when i was in high school, i used to buy lots of guitar magazines. one issue of ‘guitar world’ (er… probably) had a lengthy interview with megadeth’s dave mustaine. the interviewer was asking him about their new album, and dave explained that the recording process was a bit like “cleaning every hair on your nut sack, one at a time”.
…
i actually went looking for the exact quote, but googling for “dave mustaine megadeth nut sack recording” didn’t work out all that well and i gave up pretty quickly. but you get the general idea.
in closely related news, we got some more overdubs in (more keys and the electronic percussion). the tracks are starting to sound like this:
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…so, yeah. all we have left at this point is steve’s vocals and guitar, and then some sort of maniac percussion marathon. we’re still looking for a suitable venue for that. it needs to be a room that can withstand the power of every cowbell in the world being hit at once. by giants.
now that ‘autofocus’ is up on iTunes, i figure this is probably a good time to compare the recording process for that with what we’re doing now.
first of all – we recorded an absolute stack of stuff for ‘autofocus’, giant chunks of which ended up getting cut. there were multiple, wildly different versions of some songs, and we left off (or outright abandoned half-way) at least four tracks. that was kinda the only way it could have been done, though. the album was recorded the way it was written – a bit random and cut-up and berzerk.
‘lost in berlin’ (check the iTunes link) is a good example of that. it started as a riff on a microkorg, and was emailed to steve with some blippy drums. steve repitched and mutilated the riff into an actual song in ableton live, but playing it live like that didn’t work. we shelved the song. i think we had another shot at a vocal somewhere in there. months later, we tried playing it rock-style and it sorta worked. we tracked a new rhythm part, and i dug up the original keyboard parts, added a new recording of steve’s vocals, and mixed the whole thing in reaper.
months. that took months. nearly a year. the song goes for about three minutes.
the same process played out for the other eight songs. i tried to get all “brian eno” on taz at one point and recorded him playing bass for a song he’d never heard before, just kinda shouting instructions at him as we went. that ended up as the main groove in ‘catching up with you‘, which is fun, but was a nightmare to work out a live arrangement for. the version of ‘things’ that ended up on there is completely different to how we play it live, but there are lots of elements in there that were pulled from an early demo of it, just processed until it sounded like it had been stuffed full of tiny robots. every song has some synthetic element to it, and hopefully that comes across as a cool sound. it’s a bit hard to judge everything objectively when you’ve heard everything thousands of times.
the new recording – which is almost certainly just going to be an EP – is coming together a bit differently.
we’ve added some new personnel (steve from great apes + others), and we’ve been rehearsing the hell out of the band. new songs are being written more in the rehearsal room than over the internet, and it’s coming out in the arrangements – we’re concentrating a lot more on just getting the groove right. which is probably why we bashed through all five basic tracks in a day, and some of that stuff was first- or second-takes. the extra percussion is actually adding some space, probably because steve and i are taking more breaks. it’s coming together alright.
we’ve now got all of the drums, all of the bass, and half of the keys and guitar comped and tracked. steve c’s recording his parts at his place, and steve a and i will be tracking percussion and extra keys at some point this month. probably at his place. hopefully his neighbours don’t totally freak out. there’s likely to be a lot of cowbell action. all of the keys and electronic percussion is being tracked live – none of the songs for this session were recorded to a click-track, so i can’t sync up drum machines to anything.
also, i put down this completely stupid solo and it’s awesome.
it took about a billion years, but we finally managed to get the go/no-go “autofocus” release shipped off to the duplicators (and flying over the internet in the general direction of itunes, which feels a bit weird).
we got a few clips done as well, thanks to stu willis for making the “catching up with you” clip possible.
anyway, we did it all DIY, and it worked out okay, so we’re gonna have a shot at a follow up EP the same way. but hopefully a bit quicker this time. i’ve had the urge to write about the recording process for a while, and this seems like a good place to start. also, i’m waiting for a plumber to show up and can’t really do anything else in the meantime.
it took a few years, but i’ve finally got myself a mobile recording rig that works pretty good and fits in the back of a daihatsu charade. the main problem is getting enough equipment to get a nice drum recording – once you get past two channels, everything gets a bit spendier and more complicated. and you end up with mic cables everywhere, and i’m really bad at winding them up neatly.
anyway. last sunday, we dragged our gear down to zen rehearsals to track drums and bass. we record there mainly because they run free bbqs on weekends, and they have a well maintained cappuccino machine. also, because some of their rooms are really well sound-proofed and have excellent room treatment, which is important – if the room sounds boxy (or if sydney’s loudest metal band are bleeding through the air conditioning system), the recording will sound bad.
cue: five hours of recording, five tracks of drums and bass done, despite 50% of the personnel suffering from crippling hangovers.
check out all the mess!
once i get everything home, i usually mix up a nice sturdy martini and transfer the tracks over from the portable recorder to the PC. the ancient vs1680 recorder i use is cheap, solid and sounds good, but getting the raw audio out of it onto the computer requires screwdrivers and lots of time and weird software and usually i have to shout at it a bit as well. but eventually i end up with the session loaded up in reaper, ready for edits.
there’s usually a bunch of takes of each song. sometimes one is just perfect the whole way through, but usually each one will have bits of inspiration hit at different times. this is where that martini comes in handy. i usually just map out the song on paper, then mark each take with ticks or crosses depending on how awesome or hideous each part is:
once i’ve mapped it out, i hack the best bits together, get a rough mix up, and start thinking about another martini. and overdubs.
with a quickie mix and some keys, it’s sounding a little like this:
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in other news… where the hell is that plumber?
next up: percussion. in a week or two. with any luck.
i just got this stupid website working again (the admin pages were broken). now i have 2,246 comments waiting for approval (of which 2,216 are probably spam).
i gave up on the whole pedal dsp idea. it’s just going to be too much work and i don’t have the cash for a devkit at the moment anyway.
but… i’ve been working on some more JS effects and these ones might actually work
i was also doing a little bit of dev work on the DS stuff but the development environment is a total pain in the ass (in that the core platform keeps getting updates that break compatibility with all the other 3rd party tools). i still have my old dev environment in a virtual machine somewhere so i can get back to that one day but really, it’s just so much damn effort. and bliptracker already does everything i need. so that’s all a bit ugh. i really need to put out that updated beta of dsmcu one day though, i just need to package it up…
i’ve been mucking about with the XNA XB360 dev environment. it looks very interesting. i have two separate ideas – one for a 2d puzzle/action game that doesn’t have gems or tiles and one for an experimental art game.
also i want to get a JLM preamp kit and get some soldering happening.
i’ve uploaded a quick demo of some of the free js effects i’ve built for reaper (linked here, click for more info)
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this is just a quick guitar improvisation, played into two instances of floaty and one of avocado, streamed live to disk – no offline edits or effects except for a limiter were added to this.
update: i’ve just updated all of the effects, here’s a demo of avocado tempo sync’ed to some drums:
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line6 are releasing a dsp guitar stomp box devkit! i can’t wait til this thing launches, i’m already getting crazy ideas.
(also: i move into a new flat in about two weeks, regular development work is going to start up again pretty soon after that, sorry about the delay on everything…)
update: apparently there’s this thing as well that looks interesting: openstomp
update3: some more info on the tonecore ddk, scrounged from the freescale website: (giant pdf thing) – short version, there’s 4Mb+ of onboard RAM (8 banks of 512kb plus whatever’s onboard the DSP), and it’s rated at about 100Mips. 24 bit. doesn’t look like there’s any FPU onboard, bah.
work is continuing on dsmcu. here’s what is in the new version so far:
now requires dldi patching.
the entire application is fully skinnable using text files (maybe xml) csv text files and png graphics. *DONE*
skinning extends to the midi commands (midi data sent or monitored for feedback) supported – this should allow the device to be used as a generic midi controller. there will be a number of basic control types available.
support for multiple layouts, selectable from L/R triggers. *DONE* (memory limits on how many backgrounds can be loaded, though)
layouts supported will include: standard mcu control, simplified/expanded mcu control (e.g. big transport), generic MIDI kaoss style touch pad or multi-kaoss (any number of pad zones on the same page), MIDI keyboard interface, MIDI drum pad interface, generic vsti synth control (faders for cutoff, resonance, etc), and combination of those elements…(MIDI and mcu controls possibly won’t be usable at the same time due to host limitations)
no estimate on when it’ll be ready – i’m going to be moving house soon so that might slow me down a bit. but what’s there is working really well so far.
if anyone has gotten the beta working under leopard, can they let me know? cheers.
i think this is #2, anyway. should start getting pretty interesting by #5 or so.
these date back to 2005-2006.
1: please wait
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2: keep starting (a collaboration w/ rachel holmshaw, cheers!)
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3: scissors
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(i’ve given up on picking a catchy name to release this stuff under, i figure my actual one will do for the time being)
i’ve put together a list of homebrew ds music apps. pretty sure i’ve gotten most of the main ones but if i’ve left anything off let me know via the comments and i’ll update it.
edit: added heaps more, thanks for the submissions!
dsmcu is a wireless mix controller for reaper (and possibly other applications if they tolerate my abuse of the particular midi control spec i’m using).
note: i haven’t had much of a chance to work on this lately and my ds is a bit sad, i’m only really posting this in the hope someone will donate a pink ds with a properly working touchscreen (black is also fine)
dsmcu is a nintendo-ds based emulator of the MCU control surface protocol. it talks to your audio workstation over wifi via dsmi.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD (beta software, please exercise care, no warranties expressed or implied, and you’ll need the readme file to get it working)
requirements: a homebrew-capable ds (which can connect to your computer over wifi), compatible audio workstation software (like ‘reaper‘) and dsmi correctly set up on your computer. more details in the download link.
tested on: reaper; (primary testing platform, works great), samplitude V8 SE (works but no VU display).
does not work with pro tools or logic yet, but support is planned
the following subset of the mcu protocol is supported:
fader send, receive
vu display
track select, mute, arm and solo (w/ feedback)
bank up/down
scrub
more coming soon…
possible applications include: a wireless rec/arm remote or end-user monitor mix interface for tracking, touch-sensitive automation recorder during mixdown, multi-user mixing, ‘left-hand’ level control while tweaking VSTs…
lots more planned, more info soon.
some user interface elements have been taken from Reaper – BIG THANKS to White Tie and the Reaper posse for granting permission for use of this and helping out with design/layout. cheers again to tobw for the dsmi library. also uses palib and devkitpro/libnds, yay.
Note: in theory this stuff all works on Linux and OSX but you’re on your own, let me know if you get it working!
Maybe print this out before you start.
Obtain a Nintendo DS and a cartridge that will let you run homebrew (I use an R4DS – http://www.r4ds.com – works great). If you get stuck here, hit up Google.
You need a wireless router or something else that will let you connect your DS to the network your computer is on. Make sure that you can connect to the Nintendo WFC online services. If you get stuck here, hit up Google.
Download the dsmcu.nds file and get it onto your DS flash card (i.e. R4DS, whatever). You don’t need to patch this file or do anything weird with it, just put it on there.
Boot your DS and run the dsmcu.nds file. If it locks up with a faint “MIDI: ?” message on the bottom screen, that means it can’t connect to your network. If you can play DS Tetris on the internet and this still doesn’t work, contact me.
If dsmcu can connect to the internet, the screen will fill with faders. This is good.
Download and run Reaper. Go to options/preferences and select the Control Surfaces section (near the bottom). Click Add to add a new control surface.
Set: Control surface mode: Mackie Control Universal,
MIDI Input: IN FROM MIDI YOKE 2
MIDI Output: OUT TO MIDI YOKE 1,
Leave everything else at default settings.
When you click OK, everything should work.
If it’s doesn’t work, try setting the DSMI output to Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth and seeing if noise is made when you click on the transport buttons on dsmcu.
note that this doesn’t show the dsmi MIDI integration, only uses one of the default sample sets, doesn’t show any of the randomization functions, and there’s no theremin. i’ll post a better quality clip with some more fun stuff when i get a bit of spare time.
now that i’ve got some more space on the server, i should probably start posting some of these tracks i’ve had lying around for aeons.
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just a tidy little dub, built up on the spot in a couple of layers using a headrush loop pedal.
2 medium-sized pears
200mL of apple cider or sparkling apple juice or something
150mL of zubrowka (bison) vodka
50mL of medos (honey) vodka
big handful of ice
blend until it looks like a daiquiri. optionally layer with a tiny bit of fresh cream and then top with cinnamon power. serve in whatever you have handy.
