Captain's log #26
Today I was going to work on the drums, but in a funny, organic way, I've finally done some prep work for the vocals too.
It was so because I started my musical day by trying to find some songs in a similar style to mine, and listen consciously how they deal with the crash cymbal. This is a part of my song that has been bugging me for a long time; the song is fast and repetitive, noisy as hell, with a crash on every beat. In the session, however, this continuous crash ended up sounding very unrealistic, and sometimes generating subpatterns that become very distracting because each beat should be evenly accentuated.
I thought this issue had to be dealt with during production; compression to tame the excess of noise. But I wasn't totally clear about that, so today I listened to how other bands do it in these "noisy" scenarios.
Firstly, I had difficulties finding a song that did this stuff. Probably because I never listen to a song in terms of audio production unless I deliberately set myself to do it (and even then, I often shift unconsciously at some point to just following the song), none of the examples I chose (Black Flag, Minor Threat, Hansen Brothers) had that kind of noise I needed. So then I turned to the main influence of my song, Motörhead.
Again, no luck with an alike example, but before I noticed it my audition session had turned into simply listening to some of my favorite Motörhead songs. "Ace of Spades", "On parole" -I'd love to cover this one one day-, "Killed by death", "Sympathy for the devil" (really curious about this one that I hadn't ever listened before; a song like this didn't fit in my concept of Motörhead, but oh boy does Lemmy own it). And, in case there was any need for further proof that Mr. Kilmster was a wonderful human being, "Suicide", whose lyrics I had never read. When I noticed it I was singing aloud, which makes good practice for the upcoming vocal tracking (although I don't know if I will try to imitate Lemmy's "broken style"; my register is like one octave higher, and I don't have enough whisky in blood...)
Then I moved to investigate and fool around with Drumgizmo, in case there was something I was doing wrong, and I think I got it (I ran out of time right then). The humanizer parameter has by its side attack and release controls. I erroneously assumed that they were for some kind of compression effect on the drum sound (as I had only heard of those parameters in such context), but they affect the humanization; when Drumgizmo detects a repeated note, it applies them to the velocity, preventing the "ratata" effect. Armed with this information, I modified those parameters, and the crash cymbal has started to sound more decent.
In addition to that, I'm thinking maybe with this humanization active, the additional work I did on velocities becomes redundant, contributing also to the weird unnatural sound.
I still have this sadness+anger re: the guitar tracks. The sound is very mediocre. Why's that? With the features of this computer I should be getting a better sound. I'll try to live with it and otherwise I'll make some more tests.
It was so because I started my musical day by trying to find some songs in a similar style to mine, and listen consciously how they deal with the crash cymbal. This is a part of my song that has been bugging me for a long time; the song is fast and repetitive, noisy as hell, with a crash on every beat. In the session, however, this continuous crash ended up sounding very unrealistic, and sometimes generating subpatterns that become very distracting because each beat should be evenly accentuated.
I thought this issue had to be dealt with during production; compression to tame the excess of noise. But I wasn't totally clear about that, so today I listened to how other bands do it in these "noisy" scenarios.
Firstly, I had difficulties finding a song that did this stuff. Probably because I never listen to a song in terms of audio production unless I deliberately set myself to do it (and even then, I often shift unconsciously at some point to just following the song), none of the examples I chose (Black Flag, Minor Threat, Hansen Brothers) had that kind of noise I needed. So then I turned to the main influence of my song, Motörhead.
Again, no luck with an alike example, but before I noticed it my audition session had turned into simply listening to some of my favorite Motörhead songs. "Ace of Spades", "On parole" -I'd love to cover this one one day-, "Killed by death", "Sympathy for the devil" (really curious about this one that I hadn't ever listened before; a song like this didn't fit in my concept of Motörhead, but oh boy does Lemmy own it). And, in case there was any need for further proof that Mr. Kilmster was a wonderful human being, "Suicide", whose lyrics I had never read. When I noticed it I was singing aloud, which makes good practice for the upcoming vocal tracking (although I don't know if I will try to imitate Lemmy's "broken style"; my register is like one octave higher, and I don't have enough whisky in blood...)
Then I moved to investigate and fool around with Drumgizmo, in case there was something I was doing wrong, and I think I got it (I ran out of time right then). The humanizer parameter has by its side attack and release controls. I erroneously assumed that they were for some kind of compression effect on the drum sound (as I had only heard of those parameters in such context), but they affect the humanization; when Drumgizmo detects a repeated note, it applies them to the velocity, preventing the "ratata" effect. Armed with this information, I modified those parameters, and the crash cymbal has started to sound more decent.
In addition to that, I'm thinking maybe with this humanization active, the additional work I did on velocities becomes redundant, contributing also to the weird unnatural sound.
I still have this sadness+anger re: the guitar tracks. The sound is very mediocre. Why's that? With the features of this computer I should be getting a better sound. I'll try to live with it and otherwise I'll make some more tests.
