hopefully
Since I have finally finished the 120 ways song, I can at last move onto other things. Let me explain why I bought the gear I did:
In the last few years I have been attempting to get to the point where I could do live solo shows, just me and all the gear I can handle - but not with a computer, or I should say an actual computer, not a music machine that is a computer.
Combined with this I want to play my horns and sing. Its important to me, to see if I can pull this off. I played so many years in bands, so its not like I am trying to prove that I can get on a stage - its more like I want to see what I can do improvisationally without the additon of extra people. Also, its difficult to find anyone who can be on the same wavelength as me; and of course I don't have to mess with anyone's schdule but my own. If I don't make progress, I can only be mad at myself.
So I went out and purchased some great grooveboxes, the Korg EA1, ER1 - which I think is a classic drum machine - a Yamaha DX200 and finally an Emu XL7, which I bought primarilly as a way to run the other machines. I didn't realize at the time what a great synth it was in its own right.
I then made sort of a tactial error. Instead of simply concentrating on what the XL could do by itself, I spent a lot of time integrating it into my other synths on the idea that I wanted to control the other grooveboxes with the XL by playing back midi files of songs I wrote.
This was very frustrating and quite time consuming. I am not inexperienced with MIDI, not after 10 years, and I finally got most of it up and running. But as a consequence, I didn't really use the XL to anywhere near its potential.
As time went on, I realized that I was spending more time messing with the gear than writing music, and getting no further along to my goal: play live.
I had another insight as some point: I decided that I wanted to get a complete CD done, so that I would have actually finished something for once, and also as a promotional tool - and maybe sell some thru CD baby and at shows. Not that I expect to make a killing off of this by any means, but it would be nice to make some $ to get more gear, right?
I have been concentrating then on getting songs done for the CD. One problem tho is that I have everything running on one set of midi ins and outs thru my interface.
This makes a lot of sense if you are trying to control everything live with the XL; however, if you aren't doing that, you lose some flexiblity by having everything ganged together. In particular, the DX200 has a definate weirdness to its operating system and midi implimentation: you can only use pitch bend if the DX is on midi channel one, and it does not correctly pass midi thru from the XL or anything else - trust me, I have been thru all the tests and messing around possible on this, it just doesn't work right.
It also affects being able to use the velocity sensitive pads on the XL to program drum beats, and to use the XL as a general midi controller, which is another reason I bought it.
One other thing, and here it is: it would be much, much, much easier to play gigs only using the XL7 and my horns: nothing to mess up with syncing or anything like that.
Therefore, I have made an important decision, well, important for me anyway: I am scrapping the idea of using the other grooveboxes live at all, and just use the XL and my horns. Of course, I will have to substitute the sounds from the other grooveboxes with sounds from the XL so as not to miss parts that I generated outside the XL. I realize that in most cases, the sounds won't be as nice as the external machines, since they each have a distinctive character, but no one will be able durning my live shows to notice the difference except me, and I won't be telling, will I?
I think if I wanted to still drag say the ER1 with me, I could manually change its patch numbers and have it still sync tempo with the XL and run its patterns off its internall sequencer; I will have to consider this.
There is some boring work related to this: changing the instrument defintions in Sonar so that the machines are pointing at their new correct ports, so I have to go into each song before I do this and note the bank and patch assignments so I won't lose them as I change the port assignments - but I can do that.
I think this will free me up a lot when I do live stuff, since if all I have to worry about is using the XL, it will make it all easy on me since the XL won't have any problems using its internal sounds, and I can still dump the midi files from Sonar into it (modified to use the internal XL sounds). It should give me the ability to freely improvise with the XL, which is the whole point of this box, plus the ability to control all the things I want to in Sonar from the XL. This hopefully will make mixing a more interactive thing, rather than just drawing envelopes in by hand, not to mention controlling DXis with all the knobs from the XL.
A lot to think about, but its all about having choices and making the most of the gear, right?
It has taken some time - much too long probably - to finish my remix of my song. I have replaced the original mix over at the songs page.
Just to remind you: Cass Anawathy was kind enough to make a remix of the original material, which just blew my original mix into the dustheap, so I decided to try and match as best I could what he did, stealing every idea I could to make my mix better. This included dropping a few drum parts at the beginning of the song, doubleing some vocal parts and treating the second part with different fx from the first on the refrain, but not so striking as what Cass did, I wanted something not quite so different as the main vocals.
I also at this time got a real preamp, and since it made all the synth stuff that much better sounding, re-recorded everything in stereo, which gave me better material to start with than what Cass had. And I changed the snare drum sound to something more realistic (I hope!) and played most of the snare drum parts by hand, not just messing with the sequencer, which I hope made it sound more realistic.
One last thing was using a new plugin, the LFX-310, which I have written about, for most all the channels. Unlike my old practice, for this song I have mostly used insert effects on each channel, rather than aux sends. For the curious, here is what I did, with the fx chain left to right:
BD - LFX compressor, overdrive and eq
SD -LFX compressor, delay, reverb
HH - LFX compressor, eq, reverb
Piano - LFX chorus, delay, reverb
Thumb piano - Sonic Foundry Track EQ
Bass - Endorphin stereo compressor from digital fishphones
Synth lead and first trumpet shared the LFX chours, stereo delay and reverb
Vocals on verses - LFX eq,delay, reverb
The special effected vocals - LFX delay, tremolo, reverb and Sonic Foundry parametic EQ for the sorta telephone effect
The first refrain vocal used LFX chorus, ping pong delay and reverb
The second refrain vocal used LFX eq and gated reverb. The refrain vox channels panned a bit from the center to make them wider
The refrain trumpet had eq and gated reverb
So - this took forever but I think it was worth the time. I want to thank everyone that gave me suggestions on this, espcially Cass of course and Jay over at yourmusicforums.com.
Finally I did a quick "mastering" using the Ozone 3 plugin, using - and don't kill me for this, OK? - a preset that I liked, Rock master 4 band dynamics, all the while A/B'ing with Cass's mix.
One last thought: I now realize that instead of actually matching what Cass did - which is pretty impossible given the differences in equipment and experience, I think that what I ended up trying to do was to just make the best mix I possibly could, using the ideas that Cass had and my own mangled brain. I think I learned more from this than any other project, so thanks again to all who came along for the ride!
And here I thought I was done...
As I have related, my friend Cass Anawathy remixed my song 120 Ways, and did a fabulous job of it. However, I have changed some things, gotten a new preamp, and re-recorded everything. The basic tracks sound much better, most of them in stereo, a tip from Jay at YourMusicForums.
Now comes the hard part: making it sound as good as the original remix. You know that one of the typical things that is said to be done when trying to make a good master of a song is to listen to songs that you like and try and match the mix.
I am in a different situation here, unique in that I am trying to match a better mix of my own stuff. You'd think it would be easy - unless you are trying to do it.
One problem is that I don't have all the mixing resources that Cass has - but I can't let that stop me,right? I did get one great advantage lately, that of a free and amazing set of fx plugins from Luxonix, the freeware LX1310. This is a great set of plugins, especially since each instance can contain up to 3 seperate plugs - and are really low on CPU usage. On my old Athlon 800, I am running 8 instances of this thing, plus two more insert effects, and the CPU usage is 52% - plenty useable.
So I have done things like run seperate compressor/eq/reverb or some such combination on 8 tracks - what a difference to control each channel indivdiually!
I was able to get a much better mix on most everything, but listening to Cass's mix, it still isnt there, I still don't have the clarity I am after, and the punch he got.
I also tried to duplicate some of the voice tricks he did with varying success.
I could go into long and laborous details of what I have done - but I think it can wait until Labor Day, which is tomorrow. I fear that I am losing site of the whole picture, so I need to let my poor ears rest until I can hear it all fresh.
It all just boils down to having the patience to persist until I can achive at least a rough simulation of what Cass did. I have to believe the end product will be worth it!