...A home studio and creative outlet. I will explore different setups, hardware, software, and review anything I find that I like. Almost everything heard on my recordings will be digital, from the guitar amps to the drums, from the strings to the compressors, all with both musical taste and price point in mind. I intend to help others and document my work with setting up a studio on a budget. What's best about this is that anyone can do it with a little know how and time. Not including the computer and the guitar, it is possible these days to make your own recordings for as little as a few hundred dollars. This is my attempt to do just that. The goal is to create amateur but realistic recordings from software for as little out of pocket expense as possible. So, feel free to comment and ask questions. I'm doing this as much for the community of home studio enthusiasts as I am for myself as a way to express my creativity. I'm not sure I'm looking for cutting edge - just good sounding songs that might put a smile on your face or make you want to drive a little faster in traffic. I hope you enjoy.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Song - A Quarter Inch Crazy

-An instrumental - The main theme of this song, the chromatic riff that appears over and over through the rhythm guitars, strings and even in the solo's, kept nagging at me. I experimented with speeding it up (which sounds real good, but made no sense for the expression as a whole - hear it much faster in the solo starting at around 6 minutes), but ultimately settled with it around 150bpm. In my writing of this song, I was initially thinking of it in similar fashion to a Canon and then Sonata, but settled somewhere in between but falling short of both.

I really liked this song when first coming up with the initial pieces, but never could get it to sound quite right. I finally came up with the "chorus" section that's played at the beginning middle and end of the song, and it finally came together. The song is quite modal and alternates between a feeling of Db minor and Ab Major. I really stopped short of taking it full circle, but it was getting too long and unfortunately I was getting tired of working on it. In the end, I think I'm happy with the results even if at this point I do believe it's a little more straight forward and less "prog" than originally planned.

Recording techniques are almost exactly the same as the previous song "Beyond the Beginning", with the exception of the lead guitars. The "wah" lead part is the 6505 from Revalver MK III amp sim and the other is a mix of two different IR's using Lextac by Lepou Plugins.

I also used the free version of East West Symphonic Orchestra for the string parts. I wish I had the full version (and with it a full orchestra for the low low price of close to a thousand dollars), but even this extremely basic version sounds great. If you're into that kinda thing, I highly recommend checking it out. I filled out a survey on their website which enabled me to download the "free version". It was a pain to get the program to work, but totally worth it.

In the next few posts I'll be discussing which plugins I like and why. Everything from amp sims to why I like this compressor and how I've got the computer setup to work best. I hope you can stay tuned!
Posted by at

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)