Now that November is over and I recorded these songs, I can share some notes:
Broken Road:
I wrote this quickly and recorded most of it in one day.
Here's the track list:
- Electric Guitar (Peavey Falcon which is an old Strat clone from the '80s played direct in
- High "plinky" guitar heard from beginning to end
- strong compression (ratio 3.8 with no knee)
- amp/cabinet simulator with a little bit of overdrive
- high pass filter at about 550Hz
- panned moderate right
- Lower tone "fuzzy" guitar that comes in and out to fill out the tone
- EQ with strong cut of low/mid (around 550Hz)
- Light compression (ratio below 2, some knee)
- Amp with a good amount of overdrive
- panned moderate left
- These were sent to a stereo bus with:
- EQ boosting highs around 9000 and a narrow cut at around 4000Hz
- stereo chorus
- reverb
- Drums (a standard kit played once through)
- Condensor mic placed high
- EQ boosting highs (9000Hz and above) and a narrow boost around 1200Hz
- Expander (gate) to cut ambient noise and truncate drum hit decay
- panned moderate right
- Cardioid mix placed on the floor in front of the kick
- EQ low pass around 500Hz, boost around 1500Hz
- Strong expander
- Heavy reverb
- panned light left
- These were sent to a stereo bus with:
- Light reverb
- Background vocals (condensor mic)
- Two tracks doubled (the high vocal harmony on the chorus sung twice)
- hard-panned left/right
- These were sent to a stereo bus
- Heavy compression (ratio about 9, no knee)
- Stereo chorus
- Light reverb
- Piano (Yamaha digital keyboard direct in)
- EQ with high end boost, boost at 5600Hz, cut at 800Hz
- reverb
- panned left
- Bass (electric upright double bass)
- No effects
- Panned light left
- "Funny" bass (just the downward slides after "rains lead" in verse 2)
- Long delay (about 1200ms)
- hard-panned right
- Birds
- A sound I found on FreeSound, released with no rights reserved
- panned slight right
- Lead vocal (condensor mic, sung close to the diaphram with a pop screen)
- Strong high pass filter (cut everything below 60Hz, boost everything above 6000Hz), boost 4400Hz, boost 300Hz
- Heavy compression (ratio of 6, slight knee, quick attack, long release)
- Guitar fuzz pedal
- Long delay synced to the half note duration
- Reverb
There was another guitar track I recorded but I just muted it.
My guitars were not tuned to the piano so I had to pitch shift the piano recording a few cents (I think I didn't get it right even then: the piano still sounds sharp to me).
I love the chord progression on the chorus, but I failed to really hit the transition chords that tonicize the minor V and then go back to tonic.
The third verse and following chorus (after the bridge) had very wonky timing so I just cut the drums out and that made it sound more open, and also dramatized the final chorus. In retrospect, I should have removed the backing vocals and pieces of the plinky guitar and piano to make it more sparse.
I added the birds because the expander/gates were making way too sudden and obvious cuts to zero dB during the pause and I couldn't figure out to smooth it out. I considered just adding some white noise or dithering or something and then just decided to use a sound effect. Maybe birds was too on the nose.
I did all my recording through an M-Audio Omnistudio A/D converter with phantom power for the condensor mic. This connected to a laptop by USB, running Ubuntu Linux with audio priority settings running PipeWire which controls JACK. The DAW is Ardour 6.9 which is an older version offered for free under a GNU license.
M-Audio does not make or support the Omnistudio anymore but I was able to find drivers for Linux that someone had coded a long time ago and with some trial and error was able to get the settings right. I fear changing my system simply because that was a pain and I do not want to have to do it again.
