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Noc

By onezero on February 21, 2016 7:28 pm

This was a busy week, involving weekend travel, and I still managed to find some time to work on the track. I began with the thought of filtered percussion, so set up a couple Drum Racks with Analog voices to synthesize the drums--one's low-pass filtered, while the other's high-pass.  It needed a bit more, so I added another track of synthesized kick, and threw in yet another drum rack with brush-kit samples.  There are two tracks of Operator for bass lines, another track of Operator for that grinding drone voice, a track of Simpler with grand piano (which goes through the Frequency Shifter to make it a bit less "oh, a piano"). I also added a track of Electric for that Rhodes thing.

It also happens that I picked up a guitar that I bought in early January, an Epiphone Moderne from 2000: 

So I recorded some bits with that.  Those went through Ableton's Amp plugin, mostly on variations of the "Blues" (Fender) preset.   (It could use a bit of setup attention when I get home, and it's such an odd non-ergonomic body shape, but I'm digging it.) 

Sends:

An audio effects rack with two parallel processes: a narrow-band of auto-filter going into the Convolution Reverb Pro (Powerstation Berlin Bright impulse), and another narrow-band of auto-filter going into the Buffer Shuffler 2.0.

A send of EQ Eight (midrange hump) going into the Convolution Reverb Pro using the Harpole Cistern impulse.

One send of Filter Delay.

All MIDI channels got a bit of Humanizer for delay, and got L-R auto-pan plus volume auto-pan.  Guitars got L-R auto-pan, all set to different frequencies and intensities.

Man, did all of this max out the processor.  I tracked with the built-in Reverb, but subbed out the Convolution at the last moment for rendering.  Screen redraws really hurt during the preview part of things, but the rendering went fine.

Title from the Little Bay de Noc, where I'm looking out at the frozen tip of Lake Michigan.

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mood and feel totally works for me. great track. love the guitar, shape an sound.

Masterful! All those pieces really come together.

Nice main riff. I really dig the contrast between the clean parts and the low, distorted parts. The background noises add a ton to this track, giving it ambience and really filling in the sound space. Sounds quite different from your last week's work. Definitely shows your confidence and experience. If I had to change one thing, I'd suggest making the drums pop a bit more (more compression maybe) and to reduce the low bass so it doesn't cover up the mids and highs from the guitar. This is great stuff. I enjoyed it.

minaret_kid wrote:

mood and feel totally works for me. great track. love the guitar, shape an sound.

Thank you!  Yeah, the guitar was an always-wanted kind of purchase.  A friend spotted the listing in Chicago, and another friend there checked it out for me and bought it. Now I've been able to pick it up.  Through a real amp...it's glorious.  Nice neck and very little wear, too.  (Dude who originally owned it dinged the fin and broke off the switch...but I can replace the switch.)

Jim Wood wrote:

Masterful! All those pieces really come together.

Thank you, sir!

Arcana wrote:

Nice main riff. I really dig the contrast between the clean parts and the low, distorted parts. The background noises add a ton to this track, giving it ambience and really filling in the sound space. Sounds quite different from your last week's work. Definitely shows your confidence and experience. If I had to change one thing, I'd suggest making the drums pop a bit more (more compression maybe) and to reduce the low bass so it doesn't cover up the mids and highs from the guitar. This is great stuff. I enjoyed it.

Thank you!  I agree about the drums, though for different reasons: I'm not totally happy with the way I synthesized the drum voices, and they don't quite work with the final piece, particularly with the filter.  Originally I was planning on something more minimal, but once I had the guitar in hand...of course I had to use it, and it makes the piece better.  So there's that.  But yeah, the synth drums are a weak spot here.

nice vibes, good trick with the freq shifter on the piano!

Chill, great mix... the grinding drone works wonders. The tempo and the attack on the guitar create an interesting pair - sounds cool!

Has a nice relaxed vibe and sounds great.  That's a sweet guitar, too!

I'm digging your "spaced out" guitar jams a lot. Really chilled vibes on this one, and I would touch the drums. As some of your other tracks, you get a very warm sound found of (ahem) "analogic" nuances and I insist I would totally believe drums we're from a complicated modular patch.

On my studio monitors, the low end is there like a non-protagonist drummer, but the story is told by the guitar.

Great track, Maurice

Oh, nice guitar! heart

Congrats!

The track is completely chill, love it!

Lovely relaxed feel to this! Lots of interesting things happening in the background.
Well done!

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