8/05/18
Sharing A Song - 8/14/18 (Post 1)
So how does one take what they hear in their head and get it into a form to share? Short of a Vulcan mind meld, its either a live performance or a recording. The previous postings were a journey of bringing a song into existence culminating in lyrics and an understanding of the underlying music. To record and produce a song requires many other tools, skills, and processes. This effort has its own aspects of creativity. For these next set of posts, I will walk through my process. But it is by no means the only way or even the best way. It is the way that works for me. For those inclined feel free to ask questions or share your methods.
This blog will be a bit more technical but I will keep it grounded upon how the song will sound. For audio illustration, I will probably have to imbed videos. I will figure that out as we go along. But, there is time for that as the next few posts will be about the recording environment and the song’s plan. It starts with a plan. Well sort of, it really all starts with coffee.
Welcome to Locust Studio, have a look around. What’s that? Where is all the equipment? You know, the mix board, the compressor, filter banks, reverb units, and the multi-track tape machine.
Oh your old school - chuckles with amusement. That’s all done in the computer now: digital audio work station (DAWS) if you like jargon. Even the instruments and amps can be modeled.
My set-up is a modest home studio. An iMac running Logic Pro for the DAWS. Two Apogee Quartets chained for input and output. Cube monitors for playback. A couple of condenser microphones: one for vocals and the other for instruments. As a key board player, my main instrument is a Korg Nautilus which I augment with a Korg Triton and M1 (now in software). For guitar parts I use my Les Paul Custom or my Dove Acoustic depending on the feel of the song.
My general approach is to record dry (no effects) and then add effects (wet) during production. I occasionally use discrete equipment such as a mix board and external effects for wet recordings. For instance, I may mix up a wet guitar solo recorded through a mic’d up amp to get that desired analog distorted sound. It really depends how much control over the sound I wish to have.
That control is now achieved in the Logic Pro set-up for the song and a resulting dynamic mix. So future posts will go into this a bit more.
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