The PsychoVoyager Journal

Believe In You

2009-03-15T06:28:00.001-04:00

Song I've worked on and off (mostly off) since May 2008, using the program Energy XT2 in Windows XP. It's probably about done, though I will likely tweak it just a li'l bit, before I'm satisfied.

Plug-ins used; GTG DPC 3 (drums), SoHaSonata (synth), Classic compressor, Classic phaser, Classic EQ, classic flanger, Bionic Delay, as well as the program's own Synthesizer and FX DelayReverb.

A Demo was made back in 2006:

Lyrics:

I don't think you realize
just how proud I am
Just how impressed I've been
You've got the drive within
you're so long overdue
and you've long paid your dues
no one here gets an apology

sorry won't cut it
It's not in the budget
they want regrets
but they can forget it
you're doin' it your way
your way is the highway
blazin' on down the only road that gets you home

and that's why
I continue
to believe in you

and
you
should
too

takin' it underground
like you're fighting Manchus
showin' off your skills
as though you're good at kung-fu
The Five Deadly Venoms
couldn't get through your defences
forget the seven sins
your top priority is

You but not for you alone
for your strength will set the tone
and lift the hearts
of all of those around you
even those who put you down
and would see your failure crown
the doubts they've always bowed down to

and that's why
I continue
to believe in you

and
you
should
too

you rock well
and nobody does it better

(c) 2006-2009 George Isaacs

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

My Burning Kiss part 2

2007-09-23T22:00:00.000-04:00

I finally got a program that allowed me to record Flash audio, like that used at Jamstudio.com. The Freecorder toolbar. I used it to capture the audio of the song I wrote using the site's browser interface, so that I could record a vocal over it. Had to play with the settings a little as sometimes the audio would lower in pitch, or I just get static, a problem I had with a few other programs like Audacity.

Once done, I imported the wav file into Sonar and recorded a quickie vocal.

Here 'tis.

I'll put it on the shelf for now. Record it proper later.

My Burning Kiss part 1

2007-08-25T16:30:00.000-04:00

There are plenty of songs from the past couple of years waiting on the back burner to be completed. However, I realized I haven't written any new tunes this year. I just sorta finished Ménage à Trois with robots, so I figured on getting something new in between that whatever I'll spend the next month or two polishing up.

Always looking for new toys to play with, outta nowhere came ChordStudio.com, now known as JamStudio.com (both URLs work, currently).

A boon to songwriters, musicians, or those of us who pretend to be, this web interface allows you to not only arrange chord progression with a click o' the mouse, but also the musical arrangement as well. Nice sounding samples of drums, bass, guitars, pianos, etc.

Creating songs this way, offers one a way to think outside the instrument and maybe write songs that might not normally result from noodling on the guitar or keyboard. Of course, if you were really good, you'd think outside the box with or without your main instrument. I'm not, so here I am.

I threw some random chords together on the 3rd and 4th of this month, till I got a couple of sequences with melodic potential. Then I started to build on the first one, which I decided was a verse. A chorus and intro was eventually added and I started on lyrics, which I worked on little by little from the 11th to today.

There might be a wee bit of a WTF factor to them, which I'm not gonna get into, except to say there is some element of truth to the words and just leave it at that.

After nearly finishing the lyrics, I then constructed a bridge section, which will probably host a guitar solo or some kind of instrumental break. Too lazy to write more words.

The two big limits with JamStudio are the inability (so far) to record vocals (don't know if that can be done with something like this) and the inability to record your song to mp3 or other audio format. The latter would sorta take care of the former as one could then overly vocals over the mp3 in another program (not the optimal way to record a song, but fine for a demo). Otherwise the share song feature is almost redundant as you're just sharing a chord progression arranged into a verse-chorus sequence, and not really an actual song (words and music).

Otherwise, the website as it is will keep me somewhat honest as a musician, as I'm forced to actually play and record the music to complete a demo. Still, if I could do it all here, and then put it on the shelf til I was ready to record proper, that would be an extra two flavors of awesome.

My JamStudio song can be heard here (and then make your own) until I get around to recording it.
And the lyrics below (I don't think anybody's gonna be able to sing along, just yet)...

Burning Kiss (c) 2007 George-Williams Isaacs

The secret evil
beneath the surface-volitile
but all the while-I stay
politecuzIcouldneverhurtyouorburnyouyoumeanthewholeworldtomebutIstillwantto
because it feels so good
this is where I've stood-the line
between
two worlds
of pain and pleasure
I need you to release the pressure

There is no hate there is no anger
in my burning kiss
I lust to taste your fear
of my burning kiss

Submission
to the power
while my aura
overwhelms-I sense
thetensionincreasingthestrikesneverceasingeuphoriareachingnewheightsneverdreamedof
No safe words spoken yet
smell the latex and the sweat
Awake
the dragon
from hell up to heaven
all our sins are now forgiven

There is no hate there is no anger
in my burning kiss
I lust to taste your fear
of my burning kiss

Gonna crosspost this to Edshugeo The GodMoor

Thanks to Create Digital Music for highlighting this app.

Ménage à trois with robots part 11

2007-08-03T19:25:00.000-04:00

I am done with this one for now. I work on it on and off for the last coupl'a weeks without blogging about it, so I'll jot down what I remember...

Recorded more handclaps for a total of six. Bounced to stereo.

Was having trouble with x-runs, slowdowns, and crashes so I cleared out tracks I clearly wasn't using. That left me with seventeen tracks of recorded audio.

What really seemed to help, aside from some slight adjustments in JACK, was changing an audio option in Ardour. In options > audio file format > data, I changed from 32-bit floating point to 24-bit signed integer. I don't know what either of those are but that seemed to help a lot.

While I was having trouble, I played around with the latency settings a little. This while recording one of the hand claps. The slight delay helped fatten up the sound on one section, which gave me an idea. I was gonna copy those tracks and double them, synced at a slight delay. I decided I liked the claps the way they were and didn't bother.

Recorded some bass guitar to the later sections of the song. I don't think it's needed before then. Bass was plugged in directly into the Lexicon Lambda. I was using the Zoom 506 pedal, but the battery died on me, before I was ready to record.

I was thinking about some lead guitar, but I don't think it is needed either. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

Added some LADSPA FX. 1st applied them pre-fader, but after reading a little of the online manual, applied them post.

TAP equalizer on a guitar track that had too much hiss on it.
TAP Stereo echo and TAP reverberator on the handclaps track.
Frequency modulator on the bass guitar track, which punches it up a bit.
Setup a bus to route vocals to apply effects. right now only using TAP DeEssor.

I took the spoken chorus bit off the DeEssor bus cuz I didn't like the way it sounded there. Also normalized that track as the choruses for that track got louder and louder.

I'd experiment with more effects, but I seem to be pushing this computer to it's limits. I'm not sure that should be the case.

I'll revisit this tune when it's time to configure the next album, whenever and whatever that is.
In the meantime the song can currently (as of this writing) be found on MySpace (faded out at a tolerable 4 min, 15 sec) and here in it's full version.

Ménage à trois with robots part 10

2007-07-16T10:09:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping to conclude this one soon. It's been over two years since I've done anything significant with it. I'd exported the audio to be used in Sonar, but since figuring out how to make my USB audio interface work in Ubuntu Studio, I'm gonna finish this in Ardour. That's the plan, so far.

All I did this go round was to play around with fader levels and cut the not quite silent sections of the guitar and vocal tracks. I recorded a hand clap track during one of the last couple of sessions (but forgot to mention it). I plan on building on that, and then maybe adding some lead guitar.

The latest...

I'll be posting audio on Vox (hat tip to the Undercover Black Man) from now on as it's better than taking up space and bandwith here. Also, it's free.

Lexicon Lambda USB On Ubuntu Studio

2007-07-08T02:10:00.000-04:00

Works just fine if I plug it in after Ubuntu boots up. Also had to change a few settings in Jack Control to keep Ardour from shutting down on me.
I found out about the boot up issue reading the following (at the bottom of that page):

If you use a USB MIDI keyboard or a USB sound card as your secondary device, you may run into issues with it taking priority over your PCI device as your main sound card. This tends to happen if you leave it turned on and plugged in during boot. Here is the solution:

 sudo su -c 'echo options snd-usb-audio index=-2 >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base'

I haven't tried the solution, yet. I'm happy the USB interface works. For now, waiting til boot up to plug the thing in will do. Eventually I'll mess with the above gibberish.

Ubuntu Studio! It's Here!!

2007-05-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

I stopped checking for it a few days ago, but lo and behold; Ubuntu Studio has arrived. I haven't downloaded it yet, but I will soon. I need to save my data from my Agnula partition first.

Edit - figured I'd add the release notes...

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia editing/creation flavour of Ubuntu. It's built for the GNU/Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional.

The Ubuntu Studio team is proud to announce its first release: 7.04 for Intel i386-compatible processors. With this release, which you can download for DVD in little over 860 MiB, we offer a feature that is somewhat reminiscent of Ubuntu Server: on installation, you can choose between the Audio, Graphics or Video tasks; and choose also to install a number of plugins, which for this release is mainly aimed at audio production.

We have endeavoured to keep as many of our packages in the standard Ubuntu repositories as possible. Certain packages, such as wired and our art packages, are kept in an external repository and fully up to Ubuntu packaging standards. Be aware however, that this is only a temporary solution and we will be pushing all our packages into Ubuntu for the next release.

The Audio task also provides a different kernel to the Video and Graphics tasks, which has low latency to enable easy JACK work, and for Gutsy we will be providing a fully realtime enabled setup. We have built upon the usability and support of Ubuntu as a foundation, and are certain that this was a wise choice, for we have access to a wide range of packages in the repository, and a stable base system.

For the video task, we have chosen the GStreamer-based PiTiVi as our central NLE. PiTiVi is written in Ubuntu's favourite scripting language, Python, and the GStreamer back-end enables it to use all the GStreamer-compatible codecs that are installed, and thus taking advantage of Feisty's Easy Codec Installation. It also uses our favourite widget set, GTK+, and thus keeps with the theme and flow of the Ubuntu Studio desktop, and tries also to stay usable in any environment, in keeping with Ubuntu Studio's aim that media production should be simple and accessible.

We have also packaged Ardour 2, which will debut on our disc. Our theme is heavily based around the dark style of Ardour and many other audio applications, and we are trying to have a release that is as integrated as possible with all of our applications and tasks.

Finally, the Graphics task deserves some attention. We have included a very wide range of very high quality applications that are also very well known. What we have done is added to this selection (with Enblend, for example), and brought them all together into a coherent set. Some main packages to note are the GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Hugin and Scribus, which are all provided with a default install of the Ubuntu Studio Graphics task.

As our wiki page at [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio states: "Our aim is to make it more accessible for new users to get into the tools that GNU/Linux has to offer for multimedia creation/production. We also want to spotlight what's out there. Show users tools they might not have know existed." We have certainly fulfilled that aim with our first release with 7.04, and can only continue to improve.

Thanks to all who helped in Ubuntu Studios creation! Bring on the show!

Above It All part 7 (The newest final version)

2007-04-28T12:33:00.000-04:00

Given permission by this song's author to exploit it, commercially, I revisited Above It All and found some things I wasn't comfortable with. Most notably, my voice. So I decided to polish it up a bit, along with a bunch of other songs from the past couple of years or so, for a new album. If I was gonna charge money for it, I might as well make it sound as good as I'm able, right? The original mix will remain free, as well as the separate instrument tracks, should anyone else want to tackle this tune, either for covers, remixes, or whatever.

Those tracks, which are found on Archive.org, were the basis for the new mix, since I couldn't locate the disc I thought I burned (they may actually be on my hard drive, somewhere on the Agnula partition). I downloaded those and imported them into Sonar. I'd normally blog the same day I record or work on a song, but I hadn't felt like it over the last couple of weeks. I did take the following notes, though...

April 14th, 2007

Recorded new lead vocal. Didn't care for the old one. Recorded harmonized "oohs" for the
choruses. One set, then cut and pasted two more times.

April 17th 2007

Cakewalk FX Reverb into an effects send bus. For bass acoustic, 1 electric guitar track, and vocals. BlockFish Compressor and SpitFish de-essor onto new lead vocal track.
Eq'd a bass boost on the bass itself.

April 20th 2007

Spitfish on one of the background vocal tracks. Cakewalk FX Expander/Gate on lead vocal. Cut out silences on various tracks. Almost finished.

April 27th 2007

Lowered volume a little. Added Sonitus: FX Gate to a harmony track on the first chorus to
reduce some hiss. Did the same to the bass and acoustic guitars, but also used Sonitus FX:
Equalizer to remove hiss from the instrument sounds themselves.

Currently, this song can be purchased from the PsychoVoyager Music Store at the top of this page. It won't be submitted to any of the major music e-tailers until a full album is put together.

As of this writing, you can listen to the whole song on MySpace. It can also be streamed at the Podsafe Music Network. Due to it's being recorded at 48000kh or whatever it is, and a bug in Flash, the song plays slower than it should at Podsafe. I actually like how it sounds, so I'm not changing it yet. Plus I don't feel like re-encoding it. The Myspace and PsychoVoyager Store version play at the proper 80bpm.

April Fool's Day Part 6 (finished!)

2007-03-24T22:59:00.000-04:00

Played around with various settings, levels, etc. Added automation to the fifth vocal track, so that it plays during the laughter at the beginning, fades out and re-appears during the final chorus through the end. Used the Classic Compressor and the Classic Phaser to punch up and then crazy up that track a little, and then played around with panning it back and forth, but decided to simply pan it far right.

I fixed the reversed conga and bongo sounds in Audacity. I didn't want to spend the time figuring how to do it in Sonar. The sounds end sharply with a click, so I removed the clicks by selecting the segment of the audio and then faded the sound out at the very end. It probably wasn't neccessary, but I also normalized the wav files (These were the original exported files from PSP Rhythm). I deleted the audio in the Sonar tracks, inported the altered wav files (drag and drop) and then split the tracks. When I fixed the audio, I only faded out one instance. The same notes play over and over throughout the song, so I took the fixed parts, split them apart from the clicky bits, and then Groove-clipped them (an Acid like feature where you can take a one bar phrase, drag and stretch it to loop as much as needed).

Muted the woodblock and closed high hat sounds. The high hat wasn't needed and the woodblock couldn't be heard and there was no need to force the issue.

Added one of Cakewalk's own reverbs to the snare, which isn't very snare like, but whatever.

Played some more with levels and whatnot till I was relatively happy and then mixed down the audio.

Opened up the audio in a new project. Might not have been necessary, but again, I was too lazy to find out. Applied Classic Compression (used the "mix down" pre-set) and Classic EQ for just a wee bit o' tweaking.

The finished song can be bought at my little store at the top o' the page. You can also listen to it at my Podsafe page which is a higher quality than the version on my Myspace page and closer in quality to the sold version.

April Fool's Day Part 5

2007-03-20T23:20:00.000-04:00

I'm extending my deadline for this song to this weekend. Probably Saturday. Work and stuff getting in the way.

Didn't do much today except replace the kick drum track that replaced a previous kick drum track. I didn't like the way it sounded, so I went back into Hydrogen and loaded the second drum set. There were two already loaded in the program and more available here. I'll download those others at some point, but the one I found did just fine.

I kept the Nyquist EQ settings, mostly, though I tweaked it a little.
When I solo a couple of the PSP Rhythm instrument tracks, I hear a slight click at the end. These on sounds that were reversed, so they fade in and then stop suddenly. In the mix they're not really noticeable I think, so I'll leave them alone for the most part, except near the begining.

Next...

April Fool's Day Part 4

2007-03-19T01:50:00.000-04:00

The guitar editing from the other day left a wee bit of a gap on the right side of the stereo which I fixed by a little cutting and pasting. It was time I did something about that kick drum track (imported from PSP Rhythm) which had some mild pops and clicks in the background.

Sonar has something called Session Drummer, but I didn't feel like figuring out how it works right now, so I looked into something more familiar. First I tried Hammerhead, but didn't care for it's sounds, the deepest of which was almost as crackly as the one in PSP Rhythm. I remembered Hydrogen and thought I might've read that there was a Windows version. I was in luck, so I downloaded it, programed a quick loop, imitating the original track and exported it.

The Hydrogen Kick was a different sound, but I figured it would do just fine. Once in Sonar I Groove Clipped it and stretched it the length of the song and then EQ'd it with NyquistEq5. Then I went and cut all the spaces in the vocals, where I neither spoke nor sang (but cleared my throat once or twice) and then exported to mp3 so I can listen to it a million times on my PSP before making my next move...

Next...

April Fool's Day Part 3

2007-03-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

Edited a small bit of the first guitar track (near the beginning), taking out a few notes that were kinda sloppy, time-wise. I played around with VST effects after reading this article on effects chains for vocals, which also touches on a bunch of freebies in that area. I downloaded a bunch and tried a few out on a vocal or two and the second guitar track.

For the main vocal (in this case the fourth vocal track - I don't know if I'll end up using this one or the fifth), I used the Spitfish de-esser, Floorfish noisegate, the Classic compressor, and Bionic Delay. I'm not sure if I really need the first two. I'll play around with them some more. My use of the Bionic Delay is a tad bit over the top with the ping-ponging (though not too excessive), but I can't resist it. Used the Compressor on the "trickster god" bit at the end and then for the guitar I duplicated the track, so I could keep the naked sound, and then play with the effected stuff independently. I used the "Uhhh" preset on the Classic Phaser, and then threw the Bionic Delay on top for some funkadelic bouncing around. Sounds a bit like whales or something. I like the way it's shaping up, so far...

Next

April Fool's Day Part 2

2007-03-10T00:39:00.000-05:00

Rehearsed some funk/blues guitar earlier this evening (actually March 9th, but it's after midnight, now) to play around with some ideas and to warm up my hands before recording. Was going for that Jimmie Nolen/Catfish Collins/Prince "chicken grease"* sound, kinda. That I don't play a fraction as well as any of those guys isn't much concern to me, so much as I get a rhythm appropriate to the track.

I recorded two guitar tracks with my Peavey Vortex 1 plugged in directly to the Lambda USB box. Any effects would be added later. The second track was to replace the first, but certain elements were played differently, and I think they'd go well together, panned apart (and edited where necessary). I considered overlaying one more track over the bridge, but I'll hold off on that right now. From the sound of things, it may not even be necessary.

I'm giving myself a deadline of March 21st, to finish this recording and then drop it on MySpace. Should be plenty of time.

*Also called "chicken scratch".

Next...

April Fool's Day Part 1

2007-03-06T21:36:00.000-05:00

This song was recorded last year as a quick demo using PSP Rhythm and Audacity. I've decided to pretty it up a little (and then move on to some of my other favorites from the last couple of years). I explain why I'm using Sonar this go 'round, below. I haven't completely sold out, though. Not yet, anyway. I've signed on as a subscriber to Ardour to help ensure that it makes it to 2.0, and hopefully beyond.
-----------------------------------------------
A couple of days ago I imported the saved audio tracks from this song, created in PSP Rhythm into Sonar. I'd exported each instrument as a separate wav file, to allow greater flexibility in mixing the song when it was done. I tried initially to change the audio to 48 kHz, 24 bit (in Sonar), but it seems to apply to new projects, and I'd already started this one. By the time I'd realized that I was still in 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, I was already underway and didn't feel like re-importing the PSP Rhythm files.

The VGA Kick-Low end (bass drum) track has some crackle in it that originates in it's source, the sample in PSP Rhythm 4. It'll have to be replaced, but that won't be difficult. I'll come back to that later.

My condensor mic, the MXL 990 was plugged in to the Lexicon Lambda USB interface, so I got started on vocals. I recorded four full takes before I was satisfied with performance and input levels. Then did a harmony take on each chorus and the ending.

I ended up using Sonar on this song because I thought I could reduce the tempo, record a vocal, and then speed it up to normal, but end up with a slightly sped up chipmunk voice ala Prince's Camille voice (Housequake, U Got The Look, etc.). However, it's been years since I'd used Sonar or Cakewalk Pro Audio, I didn't remember how to do this. I wasn't sure I had actually done this before on digital audio. Tape, yes, but that was a while ago. So I changed my mind and started top go back to Ardour in Agnula. But then, I made an impulse purchase of the USB interface mentioned above. I haven't yet gotten it to work with Agnula Linux, and the Cubase LE it comes packaged with, produces noise, instead of playing back music (I'll figure that one out later). So I'm back in Sonar (6), and thought I figured how to do the pitch thing without a plugin.

Audio stretching is available in clip properties, so I selected it on each instrumental track. Then I slowed the tempo from it's original 125bpm to 100, and then recorded a vocal. Unfortunately, the pitch in the tracks don't change, unless you tell them to, so I ended up singing the song in the same pitch, and didn't get the effect I was looking for. It did come out kinda interesting, in that there was a weird doubling effect on parts of the words I was singing. I haven't figured out if I'll keep it.

I tried it again, this time changing the pitch in the backing tracks to -5 and then singing in whatever key that was. Restored the tracks to their normal pitch, applied audio stretching to the new vocal part and then upped the pitch +5, and found that it sorta, kinda worked out, but not as a lead vocal.

Added two more harmony tracks, and then a separate spoken track for the trickster god bit at the end. The roll call appears on all the main vocal takes. In the demo, this bit appears both in the bridge and at the end. Here, I've taken it out of the bridge to make room for some guitar playing.

I'll post the song when it's done. Hopefully in a week...

Next...

I Think Agnula Might Be Dead...

2007-02-26T23:05:00.000-05:00

No news, no updates, no nothin' lately (except a change of domain due to a "miscommunication"). If I wasn't lazy, I could figure out (maybe) how to update some of the programs, especially Ardour which I understand has to be built from the source. But I'm not trying to do that right now.

Ubuntu Studio looks interesting, but isn't due till April. I'll try it out once it's released, but until then, I want to re-record my song, April Fool's Day. I need to be able to play around with pitch, and I don't know how to do that in the version of Ardour included with Agnula*, so I'm gonna play around with Sonar temporarily(?), and see where that gets me.

This project will end a fairly long, creative dry spell for me.

Assuming I get started...

* Feb 28th 2007 Been away (From Agnula) for awhile. Forgot about the LADSPA plugins. I'd rather be able to slow the tempo down, record the vocal or guitar and then speed up to normal tempo for that effect. I know I've done it in Cakewalk, but I don't feel like relearning that software, so I'll play around with the plugins in Agnula, for now.

Save Ardour, Save The World

2007-01-17T23:04:00.001-05:00

The folks over at Ardour, the soon to be great, Linux digital audio recording program, has lost their sponsor Solid State Logic and are looking towards their user base and other interested parties for donations to keep things moving towards the eventual release of version 2.0 and hopefully beyond.

Read this and then this. While there, maybe donate a little something via Paypal (I gave ten bucks), if you're so inclined. I'm sure even small donations will be appreciated. Especially if repeated periodically.

SnoCap.com

2007-01-03T22:46:00.000-05:00

Another way for me to sell (or not) my music. Snocap has a new partnership with MySpace, which is how I came across it. I signed up. I have the Snocap store inbedded atop this page and Edshugeo The GodMoor, as well as on my MySpace page. There's a thirty dollar annual fee that's waived on the first year. By next December, I'll know if it's worth it for me.

In the meantime, I should go about creating some new music, no?

Special Sauce part one

2006-09-19T21:14:00.000-04:00

I wrote and recorded this song as a demo back in march. The music was done with PSPRhythm, which was exported into Audacity where I added the vocals. I also exported the wav files from my PSP to Ardour in the form of single bar samples for each intrument save for one which seems to be missing. I liked the sound of the song enough to preserve it for when I actually wanted to record it.

So returning to Ardour today, I took eack track which contained a single bar of audio and did some cutting and pasting. Ardour has a fill track option, but that couldn't be used here. The samples were either just under a bar or just over and I needed each repeating sample to start at the next bar rather than the end of the sample. What I had to do was "ctrl-c" to copy the sample, move the cursor to the start of the next bar and press "e" to move the edit point to the next bar, and then "ctrl-v" to paste. I repeated these steps until filling the screen.
Next, I hold down shift while selecting each of the samples, then "ctrl-c" to copy, move the cursor to the start of the next bar and press "e" to move the edit point to the next bar, and then "ctrl-v" to paste the whole line. Then I repeat those steps until the whole track is filled. Then repeat that process on all the other tracks.
I'm almost certain Cakewalk/Sonar had such a process automated, but my memory is faulty. Let's hope the next release of Ardour simplifies this issue.

Next up is to find that missing bass sound and add vocals and probably guitar.

Politikill part two

2006-09-18T20:24:00.000-04:00

Well, so much for recording one cover song a month. I started this one back in April, and then stopped doing any recording for a while. Including my song of the week. Hopefully my dry spell is over for now.

Today I went back into Ardour and recorded a bunch of kazoos. 4 tracks during the bridge, one for the last verse and end of the song and two for the intro, which were cut and pasted into the ending of the song. I wonder if the kazoo voids the a cappella-ism of this song? Doesn't matter. It's just about done, save effects (if I so choose) and final mix.

I attempted to upload this to Archive.org, but the upload tool ccPublisher 2.2.1 is as screwed up as the last one I was using, 1. something or another. I'm gonna wait to see if it pops up within the next day or two, if so I'll post the link here, if not, I'll ftp it to the site and then post the link here. I don't want any more multiple posts showing up there. I still haven't cleaned up my eariler messes.

Edit: finally uploaded the song here. I'll be using the FTP option from now on with archive.org. Less headaches. 10/02/06

Politikill part one

2006-04-26T00:08:00.000-04:00

Politikill is a tune originally written and performed by someone who calls himself Richard O. It's about eating facists. I'd wanted to cover this one for a little while, so here we are.

I made one minor change in the lyrics because I do eat meat. Even had some red meat over the last coupl'a Judeo-Christian holiday periods, and for the most part, liked it. Also "hold the feet" was easier to sing.

I wasn't sure what the "name of a cheese" thing was about, but found out there is a President brand cheese. That bit might've been neccesary, because threatening the President may be against the law. Found that out from an episode of The Jeffersons, a long time ago.

I thought I might combine my experiments with Dokaka-eque a cappella recording with PSP Rhythm beats. Naturally any mixture between voice and instrument would void the a cappella-isms, but that's not why (so far) I went with with straight vocals. It was faster. I may still add other stuff later, like guitar and maybe an automated beat. My rhythm is still a bit sloppy.

I recorded in Ardour, starting with the melody and words. Even though I used the click to keep the time, starting out this way could be a problem if I try to introduce a tuned instrument.

I added drum sounds next and then a bassline and two separate tracks kinda mimicing a rhythm guitar. After that, an extra vocal for the very last verse.

I'm not sure if I'm adding anything else. Maybe more harmony. maybe effects and/or instruments. In any case, I may get this done on time.

Here's what it sounds like so far.

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

next...

No Meaning No part five

2006-04-10T20:15:00.000-04:00

Not much left I wanted to do here, so I played around with some plugins. I don't yet know the difference between pre-fader and post fader FX. I should probably do some reading.

Anyway, what I used ended up as post. Simple Amplifier on the bass and vox 2, (Hard Limiter) on vox 2 and TAP Sigmoid Booster on vox 1.

For the last verse, I duplicated the vocal and put it on another track. I was gonna use some wierd effect on it, but instead split it and used it to accent the last few phrases which were getting a bit lost in the mix.

Exported to wav, went back to Windows and used explore2fs to transfer the track to XP to create and mp3 and an ogg using Audacity (which isn't working right in my Agnula set-up right now).

Then I upped it to The Internet Archive.

Finished for now. Like everything else, I may get back to it at some point...

What Kinda Man part one

2006-04-06T23:10:00.000-04:00

This is a song of the week thing. I normally don't post those here. They're usually done in one shot (just about) and posted at edshugeo.com and the internet archive. Aside from the first one, they've all been recorded in Windows XP with Audacity. Inspired by the great a cappella-ist, Dokaka, I've decided that I would write four songs with nothing but my voice. Over the past few weeks, I've done some limited multi-tracking with Audacity, but for this task, it was best that I use Ardour.

My drums, so far, consists of bass drum, snare (sorta), and high hats. I recorded each separately on mono tracks, using a click track as a guide. My timing was still a bit shakey, but I didn't really mind too much.

I probably should'a isolated the best 4 bars out of the 16-ish I recorded, but instead I kept just about the whole thing and divided it into two eight bar loops (for each track). I repeated the loops enough times for a nearly five minute song. There's a fill track option, but I couldn't get it to work right with both eight bar loops. I copied both by selecting the first with a (left) mouse click and the second with shift/mouse click, then Ctrl-C (copy). I move the edit cursor to the mouse at the next position by pressing "E" on the keyboard, so I can Ctrl-V to paste. Etc., etc..

Bassline was next. I hummed a simple little something to myself and quickly came up with a little bit of a structure and recorded it straight through.

The next bit was a bit tricky. I "ooh"ed a melody to hopefully form the basis of a chord structure. This was recorded straight through as well. I think the first chorus is a little different from the ones that follow.

About three or four (maybe four or five) harmonies were recorded. Not really four or five part harmony, as my ears are easily tricked and I end up playing in unison for about two tracks or so. Except for the first, which was recorded straight through, only one verse and chorus was done for each track. These were then cut up and then placed in the appropiate spots in the song.

I still have lyrics to write and then to sing and I'll see where I go from there.

What I have so far...

edit: wrote the song, but recorded the lead vocals in Audacity (WinXP) instead of switching to Agnula and doing it in Ardour. The song demo is here.

No Meaning No part four

2006-04-04T00:40:00.000-04:00

Now, we're getting somewhere.

Did some editing in Ardour, splitting yesterday's guitar tracks and looping and discarding where I think is neccesary. Still a bit busy and muddied, but I'm starting to like it. More to do, but that shall wait till later.

Here 'tis.

Originally by Chuck D and The Fine Arts Militia
Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

to be concluded...

No Meaning No part three

2006-04-03T04:31:00.000-04:00

The completion of March's cover song of the month is gonna be a little late. Perhaps a week, hopefully not more.

I recorded four guitar tracks. One rhythm, three leads, or whatever they are. When I finally get rolling (after the second chorus, I think) I end up playing the same blues crap I almost always play when I "solo". That and the occasional picking at random notes towards the end (the stuff at the begining doesn't count). I need to re-think my approach to the instrument.

These were played through my Peavey Vortex 1 guitar, SGX 2000 effects on A-30 (the rhythm track might have used a different setting, I don't remember) into Ardour.

This muddied mess isn't listenable, really, but here's where I am right now... if you must know.

Originally by Chuck D and The Fine Arts Militia
Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

next...

No Meaning No part two

2006-03-28T08:07:00.000-05:00

So, I recorded four tracks of vocals for the choruses (no corny choruses?) and a bit at or near the end of the song. These were sung. Each chorus is recited twice. While I did that on the first track, the "harmonies" were recited once and then copied and pasted for completion. I also used the same recorded harmonies for the last chorus and repeated them untill the end. A great help in the whole process was remembering to use the "E" key to place the edit cursor where the mouse was in Ardour. Something I neglected to mention in the last post. Some of the loops (drums, guitars, keys) were longer or shorter than they should'a been, so simply using the fill track option on the menu (after right-clicking on the track) wasn't helpful. I had to place each repeated phrase at the begining of each bar or measure it belonged. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a quicker workaround for this. I hope there is and I'm simply just not aware of it, yet.

I started this session around 2 am and finished it near 3 am. Was too tired to blog it then so here we are now.

The song as it stands now.

Originally by Chuck D and The Fine Arts Militia
Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Next up; my guitar, more samples, or both?