase. I think I have it right. I listen again, and no its not quite there. You know this is a love song, and for years I just didn't write stuff like that, since it seemed that it would be a)redundant after the 8 billion other songs about love that have been written or b)that I woulnd't be able to strike the balance between the personal and the general - after all I want this stuff to stick and peoples heads and have them plug their own life into what I am writing about. It can't just be about me.
I also am quite obviously fascinated by words. Case in point: this verse started to come together when I combined the words 'best believe' together. This is entirely different in my mind than something like 'you should believe' or 'you'd better believe'. Its a question of context and the things you imply with your words - I wanted this song to be intimate and wanted to convey the feeling that I was spinging right at the person in the room with me.
Some 10 or 15 takes later this bit of verse is finally sung like I wanted it to sound, or at least a close approximation of that. By now its 11:30 at night, and homeboy gotta get to bed.
And now all I have to do is mix it...................
Tail end of a very hot weekend, I just have enough time to do some alternate takes on my horn solos, and maybe record some vocals as well.
One thing it took me a bit to figure out - I now have multiple settings on the software for my m-audio card. This is handy when I am just working with audio, and not with recording S/PDIF, since all sorts of weird things happen in Sonar when I don't have a digital source (my XL7) plugged in and powered up. Drove me nuts the other night till I figured it out. Always one more thing to learn, but now its no problem, once the synth parts are recorded, to just record more audio with none of the synths powerec on. I believe it would also reduce the ambient audio from having all the other synths turned on.
Speaking of which, I am lovin' the fact that I no longer have to worry about anything when I record other than actually having to play or sing correctly. No more wondering if I am going to lose a good take from having some freaking pop or crakle in the middle of a recording.
First, I just did some re-recording with my analog synths - nice! just the sound of the synth, thats it baby, no extraneous noise whatsoever. And it is interesting to me that now the levels of recording straight from the analog boxes are not so freaking loud as they used to be. I don't see how this could be releated to fixing the IRQ problem, but what the hell, its better so I will take it.
Next I turn to the first half of the bridge solo. I should say here that the last part of the solo was already fine, and foruntatley free of unwanted audio artifacts.
The first part of the solo, which I am replacing, was good conceptually but poor in execution, not exactly in tune. It takes awhile, but I finally got down a good take, and when both takes are put together, it sounds like one long take.
One thing I have noticed when recording my trumpet, I tend to make lines that have reasonable pauses in them. This allows me to to overdub more easily when necessary, but I also like the sound. Sure its fun to play fast, but I like the ease and flow you get when you don't try to put everything in the world in there.
Finally I get to the vocals. The scratch vocals, which I liked fine on the verse, just won't do - not only pops and crackles, but I recorded them with my SM57 which tends to make everything overly round and a little blurry.
On the other hand, the large condenser mic I own, a Studio Projects C1, can tend to overemphasize the highs sometimes if I am not careful. Not that it distorts, it just can be a bit bright. This can be a problem with the trumpet. which of course is bright as hell sounding, even when I play it.
I start to sing the verse, and while attempting to get that correct feel, I find the C1 is making it too clear, if you can imagine that. I decide to do something wrong on purpose. I get much closer to the mic than normal, like maybe an inch and a half, and sing very softly.
This is so not me - after a decade of singing in front of loud bands with lousy PAs, I have a really loud voice. Great in context but not here. So on this piece I am conciously singing soft and low, and trying to make everything sound as round and legato as possilbe.
It finally works, after many many tries, and as always I am happy I am not having to deal with tape recorders, just bits of digital info. I also do many more takes and am happy with the refrain, which like the original verse had pops and crackles, but worse I sang out of tune on part of it.
At that point, I had to quit. I only need to write the second verse - yes, I have put that off till now! - and record it, then mix and master this thing.
Stick around, I promise it won't be long......
This last week or so I have been unable to work on this piece. As have many before me, I had the dreaded 'audio crackle syndrome' or ACS on my audio recordings.
As I am sure I wrote of late, I now am using the digital outs on my XL7 and that works a treat, as they say in England - totally quiet, not a real high output level but that is easy to correct once its recorded.
For some time now I have had problems with some crackling in the audio, especially it seems with non-synth tracks. I drove myself crazy every few months trying to find the answer - new drivers, updates, messing with the card slots, but nothing worked.
Lately it got so bad I was determined I had to do something about it. This was really getting to me since the digital recordings were so wonderfully clean.
Once again I searched the web, updated the drivers, messed at some length with the BIOS settings and moved the audio card around in the machine. What would happen is that another device - the VIA (hiss!!!!!) USB universal cotroller, would also end up sharing the IRQ with the audio card. I had even considered buying a USB audio card, in the hopes that that would solve the problem. Finally, a user at youraudioforums.com named stringtheorist - now why couldn't I think up a great handle like that?? asked if I had pulled any of the cards out of the PC. Of course I had, I thought, but then it occured to me that I since I had two open slots, and I didn't want to move more than one card, I just swapped the card into the other open slot.
It had never crossed my mind that those two slots themselves could be the problem. I moved my NIC over into one of those slots and the audio card into where the NIC was. Bang! After the reboots, my audio card was on its own IRQ!
Of course, as my luck goes, I had to reinstall the NIC for whatever reason. And lo and behold, the NIC and the VIA device are now happily sharing the same IRQ. So anything in those two slots will end up sharing an IRQ. Really, really, really stupid design. I don't think I will ever buy a board with a VIA chipset again after all this nonsense.
I have just done some recording of one of the analog synths that was negatively effected by all this and I am happy to say that between the notes, there is nothing but blissful, pristine silence.
The lesson to me I suppose is that I should never take anything for granted. You would think I would have learned this after a decade in the computer industry, but as my old boss would have said, whats the point of being stupid if you don't show it?
Now I will finally be able to finish this song, thanks to all who have stayed with this and given me your comments.
Some thoughts on how timing affects just about everything .....
Last night I did a bit more critical listening. I had spent some time listening to the transistion between the second refrain and the bridge. Specifically it seemed to me that somehow the trumpet solo on the bridge just didn't match.
One of the great and terrible things about being able to edit audio digitally is the ablility to really mess with timing post recording. This can make you sound like you have the best timing on the planet, even if your timing sucks.
In this case, the end of the trumpet lick on the refrain was being followed almost instantly by the bridge trumpet section. It just didn't make sense, since while it may have been possible to play thru these sections, I don't have the lungs to do it. This made the entire bridge trumpet solo sound off. I tried to just snip the first riff and move it back a bit, but that wasn't the real case.
Finally I found the real answer: move the entire bridge back a 1/32nd note or so. Now it all lines up, plus the little extra space at the end of the refrain gives the piece just a slight breath, making it all sound much more natural and not forced.
One thing it reminds me of in classical trumpet literature, is when you sometimes see a ' between two notes - this is the symbol for breath, not really a rest or pause per se but just that millisecond when you intake air. In my mind this always indicated a sort of micro-rallentando - and here let me quote Websters 1913 dictionary:
Definition:
\Ral"len*tan"do\, a. [It.] (Mus.)
Slackening; -- a direction to perform a passage with a
gradual decrease in time and force; ritardando.
-but again, a micro version, so you are not really slowing down as in a regular rallentando, but more of a feeling thing. I am reminded that my best guitar teacher told me once that all instruments are derived from the human voice, and of course we have to breathe when we sing, so in my mind at least, it all makes sense. Its all about flow......
And now I have decided that this piece is finally ready to record. I recorded all the bass drum parts last night before I fell asleep, so its on to tomorrow. I don't how other people do this, but I don't try and save disk space by just recording one section if I have a repeating series of sections - I just hit record and let go. I think it sounds better. And it is always interesting to me to hear just one part playing for the entire song, cause its that last chance to catch a mistake.
I hope to finish this song up by the weekend, unless life gets in the way and throws a rallentando at me.
Thoughts on soloing
Its the end of the weekend, and I finally have a chance to take some time and record the trumpet parts for this song. I did have some space yesterday and worked up some parts, and even quoted "the Work Song" in part of what I thought I would do.
It was great - but I didn't use any of it. Naturally.
I started tonight with the bridge section, and what a freaking pain it was! I played thru it many times, and even did a test recording, and then said - what the hell is wrong, why am I playing so flat? Turns out that yesterday I had noticed the tuning slide was quite tight and greased it - and you can guess the rest.
OK that is fixed and now I turn to the acutal recording. It seems no matter how many times I do this, I don't ever really get to the point where it is totally mindless and I can sit back and play. Close maybe, but not in cruise control. One thing is certain, its much more difficult to do all the recording yourself than paying the bucks and going into a studio that has all the amenities, including someone else to run takes. Of course the up side is that there is no clock, and that is invaluable.
In this case, I found a nice riff for the second eight of the refrain, but gad it took a long ass time to get it right! Have you ever noticed how there is a fuck up mechanism built into every microphone? That is, you can play the riff perfectly right up to the time you point at the large diaphragm demon, and then bang - fuck up! I really think its worse on wind instruments, but in this particular case it is really because I don't have great trumpet chops. Over and over I go, until I finally get a take I can live with.
Then I have to find something for the first eight - that takes a little longer, and involves much cutting of mistakes, and in one case just getting that right two notes. But its important to me to make it sound real, and in any case, I can now go back and practice the solo before I make it out live, or at least the bones of the solo.
So I am almost there, with much trouble and toil. The trumpet valves are beginning to stick, which makes no sense whatsoever, as they normally get looser as I play - go figure!
I decide that I will have the trumpet ride out on the refrains at the end, so I first copy the pseudo-vibe refrain riff, and then do another take of a solo, and finally one more take, which I keep. Its amazing to me that this last bit, where I am playing for like 24 or 36 measues goes down the easiest of anything this night - this in spite of the fact that my lip is going south a bit.
It is interesting to note that when I am just practicing my horn, my lip dies off way quicker than when I am just playing, but maybe that is the price of trying to be disiplined when I am doing the scales, and not just blowing.
This song is - da ta! - almost done now except for recording the real vocals and doing the to me tedious job of recording all the synth parts and doing the mixing and mastering. But I think its a damn nice song, and so its well worth the effort.
I can see clearly now
Over the holiday weekend, I did quite a bit of work on this piece, and I am now happy to say the form is finally set up.
Probably the most important element, that finally makes this work as a piece of music, was the writing of the verse undermelody. This was really what was holding me up on finishing the song.
I was letting the verse cycle back and forth, and listening to more presets, when I finally chanced upon a Thumb Piano sample.
When I heard this, I realized that what I actually wanted for this piece was a set of vibes - but of the thousands of presets that I have, there wasn't a single set of vibes anywhere that I could find! Startling!
So I end up back with the thumb piano.This ended up being a good starting point for the sound that I am finally using. Luckly for me I have a software editor for the XL7. It is a very powerful synth, but even with all the knobs on the front, its much easier to construct synth voices with the aid of a nice gui.
I spent quite some time on this, combining the thumb piano sample with a harp finally, and one of the amazing filters on the XL, plus some effects. What I ended up with sounds somewhat like a wide and deep and fuzzy thumb piano/vibraphone thing with some other nice overtones in it. Me like!
What is interesting to me is that the sound I made and the riffs give this piece - like so many of my pieces - a very slight 'oriental' tinge - and I am reminded how much I like Martin Denny - and if you don't know who he is (!) you can just jump over here and get to know a very cool musician indeed. And you really can't beat the album covers either.
One of the things that I try and do is to play the instruments that are emulated in my songs as they would actually be played, and the ersatz vibe I cooked up is no exception: I just used two note harmonic intervals, no three or four note chords to write the parts.
As I said, I was only going to use this on the verse, but as I played around with it more, I ended up writing a part for the refrain also. Now I'm in business, the song can be completed.
What I did find though, that I thought was interesting: even though I played all the vibe parts live, afterwards I went in a moved them forward in time about 20 ticks - this gave them a really laid back feel that I think works with the song. In case you are wondering, you can hear the refrain and the bridge by
clicking on this text for 120 ways test mix 3 and as usual, it would be better to save than stream.
At this point, I basically have the song under control. I need to play the little trumpet part that I had so much time in remembering, write the rest of the lyrics, and record all the final vocals, and the mastering.
According the Sonar, I am on revision 234, with about 23 hours of work on this song, which has been spread over a month. No wonder I can't finish my CD!!!! Still, I think I will be quite pleased when this is done, and hopefully a few others will be too.
Try as I might, I can't always update the blog every time I manage to do some work on this song, so I am catching up on the last few days tonight.
As the summer is here, and I am working out in the huge garden, its gets harder to find time to work down here in the operating room. Still I grab the times when I can and try to make the most of them.
A couple of days ago, I put in a new ROM in the XL7. The thing is full now, no more slots and while this ROM wouldn't have been the first choice, the blow out price was way too good to resist. I have written back on the random thoughts page
about how its good not to always buy gear when it first comes out - most true in this case, where the price of this ROM fell something like 75%. I now have yet a ton more samples and presets to work with.
For the bridge, I knew I wanted some sort of piano and/or sting sounds - and there it was right when I looked for it. Sometimes I don't think its necessary to tweak every single preset in the synth, although I do some messing with most of them. What I am trying to do with my songs is make a good song, that presents the ideas I am trying to communicate, not necessarily trying to impress people with how good a synth programmer I am.
Once I had the sound close enough for my purposes, it was fairly easy to write a melody for the bridge, quick actually. The jury in my mind is still out if not having great chops on an instrument is a blessing or a curse - certainly having to think simply can be a good thing, since any fool can play lots of notes fast. Hell, with midi you don't even have to think about it. I will never forget, after being totally blown away by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, seeing Bill Cobham on his own tour, and being really bored - I mean, the man is a monster, but all that speed and dexterity couldn't replace the wonderful interplay of the musicians and great song structures that were part of the MO.
At this point I decide just to flesh out the structure, simple in this case, A/B/A/B/C/A/B - and I spend a lot of time listening.
I realize that there is still a hole in the verse section - not enough for all of it to go without a counter melody to weave around the vocal. But what sound? I do some sound grazing on the XL, and of course I am still partly exploring the new presets. Some nice stuff, but nothing that really catches my ear. Then I begin to think about the little melody from the DX200 that I am using on the refrain. I start to play with that sound on the verse section, and soon enough I have come up with something that may actually make the cut. One point for me that is important: just because I can have fifty different timbres in a song, doesn't mean I should. For one thing, I am trying to make songs that sound like humans in a band actually play them, which is why I try as best as I can to play most stuff live and not go crazy on the editing or with throwing in that zither riff just cause I can. The human feel is very important to me.
Still I am not certain that these new riffs on the verse are quite right, so I will be working on that some more, and indeed there may be another sound in there. I will know it when I hear it.
Once that is done, its simply a matter of writing the rest of the verses, recording them, and doing a few more trumpet parts. Which brings me to something I bet you can relate to:
How many time have you had a riff rolling around in your head, and you think, as soon as I get home I will record that thing before I lose it? This is what happened to me last night - I had just a bit of time to work on this song, and I thought I would record this trumpet riff over the intro, that had been in my head for days. I mean, I had even previously played thru it one or twice on the horn, but I didn't record it. And I sat there and sat there and couldn't remember the damn thing for the life of me! I tried all sorts of alternatives, but of course they all sucked, right?
Luckily for me this morning, as I was doing some exercises at 6:30 am, the riff came back to me. I was downstairs in a shot, and just hummed the melody into Sonar. Now of course, I can remember it easily, but did that help me the other night? Thanks heavens the idea floated back up into my conciousness, because as I always say, technique can be learned - but ideas are precious and I can't afford to lose a single one.
I will try and post the bridge so you can check it out, but me being a good working stiff, I need to hit the hay. And think about this song some more as I slip into unconciousness.............it really is a great addiction, isn't it?