Art Rock made w/CEP&FLP&RODENT1&ARTTUBEMP&RNC&MX802A

W

William Choi

New member
Well, the heart of my gear is listed in the subject title. So how about a listen to,eh?
I want to know how I did on the bass frequency side of things, and overall mix technique.
www.mp3.com/willchoi/

Try the first two you see from the top.
The latest,Emerald i, I used all new equipment.
1984 was used only with the mixer and an SM58. So you'll probably here some major freq. response differences in vocals.

You'll hear a lot of Queen influences hear.

And interesting thing about how I've done the drums: All using Fruity Loops and a collection of samples. I did my best to get a natural drum sound mixed in with some electronic drum sounds.

Anyways. Ask any questions and make any comments please.
 
Really cool stuff. I don't have too much input...could have used a bit more bottom...
some place with vocals a slight bit masked,
but all in all, great recording and performance.
-ric
 
Only downloaded 1984 thus far... I want more lows and less mids (cut roughly 1500-2000Hz a bit maybe), but I love the song. Quite ambitious.
 
Downloaded 1984 and Emerald....my god man the signal is loud on both...had to adjust winamp and windows volume too.....but a very clean signal it was and nice tunes too...good work on the percussion too...mixes were very spatial...I really like Fruityloops and am very new to using it...I'll be damned embarrassed when I post the song I'm working on now, after hearing the recent mp3's I've been hearing, yours included....I've found that Fruityloops are so much fun to play with, I could get easily carried away....I had a highhat doing things that were impossible for a human to execute...lol...nice work....gibs
 
Great job on those two. I can hear a big difference from that mic change but the mix was well executed in both cases.
Really dug the variety of cool sounds you dredged up for accent. That "banging on a garbage can" kind of snare sound. That
"dzzzzzzt" electrical arcing noise worked well too. It's hard to keep up with the ambitious nature of a Queen rock opera, but I think you pulled it off.
How many tracks did that take for each of those compositions?
 
(thanks PGLEWIS for EQ advise) I adjusted the EQ at 1.6K on CEP and couldn't believe my ears.The the mix cleared up alot. Time to note it until I master the whole album. But I think there is too much bottom for the bass track, does anyone think this as well? I EQed the bass gui. trying to get a good low responce in my headphones but when I played it on my stereo(consumer product) the bass guitar lows were SO unatural I found it irritating the hell out of my ears-to the point where it was tiring just listening to it-or maybe I was just getting tired of hearing myself sing:P It just didn't have a bass guitar sound. Maybe Ill use an AMP SIM(DX plugin) on it?(im recording the bass gui. going into the ART>RNC>MIXER>PC.Added some extra compr. and room reverb.

This is where I wish I had some proper near field monitors rather than just going with what Im hearing thru headphones.

About the levels, I normalized to a scorching 96% for cd burning sakes. Sorry if I blew your speakers,GIBS.

As for FruityLoops, Its getting really difficult to render several realtime DX plugins w/ an array of samples loaded.
A song Im working on now has 20 samples loaded at once.
I believe Emerard i has about a possible 30.

I would like to know how many samples other users of Fruityloops use for their productions.
I guess Ill find that out I any of them read this.

Some advise for new Fruityloops(superb piece of software,BTW) users.
All was have a veriety of real and REAL AMAZING real drum samples. Don't settle for crappy samples unless you want a crappy sounding production. Search Samplenet, go to the drums forum on this BBS, rip some drum intros from your favourite band's major lable produced CD.
Also, find great sounding reverb plugins. I think Fruity Reverb sounds pretty good.Its based on algorithms from one Cubase's VST plugin.

Anyways, thanks for your input. I hope to hear more from others.
 
I think your monitoring system might be lying to you about the bottom end. I added a healthy 3-5 dB boost around 80Hz and the bottom really starts to kick. Besides the notch at 1.6K, you might experiment with notching somewhere in the 4-6K range, and 12K. I find I can turn it up even _louder_ after making those freq cuts! And I want to turn it up louder ;).
 
For 1984:
I know that it took me a full 64 tracks in CEP and mixing down later.Inserting that into a fresh multitrack project, And then filling up the 64 tracks again. This is all because of the initial programming of the drums on Fruity Loops. It was tough putting together a cohesive sounding mesh of different patterns with different tempos and samples events. So I had a lot of FLP files for FL.
And for some reason I started to make whole new drum parts in CEP using the loop duplicate function. After doing so, it was only appropriate for me to mixdown the drums instead of having a billion of these snare,crash, kick samples in the same multitrack project.

For Em. I, I used a full 64.

Keep in mind when I say a full 64, that doesn't mean that each track is recorded from the 0mark and to whereever the song ends. I do a lot of moving of events to similar tracks with the same volume level.

I REALLY REALLY WISH THAT SOMEBODY COULD HACK CEP SO IT LETS YOU HAVE INFINITE TRACKS INSTEAD OF 64!! I don't see why not. The CEP engine doesn't seem to put any importance to the number of tracks you use. They should have made the number of tracks infinite to how much you computer can take.(but i guess they were reaching out to the low end PC market(that which i have,-CELERON 400,w/ cheap Quantum HD(5700rpm).

Even on my machine it runs solidly.(Im upgrading soon to an ATHLON 800! QUANTUM LM!!! :)
 
I'm very impressed! That's the sort of song where if I heard it on the radio I'd turn to the person next to me and go, "Hey, who was that band? They sounded pretty cool". Reminded me a bit of Extreme, actually.

Great vocals, especially. You did those on the NT-1 with the ART Tube MP?! I just got that setup but haven't recorded any vocals with it yet. Now I'm psyched! And what equipment did you use for the guitars? It sounded like you were playing a lot of single note lines in harmony instead of playing chords in some places. Very cool.

Another equipment question: What reverb and echo plugins are you using? I noticed the echo on the vocals sounded especially good.

Anyway, a rave review, no doubt about it. Looking forward to your next opus.

Ryan
 
37point5,If you're talking about Emerald i, that was the RODE NT1 w/ the ART TUBE MP.
When using the TUBE MP, keep it plugged in but just turn the knobs to infinite minus and have the Phantom power turned off.Just let it sit until your next recording session. It will sound beautiful the next time you use it for anything. Especially a bass guitar.

The guitar I used was just a BOSS ME-30 guiitar processor.pplugged into my 60watt peavy which is since been very konkified. (could be the speaker) so I have the the volume relatively low but closed miced in a quiet room (which makes up for the volume).

One thing I tend to like to do is record all my distortion guitar without any reverb processing.(not during or after recording). I used a Washburn Lyon series(like anyone knows what the hell that is), to get any strat like sounds. And I have an Epiphone which gives me all the low tones. What I need is the Red Special.Freaken thing has 24 frets(2octaves!) and so many tone and tech nobs that could be compared to a damn Parker Fly(wanna get this one two)!! Some parts I like to layer the lead guitar harmony parts then sometimes I just like to keep them grungy. The rythm for the chorus in Emerald I were two seperate harmony parts,each of them doubled using different tones(first layer using the bridge pickup,the second using the neck pickup). I did the same rythm on the left and the right channel. So all together the rythm guitar section has 8 tracks. Im a fucking tone geek.

For vocals I mainly use Aboretum Hyperprism Hyperverb. Although I just found out how good
TC Native Reverb sounds. Check those out. But Hyperprism makes some quality shit.

One thing I might have changed was the reverb on the vocals at the beginning of Emerald I.

Sounds too synthetic especially the first line yet it goes away quickly once everything else comes in. I should have dampened the highs,Don't you think?
 
Yeah, I was referring to Emerald i. Very cool song. The more I listen to it, the more I hear the Smashing Pumpkins influence. Question: How did you get that flanged swirly vocal effect towards the end (3:20)?

From the hi-fi download, I think the reverb sounds fine in the beginning; the song is very richly produced to begin with, so I don't think something vaguely artificial is bad, just "produced".

I'm gonna download the rest of your songs later this week; mp3.com was going too slow yesterday so I only downloaded Emerald i. But from the low-fi previews, they sound very good as well.

Ryan
 
Ah, that swirly delaying strange thinging effect. What i did was I divided the harmony and melody vocal tracks into L(harm)and R(melody),mixed them down in stereo, Placed a vocoder effect between the harmony and melody of L and R giving a really rustic blend. And added this Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Impulse DX. I forget the name of what its called, something like Joemeek.so I guess it simulates a product from Joemeek(but I don't knwo what,don't they make Mic pres and Compress/EQ stuff?).

Its the most strangest effect I ever heard. Its a combo of Phaser/delay buts its hard to distinguish what it is mostly.
In the piano intro in 1984,right at the first piano hit, I used that effect. It sounds like Im riding the keyboard from the highkey notes to the lower octave keynotes,but all it is really is that acoustic impulse. So I guess its like a very resonant Phaser sweep that goes a whole bunch of ovtave frequencies down and makes a delay of that wet signal from the dry. Thats what I think it is.

I'd really like to know, my self, what the hell that effect is. It just sounds so cool. I use it a lot.
 
Hey William,

Big favor: can you send me the acoustic mirror impulse file that you use for that effect? Or tell me where I can download it?

Also, what vocoder are you using?

Thanks,
Ryan
(Ryan@37point5.com)
 
I downloaded Emerald I. Great sound on the vocals... From what I've heard here the last few weeks I gotta start saving for a Rode mic and that Art mic pre. I like the different textures and layers in the song, especially the part where it drops to just acoustic and vocal then back at the end.
 
hey 37.5, Ill mail you the file, but you do understand that you still need Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror to load these impulses right? Getting you that might be a problem seeming that its the mother machine that makes you be able to use the impulses.

The vocoder, I used the one from Aboretum Hyperprism.
Does anyone know of any really really good interesting dxplugins? The Pluggin scene has really died down and Im looking for some good combos of effects. Like a backwards echo/flange/phaser type thing. Even though you can do these with a combination of processing, it would be could if they'd put it all into one.

Antares Autotune is a fantastic pluggin with a good concept of fixing out of tune vocals. I used that sometimes when my vox don't sound right. But the flaw in it is that it doesn't preserve the tempo, it just speeds up the phrase(which shortens the piece) and places silence after it to compensate. This really screws of the wave form physically adding artifacts but at least it doesn't make the whole waveform longer(thats the only thing it preserves).
 
Hey 37.5 check here for a bunch of impulses files for Sonic's AM:
http://www.geocities.com/beamsonic/

He has made impulses for a bunch of nice studio equipment. This is most likely where the Meek file came from, as he has one up there. Also has some nice amps and microphones too.

I love the Acoustic Mirror. Best thing for it is the Samplitools collection of impulses of reverbs from the Lexicon 480L and the TC5000 processors. I use those reverbs on everything. Killer. The Beamsonic site definitely has some good ones though. Some of the Beam ones work better than others.

Alex

------------------- www.mp3.com/TheShadyNeighbor
 
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