Alpha Capture
By onezero on March 13, 2016 11:40 pm
A busy week and weekend meant that I bumped up against the deadline over the weekend, and in retrospect probably should have tracked guitars a day earlier. (On the positive side, I have a lot of other stuff-of-life done.)
My initial goal was to have a percussion-heavy ensemble, with lots of simple parts--think Remain in Light. Seven tracks of percussion (assorted real-trap-kit, short-envelope 606 (high-pass auto-filter to keep it out of the way of the other kicks), 808, two percussion kits, tabla, and hand claps), one track of percussive Electric piano, one track of percussive guitar (muted strokes on the Res-O-Glas). One track of bass (80s Epi), two other tracks of guitar (one Res-O-Glas, some clips through wah, some not, and one of Moderne, some through wah and some not). All guitar went through an EHX LPB2ube with the channels cascaded. In the end, I also thought I'd need another voice, so after trying and scrapping some Nebulophone lines, I dropped in a channel of Operator, using the Light & Shadow preset to give some ambient atmosphere here and there.
I'm not really happy with the sound on that first rhythm guitar part--something's just off. I should probably remove some highs, or retrack it with more high end rolled off. Also, I'd like to play a few melodic lines that'd unify the thing a bit more. But we have a deadline, so here it is, as is.
Return channels: M4L convolution reverb with the A&M Chamber impulse, and one of M4L Tapped delay set to dotted eighth notes. Generally I kept things dry, but the two percussion channels and electric piano got a touch of reverb. The Moderne channel got some multi-tap delay. All MIDI channels got some M4L humanizer and auto-pan for volume variation and pan, while audio channels got auto-pan. Everything got the Full Chain Master as well.
After uploading, I listened back and tweaked the mix a bit--higher multi-tap send on the Moderne guitar, swapping in the A&M Chamber impulse for the German Opera House impulse I'd used initially, and adding a note or two in the Operator channel.
Title from the process that initially created the universe's supply of neon (atomic number 10).
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