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.