Leigh - "Happy Now"

[Oldrottenhead]

the world is getting smaller i thought momus was an obscure (even in scotland) scottish band. how the  hell do you know about them cuthbert. ach! tinternet.

[cuthbert]

the world is getting smaller i thought momus was an obscure (even in scotland) scottish band. how the  hell do you know about them cuthbert. ach! tinternet.

I knew about Momus afore the interwebs, even. About 1989, I think - a friend of mine got a copy of Tender Pervert on LP and made a cassette for me. But I really got into his music in the early-90s, with Hippopotamomus and Voyager. Beautiful, twisted music.

[Super 8]

Hauntingly melodic! That's a wonderful, atmospheric soundscape you've painted there Leigh. Great questioning lyrics, well performed & a powerful mix to boot (oh and your 'new toy' the sequencer sounds great too!) Pass 'Go', collect $200. CONGRATS!

[Farrell Jackson]

Leigh, a very good song, lyric and the drum track sounds perfect to my ears for this style. At first when I heard the vinyl cracking I thought you had peaked something then realized it was intentional   I've used that effect on one of my songs and at times I still get comments that I've red lined.

I with you Leigh on the less post recording EQ and compression the better. I've also taken the stance of trying to get the sound right during the individual tracking process. Your clean, clear, and dynamic recordings are proof it's a good thought process that gets excellent results. A great song and recording!

It's interesting to hear your thoughts about online auto mastering compared to the real deal human mastering house results. On my last CD I decided to spend the dollars ($500 for 12 songs to be exact) to get it mastered by an affordable mastering house. I've directly compared some of the mastered songs to the online auto mastered songs and the mastered by a real mastering engineer wins every time....at least to my ears. I've thought about using LANDR or Masterlize for my upcoming cd but I'm now having second thoughts. I'll most likely go with the guy I've previously used.

Farrell

[Super 8]

(I find the BR1600's sound modelling is very useful when I'm mixing).

I've been wanting to explore the Speaker Modelling feature on the BR1600 too Leigh. Do you use DS-series Roland monitor speakers (as recommended in the manual)? I've been trying to track down a pair (long discontinued apparently!) but to no avail :-(

PS: I'm with you on the EQ front! I think the secret is to try and commit the right sounds 'to tape' (LOL!) at the source of input point of recording. I rarely try to fix stuff in the mix apart from, as you say, perhaps the odd splash of treble on an acoustic guitar that could ideally have benefitted from being fitted with a new set of strings prior to the recording session!

PPS: I'm especially liking the way your vocals are sitting in this track! A 1600 preset perchance?

[Super 8]

I've thought about using LANDR or Masterlize for my upcoming cd but I'm now having second thoughts.

Interesting! A mate of mine was 'raving' on about this online LANDR 'robot mastering' service so I thought I'd give it a go. Maybe it's right for EDM/Rave genres (which is the type of music he makes) but, having now tried it, for the type of music I make (I dunno? Acoustic-y Indie/Folk-Rock?) to my ears I MUCH prefer the results I'm getting at home just using the Mastering Toolkit presets built into the BR1600 - my recording medium of choice these days. Of course, YMMV!

[Black Mary]

Hi Leigh,
This is a really atmospheric track. The vocals are exquisite. Great lyrics too, and the backing track has a beautiful feel. Lovely song. Cheers.
BM

[leighelse]

Thanks everyone for your feedback and kind comments.

I like the rhythm track very much - it reminds me of Momus, especially combined with the pad in the background. Is the rhythm coming from the SP-606 sampling sequencer?

Yes, the rhythm track is the SP-606. It's taken a bit of effort to get to grips with, but I have a tentative workflow now that will make the next track easier. The MIDI sync makes it possible to progressively work up a final rhythm track, although it won't sync part-way through a song, so it's necessary to record each iteration of the SP-606 track to the BR1600 if you want to hear your latest rhythm enhancements while you're recording other parts.

I was a Momus virgin until cuthbert and Oldrottenhead introduced him into this thread - I'm grateful. I've been listening to him on YouTube (he's not on Deezer, unfortunately).

I've thought about using LANDR or Masterlize for my upcoming cd but I'm now having second thoughts. I'll most likely go with the guy I've previously used.

The difference is also clear to my ears: an experienced human sounds better than a software algorithm.

A mate of mine was 'raving' on about this online LANDR 'robot mastering' service so I thought I'd give it a go. Maybe it's right for EDM/Rave genres (which is the type of music he makes) but, having now tried it, for the type of music I make (I dunno? Acoustic-y Indie/Folk-Rock?) to my ears I MUCH prefer the results I'm getting at home just using the Mastering Toolkit presets built into the BR1600 - my recording medium of choice these days. Of course, YMMV!

When I'd mixed Happy Now I compared [1] the BR1600 mastering with Masterlizer's outputs of both the [2] BR1600 raw (mixed, not mastered) and [3] mastered versions (both used Masterlizer's Modern/Soft setting for Pop). There wasn't a lot between [1] and [2], although I thought the sound of [1] was slightly more open, and that's what I posted. The sound of [3] was not so good: the snare became boxy and the overall sound was harsher and more tiring to listen to. Horses for courses, though: on some previous tracks Masterlizer has provided an appreciable improvement in both loudness and the cohesiveness of the sound.

I've been wanting to explore the Speaker Modelling feature on the BR1600 too Leigh. Do you use DS-series Roland monitor speakers (as recommended in the manual)? I've been trying to track down a pair (long discontinued apparently!) but to no avail :-(

No, I don't have the Rolands. I have a pair of Lambert Audio studio monitors, made in New Zealand in the 1980s and refurbished ten years ago (new dome tweeters, re-coned drivers). They're brilliant at exposing every slight imperfection, but they do require a space of reasonable size to do their best work.

PPS: I'm especially liking the way your vocals are sitting in this track! A 1600 preset perchance?

I used P036 for its de-essing capabilities. Actually it was U036 because I'd messed with it to try and get some action from the noise suppressor component. The manual is unhelpfully coy about the noise suppressor, and the parameter options aren't self explanatory. I've tried it on every likely combination of settings and can't hear any difference: if anyone knows what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work I'd love to hear.

Full disclosure: I first put the vocal mic through an ART valve pre-amp which has real-time Arturia auto-tune built in. My intonation has never been very secure, and on its least invasive setting the auto-tune is helpful. Mostly it's helpful because in my cans I hear the corrected pitch, and my voice automatically moves towards it. After a while I could turn the auto-tune off (I did at one point) and muscle memory is enough keep me on the straight and narrow.

What I'd really like is a vocal pre-amp that includes a noise gate. That would prevent the compressor in the BR1600's vocal preset sucking up background noise from the street between every line. Then I wouldn't have to export vocal tracks to my laptop and clean them up. TASCAM make, or made, a unit that would suit nicely but it'll have to wait for the moment: maybe in 2017.

My reply has run on a bit long again ... 

[Hook]

I've listened to this quite a few times over the last few days in the car & love it Leigh. just reading the thread now, those drums are very cool, retroishly modern. I dig the record sound but I want it a little more in the background and through the whole song, just me though. Such good lyrics and your production is so professional sounding. If you had to guess, how many hours went into this one?
Rock On!

[leighelse]

Thanks, Hook.

If you had to guess, how many hours went into this one?

It's hard to be accurate with the hours without keeping a timesheet. I recorded this song across a week, and a lot of time went into learning how best to drive the SP-606. Ignoring that, I think I'd have put between 12 and 20 hours recording time into this. That includes polishing the lyrics and developing the keyboard part.

There were a lot of repeated takes; I re-recorded the vocals four days in a row and even now would like to do them again. There were several wasted hours before I decided that, no, a growly menacing sax solo was not going to form part of the instrumental! When I was fine-tuning the drum track I had to restart the song each time to hear my changes in context (the BR1600 and the SP-606 only sync from the start, which is a bummer).

While I think I have a workflow that will ease creating with the SP-606 going forwards, there are several deficiencies with the unit. A key one is that it doesn't track song position by bar; it only tells you that you're in measure [number], pattern [name]. Each measure could be any number of bars. I work around this with a simple track sheet that lists bars, chords and patterns, but preparing that is another task for each recording - and it needs to be redone if I change the song structure. Next time I'll compare the SP-606 effort with creating a drum track in Reaper's piano roll: I can still use samples there, and render the track to a .wav file for importing into the BR1600. If that's more efficient it may after all be the better option going forward.