Time has arrived!

John's test tracks recorded with new kick drum mikes and his altered mike configurations sound very usable - he recorded some tracks to the stems from Rock Band game and with each track the balance and sound get better. Now it's time to start recording for real - we'll tweak mic placement and angle after the first set of demo drum tracks arrive for "htfk" next week.

Of course that means we're doing htfk first - it's a constant 4/4 time 96 Bpm tempo with a ton of syncopation that makes it sound more complex than it really is. It will be a good way to ease John into a collaborative recording effort where we can bounce stuff off each other on this tune in prep for the really long & complex stuff to come.

I'm thinking we'll have drum tracks shortly and then I will start with some arrangement & instrumentation changes to refresh the new version. I'll post early stems when available...

Three original songs plus one cover selected as the first to undergo re-recording

This is starting to get interesting for me - John and I got together, reviewed the equipment he has and his installation of Reaper on his PC, as well as investigating how to use some of the "-nodrums" versions of songs I sent him to generate tempo maps in Reaper for his purposes. Reaper (the DAW) impresses me each time I take time to look at it - the developers have really ramped it up to start acting very much like a real workstation software, including hosting vsts and other proprietary virtual instruments/effects. It might be very well that in the next year or two I'll dump the commercial DAW software in favor of Reaper...

Ok, that said, here's the detail for the headline of the post:

Songs selected were mostly instrumentals - they're among the hardest of the material to hit the changes, but we're also going back to redo a lot of the guitars/basses and keyboards for them, so lets make them sound as live as we can. The one vocal song is a very difficult time signature, but has a very well defined feel to it so John should be able to find a groove to work with it. The cover song selected could end up being the very first tune to record in order to get great drum sounds - "Fooling Yourself (the angry young man)" by Styx is a great song, has a nice 3/4 meter and groove to it, and I can play all of the parts to it very well. That will truly be the warm up tune allowing me to work off the rust both doing wood-shedding at home, and also playing it live at open mics in various places between now and the recording time.

Song list:

1. htfk - this is a great instrumental, in 4/4 thru the entire running length of the tune, with tons of syncopation and overlapping counter-melodies. It was never recorded with real drums either, so it will most definitely feel the big huge lift from a live band treatment.
2. Pentelho Vermelho - John wants to see this gain some speed, I'd almost like to see this slow down deliberately to gain more heaviness. This one has meter changes all over the place so much to learn on this one...
3. This Mortal Coil - the vocal tune that has the most to gain of all the "AFLB" songs. It's in a really wacky 15/8 time signature for the verses, then shifts to 9/8 (I think) for the chorus, but the whole time this has a very defined groove which makes you forget the odd meter - a bit clunky though in the AFLB form. Vocally, it will experience a huge upgrade as after almost 10 years I have a better definition of the main melodic vocal line.
4. Fooling Yourself - it was between this song, and Xanadu (the Rush tune) for the first of the covers to hit. I have others on the list as well and each one will get a treatment - but this is the first. It will keep us honest w.r.t. dealing with the complexities of the originals, and help to focus on simply getting good sounds and performances to disk. Very much looking forward to getting this song down.

John needs to pick up a couple more pieces - another kick drum mic (I think), a couple mic stands for the kick drums, the dual mic mount bit (for the x-pattern overhead mics). Once he gets those, we set up mics, get sounds and tweak placements, and then start going for broke. I'm guessing first sets of drums tracks will come my way within the next two weeks and then I'll be able to start laying the supporting tracks down at home.

We're still more or less on target for getting the redux drums done by end of June (my estimate), and then we can start working on drums for new material as some will be written by then...

As far as new material - I'm taking two pieces from the past as starting points for both individual songs, and building blocks for my progressive rock classical long form piece that will fill an entire CD by itself. I'm targeting having my first draft of the long form piece done by July and likely 5-7 stems of new individual songs / material by then as well. How I will choose to package and release will be determined as we get closer to that milestone, and its likely I'll start a PledgeMusic campaign up and going for certain by June to fund production and manufacture of the new stuff in addition to repackaging the old material for release.

Ah - I'm late, need to go take my kid to his first baseball game of the year. Have fun everyone!

Auditioning the electronic drumkit...

John came with his gf on Friday night to audition the drum kit and also check out the recording space. A few thoughts came from this as we dug further into the limitations of electronic percussion in addition to further figuring out how we will proceed with our efforts together.

There are a few things that came up - most items can be remedied but a couple things cant. The double kick pedal (since it's a single kick drum kit) I have is a DW3000, which is a bit massive and exhibits issues related to Newton's Conservation of Momentum issues. John has a very nice set of kick pedals, so in that case we can work it out.

Other items - some notable, some remediable...

• levels and sensitivities of each drum trigger - remediable, just need to take the time
• tensions of drum heads affecting the pitch of the note produced - not sure... don't think it's remediable
• heights and angles of the toms, as well as how closely packed they are - remediable
• glitching of the module when more than one or two pads/notes played simultaneously - not sure
• drum skin action (a bit dead like overly dampened drums) - don't think this is remediable
• a few of my cymbals kinda suck (this is my own comment) - remediable
• being able to take a MIDI/Audio feed using the USB 2.0 cable from the module
• so this is interesting since I've just scratched the surface of the module. My thoughts below

The item mentioned above - USB signal conveyance - is an important item for me. John feels that we can use my kit for all the more experimental tracks or sounds, and that's fine for me. But from a studio kit importance, having the USB cable to convey the audio and MIDI to the workstation is very important. It's an important feature to minimize latency - potentially - since I'll be recording the cymbals/hihats using a pair of overhead condensers plus one close mic on the hihat. Latency needs to be at zero for this to work, and if its not, then the kit is not terribly functional for me. Need to work on this one...

Final thoughts - John is getting his 2nd Zoom portable 16 channel recorder shortly (in shipping) and we will get his studio set up for sound once it arrives. I've been setting up my Ultrabook as an ultra portable DAW, migrating projects with my USB2.0 external drive from the workstation DAW to the UB. I will then be able to sync up the UB with the two Zoom units and take audio right off the board so to speak. This will be the primary means to recording drums for all the material especially the past stuff.

New material - we'll collaborate with the Spacemuffins in the garage studio, building decent bed tracks to work with especially for the longer more involved songs/compositions. As mentioned much earlier and in other forums, I'm planning on writing at least one very long piece of music integrating many ideas into a single symphonic and progressive piece. The ideas though will also live on as separate standalone songs/compositions that will help to fully realize many of the particularly good ideas into digestible songs... not pop songs, but simply easier to process for the listener. There is so much temptation to take bits and expand on things in the context of the larger piece so that each bit becomes it's own feature, but the danger is the larger piece will then be far too busy and lack an overall focal point with so many themes jostling for attention. I've been jamming on ideas on my acoustic 12 string, as well as pulling stuff from out of  the more interesting stronger bits from the Onion and subsequent works, but nothing has stood out as a primary motivating melody yet. As time goes on and the musical portion of my brain shakes off lethargy/atrophy - really my fingers still need to do the same - once the atrophy is reversed ideas will happen all the time. Now that equipment is not a concern, just getting the time in the woodshed will make shit happen :)

I'm attending an "Open Mic" @ the Cask, Tuesday April 9th - 7 pm to 10:30 pm

Here's the Facebook announcement detailing the where and when:
https://www.facebook.com/events/176488849169065/

It will be me with some small quantity of gear - I'm deciding if I bring just my acoustic 6 string, or do I work up a little more with my electric, some outboard effects and the looper pedal plus my ultrabook to play canned rhythms with. If I can get a bit of time this weekend in to put 3-4 bits together - my own take on soundscapes but less ambient and a tad more structured - then I will do the larger set of gear and take my ESP midi guitar along. Many of the people attending are also organizing the new SeaProg festival taking place in June of this year - maybe I can swing a short set for myself in there if I do well. So yea, I'd like to get something a bit more formatted ready for this informal show :)

Family members have ailments of all sorts - I had the most wicked migraine plus a minor case of the flu on Sunday, wife is sick with the flu (4 days now), oldest son Thomas has conjunctivitis (pink eye) and has been out of school all week. The two little guys have been healthy though throughout this whole thing - but with them being really active and getting into everything, there is no rest for the wicked...

But even given this impediment, I've moved over several projects from my main DAW PC to my handy dandy Ultrabook - I only need to install Cubase 7 with the Syncrosoft software key manager, and then I'll be ready to roll. On top of the myriad other things to do this weekend, I'll spend some time editing existing projects due for remix, plus reprogram the old songs due for revision and have them prepped for recording. John has ordered his 2nd Zoom portable digital recording unit and should receive shortly - at which point I'll make the short trip down Hwy 18 to his house and we'll set up sounds on his drumkit. I've also received the 8" polycone woofers and have instructions on how to build the subkick mikes - need to get the XLR connectors and wire these bad boys up.

Tonight I'll be going down to Darren Ross' place to pick up my Garrison and Gibson Goldtop LP guitars - I really want to love the LP, so lets see how the setup improves the feel and play-ability of it. Just like with the Howard Roberts Fusion, I might have to again replace pickups to get the tone I'm expecting - it seems that I only really like the Seymour Duncan stuff, I wish I wasn't such a fanboy though...

Minor note - I filled the final f/x cymbal slot with an amazing Sabian AAX 8" Air Splash. It has this extremely bright and quick hit with short decay that fills what I think I was looking for. I will revisit some of the other items (particularly the Stagg splash) and decide if it was what I hoped I was getting...

Once I get some of the oldest material re-transcribed and programmed into Cubase 7 I'll post the demo tracks with working MIDI drums - many of the songs will get a huge upgrade with the new equipment I have so I'm very excited about the prospect. Cheers!