Songcrafters.org

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REMIX 17 Jan 2015
Lowered the vox and rolled some bottom end off (explanation lower down the thread somewhere)
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A new one from me. I wrote it in April and it's been a bit of a mill-stone round my neck ever since. I have been busy with other stuff, but it's still taken FIVE months to finish what started life as a little acoustic ditty!

It now has a multitude of guitars, piano, strings, drums and several massed choirs (doing things you can't really hear). It seems to have turned into a bit of a ponderous dinosaur of a song... but I'm still rather fond of it.

It started out as an acoustic thing. But it sounded a bit Elizabethan (and it was inspired by Georgian stuff). So I twitted about a bit and the piano got involved. I had to try an electric guitar, obviously, just the one... ::)

All the electric guitars on here are my Brian May Red Special - once I started using that, it kinda set a theme... you'll hear what I mean...

The bass is my Fender Fretless Jazz (also known as the Jazzless Fret, here). I decided during the playing of this that I really need a Jazz with frets on too... negotiations have started :D

During tracking, the song ended up doubling in length by accident when the rocky outtro sort of played itself. I nearly separated that off as a different song, but when I got lyrics over it I had to keep it in.

I've listened to this a few times now here and on the other side and its Fab as i think i have already told you but its so good i thought i'd tell you again Fab!! i say!! FAB!! in my best Cartoon Cockerel Voice......

I'm so impressed with the full blown arrangement.  I wish I had the discipline to orchestrate something like this.  Phew, so much going on. Will be back later for more.

Blooby

jings crivvens and help ma boab.

am so busy these days when i get a chance to listen, i catch up using the new song player.

unfortunately songs posted at alonetone don't appear on the new songplayer here.

so i nearly missed this one, fmgwabp. where do i begin.

i thought when i read description "five months" for one song? he is mad.

andy you are not mad, yer a bloody genuis.

FMGWABP.

braw tell yer maw.

wish you could write them quicker mate, cos this is off the scales good.

Five months?! Some might say that's excessive, but then they'd listen to this and say: "Yeah... I get it. WOW!".

It's incredible. Precision, power, and consummate craftsmanship. Love the fretless bass at the start - gave me a Kate Bush vibe early on, but then it gets more Queen on the bombastic chorus parts. That little guitar breakdown part around 5 mins before the big ending (really BIG!) is beautiful. In fact there's loads of little details that will take a few listens to fully absorb.

An astonishing piece of work. Songcrafting at it's finest.

oh my !!

This is as good as it gets. You've once again raised the bar once again for what can be done on a stand-alone recorder.

I'll be adding this to my AR playlist to be burned on a CD. But first I'll have this for repeat for the rest of the year so hopefully some of the talent will rub off on me !!!

We're not worthy !!
(https://songcrafters.org/images/Post%20Comments/not%20worthy.gif)

I love all your work, but this is absolutely first class from the first note 'til the last. Bravo my friend.  Willie

Back for another listen.  This was really a stellar post.

Blooby

This is one killer of a song, performance, and production AndyR! I can hear why it took 5 month's to complete. ...it would have taken me much longer, if ever, to get something this good. There are so many minute details that I had to listen twice to pick them up and I'm sure there are some I missed. Everything works to perfection here!

Farrell

5 months well spent in my opinion.  Quite brilliant.  You have a truly awesome voice.  Production sublime.  Great song.

What's not to like?

Paul

What a sound, quality all the way through, vox and that electric guitar are just fantastic, magic, magic!!!

Excellent sound and arrangement and recording. Well done.
B

This is epic!!

Very ambitious work and the final result is just fantastic! Well written and arranged song! Top class job on many ways! Special thanks for the superb vocals and harmonies!

GREAT JOB!

Thanks folks :)

That five months - it wasn't all "go" during that time. Quite a bit of it was "oh I can't be @rsed... I'd rather lie on the sofa" :D

I got stuck several times - I couldn't play it, I couldn't sing it!

I had to rerecord the guitars, piano, and bass about 3 times each because I couldn't get it to sound as if it was moving anywhere. For example, notes got taken out of the bass part and given to one of the guitars instead.

The band mix has existed, almost in this state, for nearly a month while I was sorting the vocals out.

I've even given up on a couple of things I was planning, but they were to difficult to achieve. One of these was whispering courtiers under the repeating guitar figure. There were several ideas for this, one of which involved reciting "On a Certain Lady at Court" by Alexander Pope (it's on the internet). That was written about someone called Henrietta Howard who just happens to be the "lady behind" of the first verse and chorus of this thing. BUT! it would have taken another week or two of rehearsing and fiddling with it to make it happen!

Basically, that's kinda where the time went - rehearsing all the band and choir, getting them to learn to play together... which, of course, meant re-recording and rerecording as the parts changed (if the five guitarists in the chorus were playing what they thought was good, but it messed everything up when the bass and piano were in, then the guitar parts had to change).

I'm hoping to do something a little easier for the next one... :D

Well, I have had two listens and still don't feel like I have taken in the full magnitude and magnificence of this song.

So many shifts in moods and intensity, both musically and vocally, this is true creatively of the highest order in the first instance to have dreamed all of this up, and immense talent to deliver it in such a spell binding way.

The Choir parts sound incredible, and I think that I read somewhere previously that it is "all you", although each time I hear these multiple vocal parts in your songs I swear each time it does sound like you have recorded an actual choir in your house!

Sounds like it was a bit of a labour of love, but what has emerged out of it is right up there for me with some of your very best tunes.

Wow what a tune! So much going on but love the vocals and guitar the best!! needs a few plays is right!

Do you record the guitar with patch or a miced amp? Sounds like a compression pedal is used for lead?

This will take many listens, quite good my brother!
Rock On!

Oops... typed a lot...

Ah... guitars.

Had a lot of fun with those. I tried both modelling (Vox Tonelab) and a mic'd up Laney CUB. The mic'd up amp tracking was attempt number two and it had some issues... A) The parts had to get re-arranged again, and B) Although it was a good sound, it wasn't what I was after - it was too "thick"....

So on the re-arrangement I went straight back to the Vox Tonelab. Seeing as I was using my Brian May Red Special, the obvious amp model was AC30, full-tilt with a treble booster into it. On the Tonelab, if you're using a treble booster for the effect, you can't use a compressor as well.

There *might* be some studio compression on the lead when I was mixing the guitar parts, I can't remember. Just listened to it, I'm not sure - if it was any other guitar I'd say yes, but a Red Special sounds like that on Neck/Middle out-of-phase (that was BM's pickup selection for solos like Bohemian Rhapsody - the moment you set it like that through a full-tilt amp you can see why, it's "compressed" and cuts like a very sharp knife).

And then, choirs:

Yep, it's all me. I wanted some female voices for texture this time, but Mrs R refused to go near the mic!! :D

I did consider contacting someone I've collaborated with before - but it would be almost impossible to get what I wanted remotely. So I went with my usual technique - get further from the mic (thinner sound) and wail!

This time I restrained myself and went for the minimum voices it took to get each effect. Eg. The "ooos" (which are actually "mmm", "oooo" itself didn't work), that's just 3 part, two voices to each.

After I'd got the voices down, I then organised them with panning and complimentary EQ. Eg some get a little boost at a frequency, others get a cut at the same frequency. I had trouble with the chorus backing singers until I realised I was panning them too wide... when I put them in a tighter V they fitted the track better. Also, the closer you put the separate voices to each other in the stereo field, the more you can get away with "bad" or "mismatched" parts. In fact, it seems to sound more like a "choir" if you have one soprano singing, one wailing, and another screaming!

BUT! Although this sounds very involved, I found it's not too bad if you have some idea about what the parts will be and plan it a bit. The worst bit is cleaning all the tracks of the extra noises in their "silent" bits (I'm doing it all on the BR, not a DAW). Same with the guitar parts actually - takes AGES. In fact, there was one point the whole project was stalled for a week or two because I couldn't face going in there and cleaning guitar parts before the bounce! :D

Cleaning

Talking of "cleaning". I'm kind of stunned by this mix and the improving effect that "cleaning" has had.

For some time (about 3 songs) I've been "topping and tailing" parts by recording silence over the lead-in and lead-out on each track. This removes the noises you make while waiting to play after pressing record, and the dash back to the stop button after you've finished singing or playing.

While I always used to clean loud noises, stuff I could hear in the mix. I used to believe that the quiet noises you can't hear over the drums or whatever "added to the vibe". But... it's not true. EVERYTHING that goes through that stereo mix uses up space, even the stuff you can't hear. And if the space is used up - what happens to the stuff you want heard? You can't hear it properly and don't know why.

For example: these choirs. When tracking anything I set a two-bar lead in so that I've "got the vibe" and enough space to start singing/playing. If I've just recorded 8 backing voices, there's 8 of me breathing etc, just waiting to come in. If I leave this in, I can't "hear" it. But... if I take it out, the band and the lead vocal sound a lot better.

But there's something else I've done rigorously this time - every single track (including bass and drum program) have a low cut at 50Hz. The reasoning is: you can't really hear down there, and I learnt recently that, apparently, vinyl can't reproduce down there. All the music I like was created for vinyl, so sod it, I don't need that bottom end - especially if I can't hear it on my various mixing speakers/headphones.

Now, I used to do this when mastering the whole mix - but the thing is, the mix is already buggered by then! All that stuff below 50Hz is taking up space to the detriment of what you can hear. Clean all the tracks before mixing, and you've got a better chance of making a better mix.

Actually, the same applies for the top end. I understand that vinyl couldn't reproduce much above 16KHz, so mastering for vinyl cuts everything above 16K. Unfortunately, the BR1600 doesn't have a lo-pass (High Cut) filter - or I can't find one, anyway. So you have to improvise with shelf EQ, which doesn't work so well - it takes out a load of stuff BELOW the frequency you set. So I do my "high cut" on mastering, because the mastering EQ goes all the way up to 20KHz (the ordinary track and effects EQs only go up to 16KHz).

The rule is - Anything you can't really hear, REMOVE IT, because it uses up valuable energy/headroom (space) in the mix...

And it seems to work. On this mix, I can hear everything I put into it - in the past, that hasn't always been the case!! I'd fling a wall of stuff at it, hoping it might produce a "vibe". This time, although it's still got a few on there, there's a lot less parts than I'd have used in the past to achieve the same effect. And it seems that, even when you want more, less sounds like more!!

The 50 hz cut is interesting.  I'll have to give that a go.  Do you fiddle much with the mastering tool kit on a song-by-song basis?  I must admit I get a bit lazy by the time I get to that stage and tend to plump for the mix-down kit which I adjusted a bit although I can't really remember what I did to it.

On subsequent listens to this song I think that a factor in the clarity comes from the arrangement.  There is a lot going on a lot of the time - but never too much - and there are moments of beautiful sparseness.  This results in stunning dynamics.

Paul



 

I used to fiddle with the mastering toolkit a lot. Not so much now. Now I tend to test on the Mix Down, Live Mix, and Pop Mix defaults. If one of them sounds wonderful straight out of the box, that's it, "job done".

I do tend to add "dynamics" during mastering by riding the master fader.

If I do mess with the preset, it's usually one or more of these:
1) EQ on the way in, eg taking some top off at 20K
2) The bass cut if required
3) The Mix after the multiband EQ - especially if I use the Live Mix. I turn the top band down.
4) If I want to get loud, I turn the limiter on and adjust between that and the mix... then boost the  Out.

I no longer mess with the cut-offs into the multi-band compressor, nor the compression settings. I used to, but I found that that way lies disaster!!! You can get a HUGE sound and "fix" a mix... but my ears aren't experienced enough to hear everything, so it's usually at the expense of something obvious I didn't notice. Eg, I've lost the backing vocals, or some background acoustic jumps out at you (and I don't notice it until I've posted it!!)

Instead, I took some advice I read - DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FIX/CHANGE A MIX WITH WHATEVER MASTERING TOOLS YOU HAVE AT YOUR DISPOSAL... YOU'RE NOT GOOD/EXPERIENCED ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN BOG IT UP... MASTERING ENGINEERING IS A HIGHLY SKILLED JOB.

Whether or not that's actually all true, it's worked for me... I've got better results since I started obeying this rule!! :D

I do have one question - what do you do to the mix before Mastering? I end up with a Mix, and a Normalised (100%) copy of the Mix. I try mastering both and usually use the Normalised one. I've read somewhere that Normalised to 80% might give you better options... but I didn't get too far when I tried it.

After Mastering, I take a copy of the Master, and Normalise that. if the Normed version is a noticable volume improvement, I'll use that, otherwise I'll use the straight Master. This is because a few songs back I found the Normalised Master distorted... no idea what it thought it was doing... the Master itself sounded clean.

===============

Thanks for the comment on the dynamics :). I actually struggled hearing any dynamics myself when I'd first finished... I was really worried I'd made it too thick all the way through. Because I'd been hearing it so often, I wasn't noticing the increasing and decreasing instrumentation was giving me plenty of interest.

Andy, I find the 50hz cut an interesting concept that makes a lot of sense, especially after hearing your good song and mix. The clarity is definitely exceptional with all the tracks you have competing for space. I've used a similar EQ low end 80hz to 120hz roll off to get individual tracks (usually lead/fill guitars and backing vocals) to stand out but never have gone beyond that. My standard is to roll off anything below 80hz and above 12k hz during the mastering process. But now that I've heard your song and read your explanation, I'm going to re-think this. Nice job and thanks for the details!

Farrell

I have never normalised the final mix (although I may try it now you have put the idea in my head!).  In fact, I seldom find the need to use normalisation at all.  Occaisionally when micing an acoustic instrument, but other than that, never.  I guess this is because the way I work using predominantly hardware synths with spdif digital outs.  Pretty much everything (except guitars) are recorded initially using the the midi recorders built into my Motif and Fantom (16 and 128 tracks respectively).  Using the digital outs from the keys into the digital in in the BR1600 gives a fairly hot but never distorted record level.  I suspect that there is some kind of normalise function going on there, automatically setting the levels and by passing the input level knobs.  So I use the final mix in its virgin state to master.

As I say, I will give the normalise master concept a go.  Might as well try it.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Paul

WoW, PROG-TASTIC!!  This is epic;,;.;  i get this Queensryche/Savatage/TSO vibe, but better!

Digging this line in your vocals:

"It pleases us to see
The very things we used to be
At last and truly free"

This is just incredible good. The vocal is outstanding and the choir sounds great. So much to take in. As Greeny said this is songcrafting at its finest.

Back for a proper listen on slightly better speakers, so good man. That choir is really impressive and controlled. I love the slight guitar lead in the 2nd verse when the drums come back in, that really caught my ears. The dynamics are superb!
I'm not one for EQing but I have been messing around with it a little on individual tracks but it's all just by ear and I find it taxing & draining. I've always tried to record the sound I want, I hardly ever achieve that though. I usually mix my tracks, master then normalize on my 008. Then I use the leveler in audacity which if not overused seems to finish my tracks decently.
You inspired me to take a little more time with my last produced track & I think you've inspired me again to slow down & examine my sound a little more...maybe.
Rock On!

Aah! You were listener 100, Hookie... many thanks... :) (Your prize is in the post...)

(Still waiting for the woman herself to listen to it, I don't think she has, hard to tell, she's certainly not commented... and I'm not convinced she will now... :-\)

Anyway, it does seem that this cleaning-up and messing about with EQ (cuts below 50Hz or so and above 16KHz, in addition to whatever other EQ you use) can make a difference - it is a bit of work, though... and it definitely taxes the brain a bit, trying to remember and make sure that everything gets done.

I suspect it's because most of us are the "artiste" as well as the engineer. I'm realising that if I was just the engineer, some of this would be becoming second nature, just "part of the job" - a collection of tricks that can be applied as necessary to get the sound(s) needed.

At heart, though, as the singer-songwriter, I've got the same yearning for "try and get a sound then bang it down... job done" as I assume everyone else has...  :D

Great song.. perfect

Epic I'd say.

I love the composition and the construction. It really shows that you have taken a great deal of time over the creative aspects. Do you find that your subconscious grinds away at the knotty problems and then pop's the answer out, but in such an obscure way that it still takes hard work to beat it into submission?

Production is fab.

PiePod bound.

Your detailed explanations of the way your songs came about and were recorded are always intriguing and entertaining.

I don't pretend to understand too much of the technicalities that you describe as I tend to record using the preset settings on the BR and leave it at that without mucking around too much, but I am always fascinated by your processes, and eager to take tips.

A fantastic song and production. Dig the dynamics and your arrangements
are always first class.  Great vocals and playing ... WOW!!!

Just replaced the file with a remix.

I've been real quiet lately - and this song is why. It was such a millstone round my neck getting it done, and it didn't sound like I wanted it to, and I didn't know why... I haven't been able to face the recording gear, or even the studio since then (been playing guitar a lot instead!). When I went in to fix this today, I found the ash-tray still had a single lonely butt in it from the day I finished the first mix, all the way back in September last year :(

The other day, I figured out what was wrong with it - I'd mixed the vocals too loud! Really, that's all it was. You build all this nice stereo, and it's rocking away... but if you make the vocals too loud, you remove much of the dynamics and make the track more mono... And seeing as this thing is so long, it needs all the help it can get! :D

I'd also got a comment elsewhere that it was a bit bass-heavy. I had intended that the bass was "up in the mix", but on certain players I could see exactly what he meant.

For the remix I went back to the original band mix (no vox), and rolled of just a bit of bottom end (-4db shelf at 50Hz). Then I mixed the lead vox and backing vox back in a notch or two lower than before.

That's all it took, and suddenly the thing rocks a bit more and jumps out of my various speakers like it did for all those hours I was working on it before the original mix!

*SIGH* Now I can get on with recording something else :)

Still sounds excellent to my ears. Spending that amount of time would drive me insane, but you can hear the quality in the end result. It reminds me very much of something Kip Winger would produce (his solo stuff e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtQYTsk-adQ ), no bad thing in my book.
B

Wasn't on here when the original was posted but glad you bumped it with a new mix otherwise I would have missed it. As usual, a wonderful progtastic epic with many depths and wonderful arrangements. Your vocal performance is excellent on this, so powerful yet superbly controlled. Love the way it builds and the guitar work later in the song is superb. Fabulous all round and a really enjoyable listen. Well done, very well done.

Very interesting to hear what you have done with the mastering. I now have to wear hearing aids, and I have a special setting for listening to music which gets my ears back to a perfectly flat eq across all frequency ranges (I have high frequency hearing loss). It also has no compression or other clever effects like the speech settings which filter out background noises and focus on certain frequency ranges. So when I listen to stuff on my studio monitors I have pretty good hearing now. One thing I notice with a lot of recordings on the site is that there is a lot of high end noise that is not noticeable when I listen through headphones without the hearing aids. Sometimes this can make tracks quite hard to listen to for me on the monitors because I am getting all the high end that most people aren't hearing. Your track sounds great to me because of how you have mastered it.

If you want to get into mastering more seriously, I would recommend Izotope Ozone 6 (the cheaper edition), a mastering suite that runs standalone on a PC (so you do not need a DAW in which it can run as a "plug in"). So you can take your final mix from the BR 1600 and you have a nice standalone mastering tool which has very sophisticated EQ, limiting and a lot more. I've just got it and it seems to have a lot of potential.    

You did this in 5 months? Seems like rushing things a bit to me  :D

Your post made me smile, Ferryman!

It made me go back and reread the thread - and discover that I've missed a stage out of this new mix... I forgot to clean the top end while mastering it!! Oops... ::) I might revisit it later.

There is some horrendous hiss on one of the guitar overdubs on the second verse - but it doesn't seem too obvious on this version... However this version is slightly livelier in the top-end overall than I was expecting, which was confusing me during mastering... I suspect missing the top end cut has done this...

Perhaps I need to read my own instructions next time! (Or perhaps not...)

Quote from: AndyR on January 18, 2015, 07:47:05 AMYour post made me smile, Ferryman!

It made me go back and reread the thread - and discover that I've missed a stage out of this new mix... I forgot to clean the top end while mastering it!! Oops... ::) I might revisit it later.

Please do, it will sound even better!

Quote from: Ferryman on January 19, 2015, 01:55:41 AM

Quote from: AndyR on January 18, 2015, 07:47:05 AMYour post made me smile, Ferryman!

It made me go back and reread the thread - and discover that I've missed a stage out of this new mix... I forgot to clean the top end while mastering it!! Oops... ::) I might revisit it later.

Please do, it will sound even better!

Well... I gave it a go in the time allotted to me this evening... Some improvement, BUT the result was quieter and lost some oink... And I prefer the one we've got here so far...

So I've turned the machine off again for the evening - might give it another go tomorrow night.

This is astonishingly good Andy, and glad it got bumped otheriwse I would have missed it aswell. It is such an accomplished song - arrangement, instruments, and the vocals are really superb - fantastic listen fella

Andy

Great stuff Andy! Love the contrast and the huge sound. Fine Vox. Nice bass, piano, hell all the parts are tasty.

Coming back to this epic piece. I think it sounds perfect now.

 I have trouble with low end  too. I think i went too low on the one i just finished. I think it`s good to take a break which i never seem to do. I don`t think this should trouble you. It`s amazing, so get cracking on another.  :)

jings crivvens and - what was the other bit?

Mighty and multi-dimensional.  Mighty dimensional.

I'd totally missed this and got it through the 2014 jukebox submission thread.

You wail, man!

have had the 2014 sampler playing in the background whilst doing other stuff, there are some incredible songs there lots of talent on show. check them out https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?action=festival;sa=Sampler_2014

anyway i digress, haven't listened to this one in a while but when it came on i had to stop what i was doing and give it my full attention. absolutely masterful.

bump.