Project Completion

Project Highlights

We have all worked well together as a team and have enjoyed working with each other. We have all put in extra hours in the evening to create two remixes that we are really proud of. It has been an extremely enjoyable and satisfying project. The individual remix highlights are as follows:

'Children' Remix

• Mike's harmonic dive-bomb in the guitar solo.
• The way the final outro section turned out. All the component parts really work well together.
• The way Lee copied the snare in Reason's Redrum to it's own track and applied reverb to give it a big 'Phil Collins' drum sound.
• The overall musical arrangement.
• The sound balance of the final master.

'Behind the Sun' Remix

• The 'spaghetti western' concept has worked extremely well.
• The research we did to learn and re-create a musical style which we were not especially familiar with.
• We believe that we have greatly improved the original track and have added new meaning to the song.
• The reggae section. It works really well and adds interest and it drives the song to a satisfying end (we really like the final bell sound).
• The improvisational approach we took to develop the remix. We were not afraid to try out new concepts and discard those that did not work.

Final Remix Wav Files:

Behind the Scenes Videos:

YouTube Music Video to Accompany 'Children' Remix:

Split Studio Session 15. The final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Produce a final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We all had identified small problems with our  previous mastered mix. The main ones being:

• The tremolo guitar was masked in the mix.
• The gunshot's were slightly too quiet.
• The horse whinny was slightly too loud.
• The reggae drums were being masked towards the end of the song.
• The vocals were slightly over-powering at times.
• The bell sound was slightly too quiet.
• The final bell's reverb tail was cut-off prematurely.

The various volume levels were adjusted using volume automation to get a better balance.
We added a small amount of compression to the vocals to prevent them overpowering the finale section. We also adjusted the level of compression on the reggae drums and increased the volume slightly to bring them forward in the mix.

We then produced a final master of the track using the following plugins;

• Studio Equaliser: Boosted the 200Hz frequency by 3dB to enhance the kick drum, boosted the 2kHz frequency by 3dB to help bring the vocals forward.
• Multi-band compressor:  Used a high threshold level and a 2:1 ratio to lightly compress the peaks. We wanted to retain as much of the dynamic range as possible.
• Stereo Enhancer: Used very sparingly to improve the stereo definition without adding unwanted artefacts.
• Limiter: Used very sparingly to slightly squash the loudest peaks during the song's crescendo.
• UV22HR dither tool. This was used as we are mixing down down from 24-bit to 16-bit resolution at 44.1 KHz.

Split Studio Session 14 (evening). First mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Produce a first mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We approached the mix by dropping all faders in Cubase. We then increased the fader for the drum track to zero to use as a starting point. We then faded up the bass, guitars, trumpets, whistle and effects one by one to achieve a balanced mix. We used the orchestral theme from 'Hang'em High' as a reference track to help achieve a good sounding mix. We found that we had to use volume automation to achieve a balanced mix because the song naturally builds in loudness as it progresses and the correct level for some instruments (such as guitars) for the crescendo were too loud at the start of the track. We also automated the panning to cause the gunshot and ricochet effects to bounce across the speakers. We also deleted some tracks which were masking other tracks and which were not adding anything to the mix themselves. We then mastered the track using the following plugins; Multi-band compressor, Studio Equaliser, Stereo Enhancer, Limiter and the UV22HR.

When listening to this master we all thought that the level of some parts of the guitar tracks was too high and the whistle was too low. We went back and remixed the song accordingly and remastered the song to a 16-bit 44.1 KHz wav file.

We were very happy with this new master file.

Next Steps

Listen critically to the 'Behind the Sun' master track over the next week and use the next split studio session to give the track a final polish if required.

Split Studio Session 13. Added an alternative bass line and an organ sound from an external synthesiser.

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Finish the recording of new material for 'Behind the Sun'. We planned to record an alternative reggae bass line. We also planned to use an external hardware synthesiser (to show that we are able to use external MIDI hardware).

What was achieved

Mike recorded a new reggae bass line on a Yamaha bass guitar connected directly to cubase via a DI input. The new bass line fits much better as is more interesting than the previous bass line it replaced.

As part of the assessment we needed to show that we are able to connect and successfully use external hardware. We therefore connected MIDI keyboard to the Roland JV2080 synthesiser and connected its stereo outputs to cubase line inputs 3 and 4. We used a preset organ type sound to record a new stereo track which complements the existing guitar skanks. Lee had heard something similar on the Bob Marley track 'Is this Love?'.

We added some further guitar harmonies to the skanks towards the end of the song to add interest.

Next Steps

Perform a final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'. 

Split Studio Session 12 (evening). Final mix and master of 'Children' Track

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Perform final mix and master of the 'Children' remix.

What was achieved

Mike pitch shifted the delayed outro guitars up an octave and created a new Cubase track. This was done to add interest and some additional variation to the final outro section.

We all thought that the cymbal crashes were too loud and were distracting from the mix at times. Lee re-edited the drum track in reason to remove many of the cymbal hits to thin out and reduce the overall level of the cymbals.

We then exported the drum track from Reason as a 24-bit WAV file. We exported the main Cubase project (minus drums) as a 24-bit WAV file. These files together with a synth track that was created by Bob at home in Cubase 6.5 as a wav file were imported into a new 'pre-master' project in cubase and was mixed down to a single 24-bit WAV file.

This WAV file was then imported into a 'Final Master' project where the following plugins were used:

1. Multi-band compressor. A small amount of compression was used (ratio 2:1) and the low frequencies (under 100Hz) and high frequencies (over 10KHz) were attenuated slightly by 2 - 3 dB
2. Studio Equaliser. The frequencies around 150 Hz were boosted by 3dB to give a better definition to the kick. The frequencies around 6KHz were also boosted by about 3dB to help clarify the lead guitar.
3. Stereo Enhancer. A pre-set of 'Mastering - More Room' was used to widen the stereo  field.
4. Limiter. The limiter was used very sparingly and the threshold was set to only just prevent a few loud transients from clipping. Most of the time the limiter was not actual doing anything.
5. UV22HR. This was used to provide a random dither to the least significant bit of the output when mixing down from 24-bit to a 16-bit 44.1KHz WAV file.

The output from this process is our completed 'Children' track at CD quality (i.e. 16-bit 44.1 KHz WAV file).

Next Steps

Complete 'Behind the Sun' Remix. Bob to produce technical video of what we did to create our 'Children' track.

Split Studio Session 11 - Mixing 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Start mixing 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We first made some simple changes to the arrangement. We EQ'ed the gun shots to tone down the high frequencies to place them further back in the mix. We also EQ'ed the guitars. At this point Loz, our tutor, came into our room and we played him our rough mix. He liked our concept and arrangement of the track. However he wondered why we had toned down the reggae part of the track. We explained that it seemed to us that it did not fit well with the track. Loz thought that it could work really well but it conflicted with the style of the original drum track. He encouraged us to be bold and to embrace, and run, with our original concept.

We therefore stopped what we were doing and revisited the arrangement of the song. We found some reggae style drum loops in Reason. We exported these as wav files and imported them into our Cubase project to replace the original drum track where the reggae feel is introduced. Lee experimented with some new bass riffs using a virtual synth in Cubase. Having worked out a bass riff which works well we will need to re-record it using a bass guitar.

Next Steps

Bob to book the bass guitar for the evening session. Bob also booked out a fender guitar and a Shure SM57 mic in case we needed to re-record any other parts for 'Behind the Sun'.

Bob booked the Roland EF-303 effects processor for our evening session to allow pitch shifted delays to be added to the outro section of the 'Children' track. This will also let us demonstrate the use of external hardware processors.

Split Studio Session 10 (evening)

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Improve final mix for 'Children'. Add recorded vocals and sound effects to 'Behind the Sun'.

What was achieved

After repeated listens to our first mastered version of 'Children'. The following shortcomings were noted:

1. The lead guitar part was panned slightly to the left of the mix. This gave the mix a slightly lop-sided feel.
2. The kick drum was not prominent in the mix.
3. The crash cymbals were over-powering.  

We spent the first hour of our evening sessions correcting these faults. We re-panned the lead guitar to the centre of the mix. Lee added another midi track to Reason containing a different kick drum sound. When mixed with the original kick drum this increased allowed the kick drum to be more prominent in the mix. This also had the effect of moving the cymbal crashes back in the mix. However when mastering, and a compressor and limiter was applied to the final stereo output, the cymbals again became too dominant in the mix. We decided to tackle this issue at a later date because we wanted to concentrate on 'Behind the Sun' for the remainder of our evening session.

We had booked out a selection of mics to record vocal sounds. We used a shure SM57 mic to record Lee whistling a spaghetti western style refrain. When a large reverb was added it created the evocative intro sound we wanted.

We used a D112 kick drum mic to record Lee creating a horse gallop rhythm by slapping his thighs. We used EQ to boost the bass frequencies to give a realistic horse galloping sound and rhythm. We also recorded Lee jangling some coins to create a horse bridle sound. We used the D112 to record Bob thumping the door to create a kick drum sound. We also used the D112 to record Bob, Lee and Mike individually shouting 'Hoos' and 'Haas'. When mixed together they  gave a great backing sound we could use. The D112 mic seemed to work well in this role as it rolls off the higher frequencies which automatically places these sound effects further back in the mix.

Bob had previously researched and downloaded the following sound samples from the internet: a horse whinny, a rattle snake's rattle, and a variety of gunshots with ricochets. These sounds fitted well in the mix and were all used.

We then performed a very rough mix to get a view on how it sounded so far. Various ideas were tried and experimented with. Some were kept and some were rejected. In particular, we decided to tone down the reggae feel, we kept the rhythm guitar skanks but removed the reggae bass riff. We have also dropped the idea giving the track a dub-step feel as we all thought that it would conflict with the overall feel of the song as it has developed so far.

We were all very pleased with our progress so far. The spaghetti western sound seems to really work for this song. 

Next Steps

Sort out the problem with the cymbals for the 'Children' mix.

Critically listen to our 'Behind the Sun' remix over the next week to decide if there are any more parts that could be added. Lee is going to try to produce a drum track to see if that adds anything to the song. We then need to mix the track.

Split Studio Session 9 - Adding instrumental tracks to 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Add bass guitar, lead guitar and some MIDI sounds.

What was achieved

Mike recorded a couple of bass guitar tracks using a DI's bass guitar. Mike recorded a reggae style bass section as well as a simpler bass line. Mike then created a patch within the Zoom G2 guitar effects pedal to create a fender guitar sound with some moderate distortion. Playing low twangy sounding notes plus simple vibrato lead notes gives a distinctive spaghetti western sound. Lee found a tubular bell sound in a Reason soundbank which he then exported from Reason as a wav file, and then imported it into the Cubase project. This distinctive bell sound also gives the track a distinctive spaghetti western feel. Lee also used a trumpet sound from the Halion synthesiser in Cubase to add an evocative spaghetti western trumpet backing sound. Three trumpet tracks were added to create a trumpet harmony. Bob suggested that each trumpet track is offset by a few milliseconds to give a more natural feel to the overall trumpet harmony. 

Next Steps

In the evening session (when it is quieter in the split studios) we plan to record some vocal sound effects. Bob booked a selection of mics to try out. We may include other sound effects (e.g. a horse whinny, rattle snake etc).  We also plan to use some outboard MIDI hardware to create some further sound effects. Bob booked the Roland JV 2080 and Waldorf Blofeld MIDI synthesisers for the evening session. 

Split Studio Session 8 (evening) - Mixing and mastering 'Children'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Improve drum sounds. Add Bob's intro and outro parts. Mix and master the track.

What was achieved

Lee routed the snare drum to its own reverb unit in Reason to thicken the snare sound. Lee also added some new big sounding outro drums (with lots of reverb to push them back in the mix). Lee also changed the MIDI velocity on some of the rides and toms to give a more organic and human feel to the drums. Mike deleted the delayed guitar part on the first section of the song. This gave the song more room to build as it progresses. Mike also deleted the lead guitar to feature the bass guitar solo in the middle of the song. Again this added more interest and variety to the song. Bob added low synthesiser sweep sound plus a stuttery synth sound to the start of the track. This stuttery synth slowly fades out and the delayed guitar rhythm slowly fades in. This builds tension up to the point where Mike's lead guitar kicks in. The same stuttery synth sound was also added to the song's outro section which together with Lee's drums gives a big industrial style sound. The synth sounds were slowly faded down and abruptly finish with a long reverb tail to give a sense of poignancy.

Next Steps

Critically listen to track over next few weeks to see how well the mix stands to repeated listening with fresh ears. Show it to other people to get critical feedback. Review feedback obtained and re-mix and re-master if required.

Split Studio Session 7 - Planning and recording for 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Start remix of 'Behind the Sun' by Hhymn. Record electric and bass guitar. Explore further musical ideas.

What was achieved

The basic idea that we had come up with previously was to remix 'Behind the Sun' with a spaghetti western feel with reggae and dub step elements.

Mike played 'skank' style chords using a clean electric guitar sound which was DI'd to create simple reggae feel. Mike also played some harmonised chords using the guitar's tremolo arm to add a characteristic sound associated with old style western film sound tracks.

The bass guitar was not available to us to use in this session so we listened to some classic Ennio Morricone western sound tracks to get some more ideas. We identified several classic sounds and effects as follows: Vocal "Ahh's" and "Ha's", whistling, church bells, whip cracks, horses galloping, horse bridles shaking, castanets, shaker (rattle snake sound), jangly de-tuned electric guitar sounds.

The sound of a brass trumpet is also very characteristic in spaghetti westerns. We found a good solo trumpet sound in the Cubase Halion synthesiser presets which we could use.

Next Steps

Mike to create a patch for his guitar effects peddle to re-create a thin, distorted sound similar to that used in spaghetti western films.

Bob to book split studio every Thursday night until further notice to give us time to record and mix 'Behind the Sun'.

Bob to book synthesisers for next Thursday's lesson: JV2080 and Waldorf Pulse. We want to use these synths to create dub-step bass sounds.

Bob to book mics for next Thursday evening: SM57, D112, E602 and 2 x AKG C414.

Bob to try and obtain samples to use as sound effects (e.g. whip cracks etc). 

Split Studio Session 6 - Recording bass and clean rhythm guitar

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

To record bass guitar and a clean sounding rhythm guitar. Add eq, compression and reverb/chorus effects to these tracks.

What was achieved

Bob played his idea for the intro to Mike and Lee and they both liked it. As it was created using Cubase 6.5, Bob will need to export the new intro sound from his computer as a wav file to be incorporated intro our Cubase 5.5 project at Confetti.

Mike's guitar was connected directly to Cubase via a DI box. Clean (i.e. undistorted) guitar chords were played. This new guitar track was then EQ'ed with a high pass filter and some top end frequencies were boosted to brighten the sound to stop it being smothered in the mix. As the input signal was very dry, reverb was added as a send effect in Cubase to make it sound more natural.

Mike also used a bass guitar to record a bass track. Again this was DI'd directly into Cubase. Compression was added to smooth out the bass sound. The threshold was set fairly low and a ratio of around 4 to 1 applied to ensure that some louder bass notes were pulled back to give an even and punchy sound. Chorus was added as a send effect to thicken the sound and add definition. The bass was also EQ'd with a high pass filter to remove frequencies below 40Hz. A low pass filter was also applied to remove high frequencies. This was done to keep the bass guitar sound from conflicting with the distorted guitar sound, i.e. to help keep the bass well defined in the mix.

Next Steps

Incorporate Bob's new intro into the Cubase 5.5 project.
Perform final mix and master the track.
Start work on 'Behind the Sun' remix.

Half-Term - Ideas for intro and outro

Team members present: Bob

What was planned

Bob had recently purchased a copy of Cubase 6.5. He wanted to initially use it to explore some new ideas for the intro and outro sections of the 'Children' track.

What was achieved

Because the start of the song was very rhythmical right from the start Bob felt that it would sound more interesting if it gradually got into its rhythm (from a shaky start) almost as though the song was slowly coming to life. Bob also tried fading out the rhythmic guitars at the end of the song (but keeping the low synthesiser notes). The idea was to add a touch of poignancy as the song fades away.

Next Steps

Bob to create and play a rough mix of the amended track to Mike and Lee at our next split studio session to see if they like the intro and outro changes.

Split Studio Session 5 - EQing and Mixing

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

To listen and critically evaluate the rough mix made last session. To perform EQ on the guitar tracks.

What was achieved

We listened critically to the rough mix. The lead guitar sounded a little harsh and the cymbals were a little too prominent.

We EQ'd the rhythm and lead guitar tracks. We used a notch filter to remove some of the harsh frequencies from the guitar distortion sound. We did this by creating a notch filter, applying maximum gain and swept the filter up and down the frequency range. The harsh frequencies were identified and then the notch filter was used to reduce the gain on these frequencies to produce a mellower sound.

A similar EQ process was performed on the lead guitar tracks.

The method that we are using to EQ the mix is to EQ each main part in turn. For example, we first EQ each rhythm guitar track in turn. We then listen to all rhythm guitar tracks simultaneously and apply EQ to the grouped output. We then do the same for the lead guitars etc. We finally listen and adjust the EQ as necessary to ensure that each part sits well will all of the other parts.

The track containing the delayed rhythm guitar sound was split into three separate tracks, one holding the intro part, one holding the verse part and one holding the outro part. This will give us more flexibility and control when performing the final mix.

We noticed that the rhythm guitar and harmony guitar tracks sounded unbalanced in the mix. We discovered that this was due to the way that they had been parallel compressed and panned to each side of the stereo mix. Mike re-routed the guitar sound from the left side of the mix to a left-panned parallel compressor track and the guitar tracks on the right of the mix to a right-panned parallel compressor track. This fixed the problem.

We then adjusted the faders on each track to further refine the mix.

Next Steps

Book bass guitar and DI box for next session.
Mike to bring his guitar to next session to record a clean guitar rhythm track.
Lee will investigate whether individually adjusting the MIDI velocity values for the percussion track will improve the percussion sound with the aim of making it more 'organic'.
Bob will try out some experimental ideas for the intro and outro sections at home which he will share with the group after half-term.
Mike will explore some rough ideas over half-term for our next remix of 'Behind the Sun' by Hhymn 

Split Studio Session 4 (evening) - Recording

Team members present: Mike and Lee

What was planned

A split studio session from 6pm until 9pm was booked. The main aim of this session was to create rhythm guitar and rhythm guitar harmony tracks.

What was achieved

Rhythm guitar tracks were recorded. It was decided to double track the rhythm guitar and rhythm harmony tracks into the stereo mix panned to the left and right. This was done to make the guitars sound thicker, fuller, and 'beefier'.

Compression was added to the guitar tracks to 'tighten' up the sound.

The it was decided to leave the guitar solo unchanged because it now seemed to fit in with the fuller rhythm guitar  sound.

A copy of the Reason drum track was made and incorporated into Cubase to beef up the cymbal sounds.

A rough mix was then undertaken to get a feel for the overall sound. This will need to be refined later.

Next Steps

Record bass guitar track (this should be the last bit or recording to do). Add huge (helmsdeep) reverb on fake drop delays together with some filter effects. Need more bass on outro synth to give a big bass sound on the finale. 

Split Studio Session 3 - Incorporating the drum track

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

WHAT WAS PLANNED

Incorporate drum track into Cubase project.

WHAT WAS ACHIEVED

We copied the reason data to the same folder as the Cubase project. We opened the file in Reason 6 and then used re-wire to attach Reason to the Cubase project. Due to the common use of the reference track in Reason and Cubase, the drum track synchronised perfectly with the guitar elements previously recorded on Cubase.

We created and labelled a marker track to make it easier to see and navigate around the structure of the song.

Some of the drum sounds were too loud. We edited the raw MIDI data within reason to reduce the velocity value of the drum sounds which were too loud.

We listened to several of Mike's guitar solos played simultaneously. It was way too much and over the top but we all liked the squealing guitar sound in the middle of the guitar solo when simultaneously played by 4 guitars. We cut out that section on all 4 guitar tracks to keep for the final mix.

We started work on creating a background synthesiser pad sound. We selected the Divinity patch on the Spector virtual synthesiser to create some slowly changing chord sounds.

Bob backed up all Cubase and Reason data files to an external 500GB hard disk drive. Bob will backup all data to a separate folder on the backup hard drive for each session at the end of each studio session. Doing this will enable us to go back and retrieve data from any past session if data is lost or accidentally deleted in future studio sessions.

NEXT STEPS

Record rhythm guitar. Re-record guitar solo with less gain on the distortion sound.

Split Studio Session 2 (evening) - Recording

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

We had booked split studio S203 from 6pm until 9pm to start to record some guitar tracks (and maybe a drum track if there was time).

What was achieved

Mike brought along a mixdown wav file that he had created at home using Guitar Pro to use as a reference/guide track. We loaded it into a new Cubase project. Mike connected his guitar through a Zoom G2 effects pedal to a DI box which was connected to the mixer via the patch bay. At first we noticed a background hum was present on a test recording but after re-assigning the output port of the recording track in Cubase to another port, the hum disappeared. Mike used a 1/8D delay setting in Cubase at 140BPM to achieve an interesting rhythmic effect. Mike wanted to record two separate tracks with the same rhythm so they could be panned left and right in the mix to create a wide acoustic backing in the mix. Recording the complex rhythm accurately twice proved to be quite a challenge for Mike and it took many failed attempts before he finally succeeded.

Lee noticed that another split studio was free and decided to use it to create the drum track in Reason 6. This meant that both Mike and Lee could work simultaneously, saving time. Lee loaded Mike's reference track into Reason at 140 BPM and used it to create a complete MIDI drum track. Bob worked with Lee on the drum track and make a few constructive suggestions which Lee incorporated.

Mike recorded a guitar solo using heavy distortion. We reviewed it and were very impressed. However we decided that the gain used on the distortion was slightly overdone and Mike plans to re-record his guitar solo.

Bob kept technical notes of what we were doing and also took some video. Bob will use the video footage to create a technical 'making of' video at the end of the remix.

Next Steps

We need to add the drum track to the Cubase project. We need to review the overall sound far and make some tweaks to polish the initial sound.

Split Studio Session 1 - Sound test

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was achieved

We wanted to test the sound of Mike's guitar when connected to Cubase using Cubase's delay, flanging and reverb effects.

We found that a delay of 1/8D gave mike the effect he wanted to produce a very interesting backing rhythm.

We tested that the Zoom G2 guitar effects pedal also produced the sound we required when connected to Cubase via a DI box.

The above tests have given us confidence that we will not need to bring guitar amps to our remix recording sessions.

We discussed several musical ideas for the 'Children' remix. It will be a metal track with a dance edge.

We intend to book out of hours studio time to enable us get ahead with our remixes and to gauge our progress.

Next Steps

Mike and Lee to work on the musical arrangement for 'Children' and to also plan the musical structure of the song. We aim to record some rhythm and lead guitar tracks at the next studio session.

Initial plan

We discussed what we wanted to achieve in this project. Our initial plan is as follows:

To remix two tracks to be completed by the end of the autumn term:

1. Remix 1 would be a remix of "Children" by Robert Miles. We would re-record and remix this track as a metal style track.
2. Remix 2 would be a remix of "Behind the Sun" by Hhymn. The style would be based on a spaghetti western/dubstep breakdown music style.

We decided to tackle "Children" first as Mike and Lee already had some musical ideas they wanted to explore and record. We plan to get this remix done relatively quickly to give us more time to tackle "Behind the Sun". The style we plan to use for "Behind The Sun" is unfamiliar to us and so will present a real challenge.