sEEthIng — a songlet

As I mentioned yesterday, I was needing to get out of my writer head, who wants nothing at all to do with writing (for whatever reason). So I have.

I had previous mentioned my intentions of buying virtual synth and maybe upgrading to the subscription model for my DAW. Then I read the fine print: that subscription price on the DAW was only good for a year, and then the price would double. Great deal at the half-off price, terrible at the standard price.

Well, the last thing I want to do is lock myself out of my own music when I decide to no longer subscribe, so I opted out of that plan and redirected those earmarked funds to the second virtual synth I had my eyes on, thereby saving myself some money in the process.

Michael… This is awfully boring, let me skip ahead to your demo song already

I have been playing around with both software emulations of vintage Oberheim analogue synths this evening and discovering that I have a LOT to learn if I want to craft my own synth patches from scratch. My efforts all resulted in crap, crap and more crap — although, the last bit of crap sounded like major improvement over the earlier attempts. So, I’m picking up the ideas, but lacking mastery by any stretch of the imagination.

After a point, I elected to tweak the pre-purchase experiment to test some of the limits of the virtual synth within the DAW environment. I got it up to six instruments playing in tandem without lag or distortion on playback — something that shouldn’t happen and usually means that the software is not very well optimized when it does. For a frame of reference, one of my favorite go-to synths before this would start crapping out on me at three or four instances of the synth playing in tandem.

This didn’t hiccup in the least, which makes me a very happy user.

The mix on the result is very rough and I hear one note that technically is in key, but sounds dissonant to my ears. Dissonance can be a good thing, but it doesn’t sound good to my ears. When I rework this, I will probably give on that note that I am so wed to using and use a root note instead. Poo!

The idea behind this piece is to stretch out the introductory part to leave wide open and airy for vocals that sound like they are in a fog. The buildup before the drums will be lengthened somewhat, with fewer vocals and more incidental stabs/textures to build tension. The drums introduction for the final version of the song is to try and defuse some of that tension and leverage the dynamic nature of the song.

sEEthIng [edit]

All instruments aside from the drums are Oberheim virtual synths, utilizing “out-of-the-box” patches. No tweaks. The drums are from an edited sequenced run of sampled real drums. I probably overdid the ‘verb in this edit, and my stereo balance is rushed. No other effects were added aside from the reverb. Time to arrange, compose and mixdown was only about 3 hours total and it probably shows. Still, I learned a lot about the capabilities of my new tools and I am very pleased with how they sound (as well as their performance).

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there was a slight snafu in making my purchase, entirely my fault. Overnight, the problem resolved itself. But, before I could call up the vender to make sure it was kosher on their end, they called me to make sure I received my licenses and didn’t have any questions about how to get them installed on my PC. Not only that, but they asked a bunch of questions to make sure they understood my future needs and my customer service rep is assigned to me for all future purchases unless I request someone else.

So, a shoutout is definitely in order. Kris at Sweetwater rocked my morning.

Tomorrow, I may tackle the other end of the spectrum of learning how to do things: how best to employ a sequencer to create something more industrial-flavored, which is a sound I’ve been meaning to explore closer to see if I can capture the essence of those 80s-90s bands. These two synths seem to be just the ticket for doing such things.