It's been two weeks since the last post, and although I've had a big increase in my music productivity it's not up to optimal. I've been mostly spending time on the Muse Receptor issues as I got the SSD back from Muse Research and it's functional, but now it's getting the software licenses transferred from the original owner (Michael Bluestein, keyboardist extraordinaire) to me. Michael has been an excellent person in this regard - the Receptor was sold by the band through a 3rd party on eBay to me, and after I found his name and email address I just cold called him (email) and asked how we could manage this? He's since gone onto iLok website and transferred the licenses on the system to me, plus is working on getting the s/n and registration info for the version of NI Komplete that was preloaded on the unit to me. He's been excellent in making sure I'm up to date on progress towards getting everything done, and I'm hanging on to the original iLok key that was in the Receptor - can you believe that iLok charges $100 to transfer ownership of the key to a new owner, while a brand new iLok only costs $30?? Anyways, you can guess how I'm dealing with that :)
I'm writing this a bit out of order now since the Receptor item is first and foremost on my mind (in the music space at least). Once that's resolved, and I figure out how to use the Uniwire feature that links PC to Receptor (to offload VST workloads and bandwidth onto the Receptor system), then there should be a marked increase in the output on this side.
Next up - Remix status. I've done some early work on two tunes from The Sound of Thoughts: Lady in a Cage and This Mortal Coil. Both have some rework to do - vocals and guitars to be redone, some bass parts as well, maybe touch on some keyboards as required. With the new VST plug-ins I have from iZotope, Universal Audio, Waves, IK Multimedia and others, being able to really turn the drums into stellar sounding instruments is a big plus, and each of the tracks above have had enormous benefit by it. The iZotope plugs in particular have been fabulous as I can really have a all in one solution for gating, eq, compression, etc... that is tailored to each piece of the drumkit, and in fact for each instrument and vocal part in the projects. They're also very efficient in terms of CPU and memory resources such that I have multiple instances of plug-ins loaded and processing, but my CPU and memory load never exceeds roughly 50% of available. This is especially awesome considering the sheer number of tracks and VSTs loaded for Lady in a Cage - I'm guessing 32 tracks total with 18 tracks both mono and stereo audio, plus 14 MIDI tracks, and then each of the VST card slots representing instruments, effects, etc... which is a considerable load on the system. Back in 2004/05 I had to do a lot of stuff like freezing or pre-rendering individual tracks to get around the bandwidth throttling issues on the PC I had at the time, so to be able to have everything functioning real time and not being a load on the CPU or memory - a godsend.
I have a version of an early remix for "This Mortal Coil" - you can check it out here
SO here's my critical side letting loose:
This song badly needs a new vocal - I tried with the radio voice setting to reclaim the original vocal, but there are so many things that feel wrong about it, mostly in the performance itself. They always say hindsight is 20:20 - the entire delivery and how the phonetic rhythm interplays with the music just doesn't work for me.
There are good things about the track - drums are now really sounding great. I have a very nice Chapman Stick on Sample Tank 2 that is a big improvement from the live track, and I'm processing using my favorite VST and preset for all bass - the T-Racks Compressor with Bass Tube Compressor. I've got Amplitube 3 on the clean guitars through a Vox AC30 on one channel, and a Boutique amp on the other - both have some analog chorus on them to make them sound a bit richer. The lead guitar was originally tracked through a POD Pro rack unit and printed to tape - I've changed up the delays and reverbs for all f/x channel strips and the lead now has a bit more richness to it. Keyboards are all pretty standard fare - when I first tried to work on this track in 2010 I had Paul's Korg Triton rack synth and so printed some of the MIDI tracks to audio from the Triton. This resulted in a lot of thickness of pads that really muddied the 2010 mixes, and so I've been going through and automating and arranging the various tracks to enter and exit at key points in the song. As I said before, this is still an early remix, but it's a significant portion of the way down the road towards a final with the ideas and efforts being tried out continually.
Right now I've got Pentelho Vermelho in Cubase 7.5 and ready to work on. The last remix I did in 2010 was just drenched with reverb and delay - way too much. Also, given that I'd just come out of the Fine Line project and the "more is better" sensibility with respect to keyboards and guitars, it's just got too much stuff in it. My procedure will be to bring the song back to the essential instruments that highlight the melodies and rhythms, then add enough to sweeten and enhance the song without burying the essentials. The TSOT songs tend to be far easier to do this with since PC imposed limitations, but even with new hardware the key to success on the remixes will be to Keep It Simple.
I had started doing some work on The Sound of Thoughts (the track itself) - this was predominantly a MIDI track that used my old JX-8P and Wavestation extensively, along with NI Battery and a bunch of freeware VSTs that I still keep as a part of my arsenal. Crazy Diamonds is a great VST that you can still find online - the amazing strings from Shine On You Crazy Diamond are reproduced spot on, plus there's a Jean Michel Jarre patch from Oxygene that is also a perfect recreation - which is the patch I used on this track. As with Pentelho and many of the other tracks I tried to redo four years ago, I tried recording the Triton audio for several parts, and now I'm going to need to decide to thin things out. The interesting thing I'm thinking about with this track though is for me to actually play the drums myself instead of using the programmed drums. I have the electronic drums and the KAT module which streams MIDI through the USB cable for the kick/snare/toms, and then the microphones to capture the hihat, ride and overhead cymbals. At the least, since the tune is in a 4/4 signature and has a consistent tempo, I should be able to do this fairly easily and get some practice playing the drums as well.
There are 12 total tracks on the CD, so there's plenty of work to do. Given the rate at which I get to stuff, it might be end of year or early next year before the material gets to mastering - I'm hoping that with the Receptor situation being resolved, and then starting to call up my mates to get together to jam, maybe I can get this particular effort done earlier...
Finally - the "other distractions" segment. Day job has me working on doing "presence" for our group and company at Siggraph in Vancouver, I have another event in just under two weeks - Seattle Buzz Workshop has me arranging hardware with Android demos to a developer audience. Other complications have also been taking time away from me - I promise to let people know if any change imposes itself on life.
There's another part of my day job that's been interesting - I have been reaching out to hardware and VST developers on behalf of Intel to discuss partnering up with them for future products. I can't say much more about this except it is a great path for me to go down for my day job as long as I can execute on the switch. Being able to influence the ecosystem in that fashion has always been a hope and a goal for me, so lets see how this will turn out...
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