slowburn

I’ve been working on the drum parts, first to try to get them to “gel” together so they don’t sound like a bunch of random unrelated sounds but instead all work together sonically, and second to try to give the drum parts in each song a slightly different sound and feel. I’m having some success with the first part, the second part I may or may not ever be completely happy with given the similarity of all the Roland drum machine sources.

The drum bus processing chain is currently looking something like this:
1. A drum-only “ambience” type reverb, to put the drum parts together in a space. I’m currently using Space Designer, but will eventually use external reverbs for this.
2. A compressor to tame the stray transients and glue things together a bit, and hopefully add a certain sound to things. I’m alternately using the new UAD VCA VU compressor, the UAD 1176, the UAD Fairchild, the UAD LA-3A, or the Sonalksis TBK3 plugin. I’d also like to try the UAD Neve and maybe the UAD Precision Bus compressor.
3. A tape/valve distortion modeller, which adds some nice distortion and imparts a common sound on everything that again helps glue everything together. I try not to overdo this stage, just a light touch to add a little something. I’ve been using the PSP MixSaturator, Massey TapeHead, Izotope Trash, or Sonalksis TBK2.
4. The UAD Precision EQ to tweak the final result just a little in whatever direction it needs.

One specific problem I ran into while doing all this was when I tried to use the UAD Maximizer plug for the distortion stage on “laguna”. It sounded good as I set it up, but as I listened to the whole song I realized the automation was a tiny bit off on all the tracks (synths as well as drums) in the song, so the various parts when they would fade in would come up just a little early. This was driving me crazy, and it took a while to figure out that adding the Maximizer was the problem. I’m guessing that since all the drum tracks are being routed to one audio bus, and all these drum processing plugins are on that bus, maybe there is an upper limit to the amount of delay compensation Logic can handle on that bus and adding the Maximizer put it over the top. Logic has always been a little weird with delay compensation on busses, weird things always seem to happen which makes me hesitant to do complicated things with them, and especially reluctant to put UAD plugins (which all require delay compensation) on them. Anyway, Logic couldn’t handle it, so I’m sticking native plugins that won’t screw up its timing for that stage for now. Once everything is bounced down and all the drums parts are on an audio track instead of a bus I’ll try again.

In general things are sounding really good. The notable exceptions are the first and last songs, which I’m still just not happy with, so I’ll be focusing on those two next. Stay tuned for a new to-do list up shortly…

I forgot to mention another thing I’m going to this month, a free demo/concert of the nifty Tenori sequencer this Friday night featuring a bunch of random electronic musicians like Pole, Sutekh and Safety Scissors. I am psyched to see the Tenori in action, the designer is a Japanese artist named Toshio Iwai who creates interactive audio/visual installations and has brought that same playful and exploratory music-oriented mindset to videogames and now a sequencer. I loved his Elektroplankton music game and I am curious to find out how useful and inspirational a fully realized piece of music gear designed by him will be.

I saw Stars of the Lid last night and they were fantastic, very intense and moody and thick sound combining waves of textured distorted guitar, gorgeous synth chords and deep bass, and a string trio. Best concert I’ve been to in a while.

One show I’m not going to is Goldfrapp at the Warfield on April 26th, because I already have tickets for Mum on the same night. I had forgotten they were going to be here, and I’m a little bummed out because they are one of my favorite electronic groups and their new album is very good, but unfortunately I can’t be in two places at the same time. Also, I might go see Stephen Malkmus of ex-Pavement fame at the Fillmore on the 27th and re-live my mid-90s indie phase. Why does everyone have to show up to play in SF the same month?

I’ve been avoiding going out to see live music for a little while, particularly live electronic music. Time to get back out there.

Stars of the Lid at the Independent, April 15th.
Mum at the Independent, April 26th.
The Field with live band at the Independent, April 30th.

I like going to the Independent because it’s the perfect size for a club (not too big, not too small), has consistently good sound, and as a bonus is within stumbling distance of my house, but they also just happened to book a lot of great music this month so everything is there.

I also bought tickets for the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in August.

And in Submodern news, in a couple months we will be heading out to Denver to play at the Transistor Festival on June 14th. We’ll be playing the slowburn music set to a faster tempo with a Kompakt-esque minimal-melodic-bliss type feel, so I’ll be taking lots of notes at The Field show…

Audio Damage has released a free update to their Dubstation analog-delay-modelled plugin. Super easy to use, super cheap, sounds great, and now has a lowpass as well as high pass filter for extra dubby feedback goodness. You’ve gotta love getting new features for free.

I’ve been in Arizona all week so there has been no progress with finishing up slowburn. I forgot to bring along headphones, so my plan to knock out a couple quick remixes was also thwarted. I should get back to SF this weekend and start things up again, I’m really getting eager to finish it up and move on at this point.

PSP Audioware updated their MixPack, which I bought a while ago and haven’t used that much, just in time to finish up these mixes. The pack includes a plugin called MixSaturator, which is the one I bought the pack for and use the most. It’s nice for adding some analog-esque distortion of various flavors and subtlety to tracks. Another plugin called MixTreble now has a transient shaper, although I’ve been super happy using the UAD one so I may not use this one much, and also has a stereo enhancer which can be nice on pads and noise effects. They also added a gate plugin to the pack, I’ve been pretty happy with the Sonalksis gate plugin but I’ll try this new one too.

I’ve also been trying out a free plugin from Massey called TapeHead. It models the distortion you get from recording things hot to tape. It is super easy to use with just two controls, it sounds pretty nice on drums, and it’s free.

hummin
1. needs more nordmod noises
2. automate delay on lead, possibly re-record?
3. stereo widening
4. bass delay automation is buggy

puppy
1. quieter drums, and drum bus needs to gel
2. couple builds don’t sound right, maybe add nordmod noises
3. bass pad is too loud
4. pan motion on filtered drums? maybe re-do filters
5. maybe add some electribe blips
6. work on drum patterns a bit

lemon
1. glitch parts need more work
2. better transitions
3. timing on guitar/bass sounds a little off?
4. longer transition before bubble
5. ramp type build noises
6. start/stop quiet spots with drums?
7. maybe add some machinedrum blips and clicks

bubble
1. delay on filtered drums?
2. increase quiet/loud section dynamics
3. toms are boring
4. slightly louder voice chant
5. crash?

laguna
1. automate delay on leads
2. add snare back in after taking out
3. waves of sounds in and out
4. quiet/loud
5. filter or other effect on hats/drums?
6. reverb on snare?
7. drum bus needs to gel
8. thin drums in parts

rollover
1. tweak percussion delay/reverb levels
2. make lusher overall
3. nordmod noises – white noise, and sinking pitch sound
4. builds need something more

lurp
1. quieter drums and needs to gel
2. reverb on crash? volume?
3. automate delay on snare
4. snare filter roll… add in a different cutoff at end
5. loud/soft dynamics
6. alternate bassline and drums
7. extend transition to flicker?

flicker
1. quieter drums
2. pan on snare?
3. delay on bitcrunch, especially build to drop
4. could maybe use a noise pad/ramp?
5. quiet/loud

upbeat
1. quieter drums
2. delay automation
3. more reverb or something on the cymbal

tea&t
1. pad too loud/boring? record second pad and alternate portions?
2. need to record drums
3. builds/transitions need work

You can buy the individual audio parts from Radiohead’s song “Nude” on iTunes, and they’re having some sort of remix competition. Weird how Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails seem like the only two big bands pushing the mainstream boundaries like this and using the internet to their advantage. NiN was first with the remix contests (note that they released all the parts from all the songs on their last few albums, and they were free), Radiohead was first with the pay what you want mp3 album release which NiN then tweaked a bit. They also both have licensed multiple songs to the greatest music videogame ever, Rock Band. Anyway, this is my favorite song off “In Rainbows”, so add another remix to the list of things I need to work on once slowburn is done.

Also, here’s an article about Radiohead, plus they will be headlining the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in late August along with my other favorite rock band Wilco.