Songcrafters.org

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I tried to be spontaneous with this – like my heroes Trevor, ORH, Stephen, Kenny, and others. But it still took me about 3 weeks to kick this out, stealing a few minutes at a time.

My most recent songs are new recordings, but they are songs that I wrote a long time ago. This is the first new song I've written in a long time.

Cool.

Paints a very bleak picture... and then I realised it's meant to.

Powerful stuff.

I love your vocal on this.
It's a suprise When it springs to life.
Very atmospheric.
Probably one of my favourites from you Ted.
That single instrument at the start sets the song off nicely for lift off.
Excellent

way cool Ted...

it bores holes into me.

it's good that it took some time... like a great pot of stew, longer cooking and then setting for a while brings the flavors out more.

I love the guitar sounds... they are so beautiful and the reverb you use or delay is energizing.
yeah man... this is ground control to major tom kind of stuff

brrrrrrrbrrrbrrrrrbrrrrrrbrrrr
and the bass sounds great too... but I really like your voice on this...
had a nice visit here.

starrider kind of stuff.... loving it

would you explain the trim and high pass filter you are talking about?

I know about the filters in Audacity... they work good.... did you filter the whole track?

I love this, really good song, it's great the way it all builds up. And the lyrics are good. Those effects are cool, that squelchy guitar fx is nice. love the  bass lines.

The first thing that hits me is how good your vocals are, Ted...nice! I like the way the song slowly builds into a full blown production. The drums and bass are perfect. A great song and mix!

That intro makes me want to go and mess with my echo pedal really sets the vibe when the bass steps in. Excellent vocal

This is one of those songs that hook you in from the start, just with those single notes on the guitar. Such a well crafted song and very nicely performed both instrumentally & vocally.

Quote from: StephenM on March 08, 2025, 06:28:17 AMwould you explain the trim and high pass filter you are talking about?

I know about the filters in Audacity... they work good.... did you filter the whole track?

Re. Trimming: I just lop off the beginning and end of the sound file – the 2 to 4 measures before the song actually begins, and after it's over. I also frequently use the "Fade Out" effect or the "Studio Fade Out" effect in Audacity.

Re. High-Pass Filters: Yes, I filtered the whole track. A couple of years ago I became obsessed with infrasonic frequencies. I thought there was some kind of low-frequency hum in my house that was bleeding into my songs. I also learned that, although humans can't hear these frequencies, there (a) can be a net harmonic effect and (b) those frequencies still sap power from speakers and can cause distortion and other unwanted effects. It's practically a superstition at this point, but I always master in the Micro BR, and then run a HPF on the entire track in Audacity. I don't even A/B test with my ears. I just do it.

Quote from: thetworegs on March 08, 2025, 10:05:25 AMmakes me want to go and mess with my echo pedal

In recent years I bought two cheap echo pedals: a Mooer Echoverb, and a Donner Echo Square. I was goofing around using both at once with my stereo chorus – one echo on the left, the other on the right. I came up with that single-note phrase which reminded me of Blade Runner. I saved it in my music sketches with the name "Blade Runny Nose."

I appreciate the comments on the vocal performance. I'm never happy with my vocals, but I remember the wise words of AndyR: (Paraphrasing) "Don't use your real voice. Use a cheesy parody of a rock star voice." And that's kind of what I was doing here.

What AndyR actually said:

Quote from: AndyR on March 28, 2024, 04:54:24 AMTed mentioned using a silly rockstar voice for a scratch vocal - and he got a better performance. THIS! It's this.

a bit creepy intro on those single guitar notes then this develops into a fabulous well produced song. those lyrics are brill. i think your vocal sounds perfect on this track so there is nothing to be unhappy about imo. i know nothing about high pass filters or any of that kind of stuff - i just leave it all to my uncle!

Haunting music and powerful lyrics.  Loving the use of delay in the guitar.

 :) John B

Awesome info Ted.

I loved the analysis graphs.  Those real lows are pretty big. I do this in other ways, ie graphic eq but often not...
You are onto good things here.
Trimming?  Ok..never used it but I saw that...didn't know what it did thanks!
Fading is cool..

Whatever you doing vocally is working

Quote from: StephenM on March 09, 2025, 06:02:14 PMTrimming?  Ok..never used it but I saw that...didn't know what it did thanks!

Just to clarify. I don't use the Trim Audio command, although I supposed I could.


When I say trimming, I just mean Deleting the unwanted seconds at the beginning and end of the recording.


FYI: When I trim (i.e. delete) from the beginning, I always leave about one second of silence before the songs starts. I've noticed that the Songcrafters player needs about a 1 second buffer, otherwise it will cut off the first half-second or so of the song.

;D I do remember typing that now!

On the filtering, I also take everything out below 50Hz or so. I even do it during tracking and mixing - I don't want the bottom end clogged up with stuff I can't even hear!

I believe the wisdom is, for the kinds of music I dabble in, it's wasted energy/headroom. I believe this still applies nowadays, even if you're not mastering for vinyl.

But, like you, I just do it - no-one can hear it anyway.

An unusual construction, but it works well. Haunting.

Quote from: AndyR on March 10, 2025, 01:44:12 PMI also take everything out below 50Hz or so.

Interesting. Humans can hear 50Hz pretty well – That's just above G1 – 3rd fret on the E string of a bass guitar – which might make sense on a per-track level, not counting bass instruments. But I don't do per-track HPF tweaking. I just do the HPF on the overall mix. These are my settings. I don't remember if these are the Audacity defaults, or if this was some advice I found somewhere.* (In either case, I didn't choose these settings because I'm smart, or because I could hear a difference; I chose it because some actual smart person recommended it.)


30Hz is just below the B string on a 5-string bass (B0) – and that's about where humans start to lose the ability to hear low notes. As you see, I don't cut off sharply at 30Hz, but I roll off 12dB per octave. So by B000 (two octaves below the open B string on a 5-string bass; notes only elephants can hear**) nothing is getting through.

I could probably try per-track HPF tweaking on the Micro BR, but it would be tedious. I'm trying to get away from tedium in my recording process, and to just write and record more – and to consider everything I ever do to be a demo. Future alien archeologists can re-record my songs to their exacting standards.

You getting all this StephenM? You opened this can of worms.


* Most likely when I was learning about my Micro-Thumpinator pedal (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=32376.0).

**Elephants, whales, alligators, crocodiles, giraffes, pigeons, tigers, some fish, some amphibians.

spooky and mytsic has a bit of pink floyd feel to it, nicely recorded with the production values

Quote from: Ted on March 11, 2025, 05:26:49 AMFuture alien archeologists can re-record my songs to their exacting standards.

yeah I am getting it and I loved this line... so all this above made this come out then I really am getting it!  what a hoot!

Great song, Ted.  Ethereal and spare but not at all sparse.  Really enjoyed this.

On the subject of High pass filters I do it to pretty much everything on a track by track basis, although less aggressively on kick and bass.  On things like vocals, strings and woodwinds I often go much higher just to clear as much space as possible - unless your vocalist is Paul Robeson it really isn't going to be noticeable if you take out everything below 100hz.

And topping and tailing a song is important to me.   I find it quite sad when I hear a song beautifully captured and mixed only to have a huge click at the end when the artist hits the stop button.

Quote from: Ted on March 11, 2025, 05:26:49 AMYou getting all this StephenM? You opened this can of worms.

;D

Quote from: chapperz66 on March 12, 2025, 01:47:38 AMOn the subject of High pass filters I do it to pretty much everything on a track by track basis, although less aggressively on kick and bass.  On things like vocals, strings and woodwinds I often go much higher just to clear as much space as possible - unless your vocalist is Paul Robeson it really isn't going to be noticeable if you take out everything below 100hz.

And topping and tailing a song is important to me.  I find it quite sad when I hear a song beautifully captured and mixed only to have a huge click at the end when the artist hits the stop button.

Yeah, I pretty much do high pass filtering track by track too - and pay some attention to the mix at mastering stage just in case the mix (via the plugins) has introduced a bunch of bottom end I didn't notice. Now that my reverb busses have huge low cuts on, it doesn't happen quite so often.

I think Ted, I was probably thinking tracks not mix when I answered.

I also do the trimming track by track now I'm in a DAW - the mix never has any annoying start/stop stuff on it nowadays.

But when I was on an MBR I had to use Audacity.
I can't actually remember what I did with the BR1600! - my raw stereo mixes from the BR1600 seem to have no extras at the start or end... maybe it was down to how I exported?

Very cool neo-psychedelic sound here Ted! I love the extra flanging vocal on the other side. The stripped back approach to the music let's the atmosphere shine. Excellent track!

This here is the original version. The new mix is at the top of this topic.

I didn't really intend to tweak this mix, but I was unhappy with the backing vocals during the bridge and also during the outro. Plus it was a chance to try the high-pass filter techniques I recently learned (https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=35856.0).

I exported the lead and background vocals to WAVs and tweaked them in Audacity.

During the bridge, the background vocals a copy of the lead vocals, pitch shifted, and auto-tuned. They are very low in the mix, but if you care to listen, there is a subtle chipmunk harmony. In the outro, I also auto-tuned, and added echo and vocoder effects. Because future.

On both the lead and background vocals, I ran the high-pass filter effect. There was a ton of infrasonic garbage in both tracks. I ran the filter at 82hz – one octave below the lowest note in the lead vocal. So the new version should sound "better" than the original, if only for reduction in low frequency hitchhikers.

After tweaking the vocal tracks, I exported them to WAVs again and imported them back to the Micro BR and then ran a new master.