hunz » RpmSong5

The song list order, final names and album title #rpm

hunz — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:54:43 +0000

So I’ve tagged all the songs now with the official names. Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I feel like we have some solid names going on.

Hunz – Thoughts that Move

01 – It’s so Light [Rpm Song02]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day19-song02-v05.mp3)

02 – Soon, Soon [Rpm Song03]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day24-song03-v04.mp3)

03 – Car in the Meadow [Rpm Song07]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day24-song07-v04.mp3)

04 – The Messenger [Rpm Song09]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day21-song09-v02.mp3)

05 – Enough to Make You Smile [Rpm Song10]

06 – Long Road [Rpm Song01]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day12-longroad-song01-v05.mp3)

07 – You Said Hello [Rpm Song08]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmixmaster-day28-you-said-hello-song08-v07.mp3)

08 – In Tomorrow [Rpm Song06]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day19-song06-v07.mp3)

09 – Switch Off [Rpm Song04]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmixmaster-day28-switch-off-song04-v04.mp3)

10 – The Commotion [Rpm Song05]
Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day16-song05-v04.mp3)

Mastering this thing all day tomorrow. Will express my thoughts about that through the day.

#Rpm Mixing Day16 Song5 V4

hunz — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:29:46 +0000

So here is another mix from mark for your ears. This song is near complete. I do want to make some minor changes (that’s if I get time). Some involve the over usage of the crash on the accents and some double kicks that are killing the groove for me. Extending the “Go!” movement and some other little things here and there .. That’s about it. Enjoy.

Download audio file (hunz-rpmmix-day16-song05-v04.mp3)

Loading mix up: having a few listens to get familiar with the sounds and what the song is doing. Lots of channels! Kinda wish Renoise had colour-coded channels so we can find our way around massive mixes like this. It’s an aggressive mix, but hunz has already done a fantastic job…
As always, starting off with the low sounds – so checking the bass. Not much to change so adding a lite EQ to shape the sound. Removing panning envelope from the bass and adding a light vibrato to the instrument. Making up for the ‘flow sound’ by adding a stereo chorus with a mono low end.
Now to the kick. Slightly adjusting the EQ. Hmm, the drum reverb is a little stiff sounding so I might add a light pre-phaser. Playing the kick off the bass to check balance. Sounding good.
Onto the fat noisy snare. Found the complex chain to make the sound, so I’m adjusting the final EQ.
Looking at the high hat line. Adjusting the chorus and adding a wide delay to build spatiality. Bringing down the volume a touch.
Checking the Perc Hats. Taking a little more low end out of the sound.
Listening to the Perc Snare which is a delightful little glitchy sound. All good.
Now to the crashes. Removing some of the intensity out of the mids with an EQ.
Playing all the drum sounds together. Panning the glitchy snare a little to the left. Making some minor adjustments here and there. Fine tuning the snare sound. All up it’s a hard industrial like sound, but that’s good because it suits the song.
Now onto Synth 01. Adjust the EQ to clear the sound. The ‘width’ of the sound is kinda screwing with my ears (I’m a bit of a ‘fixed pan with ambience’ sort of guy). Oh there’s a panning envelope in the instrument – might leave that be for hunz to consider.
Looking at Synth 02. Making the flanger width mono. Adding an EQ to knock out harsh mids.
Checking the Strings out. Reversing the delay pans to even out the spatiality. Added EQ.
Now to the Sreaming Filter – wow lovely texture here, really industrial. Just adding a Bandpass Filter to knock out some noise from the highs and low end.
Playing all the melodic sounds together to see how they gel. Further adjusting the bass EQ.
Now adding all the percussion to the mix to see how that balances with the melodic sounds. Upping the ratio on the drum compressor to tighten it a bit. Bringing up the bridge synth a bit. High hat need some reverse pan delay on it to balance the width.
Ok all sounding workable, might be time to rest the ears and walk Max
Time for a short session, so it may be good to begin cleaning the vocal samples. The usual top and tail fades etc.
Playing all the vocal parts together acapella. Lovely harmonies!
Some distortion on the chorus vocal – and hunz has planned the is an intensity effect like old tube mic performances. Might try to warm that up a bit – adjusted the tone and distortion type.
As with the other songs I’m sending all the vocal sounds to a master send to do group processing over the entire vocal sound. Set up an EQ but I can to stop early due to rehearsals being shifted early.
Back to it! Shaping an EQ for the vocals. Adjusting the volume of the chorus vocal. Adding a master filter to the vocals to brighten the tone a bit.
Turning off the main vox to just hear the backing vocals. Doing some subtle changes to the backing vox to make sure there’s no low end interference.
Time to play the whole mix! Listening through a few times… Upped the entire vocal my just a few tiny pixels…
Things are sounding complete, so time to check on headphones. Just discovered the verse vocal is inverted L-R! Hmm, I kinda prefer it mono, but hunz may have wanted it that way for a reason. I’ll settle with mono for now and hunz can switch it back if he so wishes. Just discovered the bridge vocal is the same. Hmmm… A solution is needed. Ok added a stereo chorus that hopefully covers the task for both vocal parts.
Switching back to speakers. Things a feeling right, but it’s getting late so I may have to do a final check on the morrow.
Fresh early morning session: Time to play it really loud! Put a master fade on the outro of the song to return the audio to zero.
Checked the mix on the big speakers in another room. Everything sounds like where it should be.
Saving, and done! Time to pass back to hunz.

#Rpm Day15 Song5 v4

hunz — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:59:54 +0000

I started out really wanting to do 2 tracks today, but I only got one out. But it is complete. I would still love to tweak it some more — layering and work out what’s going on with it all, BUT it’s done for RPM. I’ll pick it up again at the end if there is time. I really enjoyed working with this song. It is something different, and that’s always great when melodies come along and aren’t what you know. Also need a name for this one… apparently ‘Pigs with Wheels’ is now taken, people.

Download audio file (hunz-rpmday15-song05-v04.mp3)

Hunz Song5 Version4

Verse
You call me, yeah, always.
I just found the phone.
Can I clean the driveway,
The entrance to home?

Chorus
My heart it floods with emotions
While, my eyes deny what I see
My mind can’t stop the commotion
And I need you now; release me

Verse
I’ll hold you in sorrow
When I get back there
It might be tomorrow
Do you want my care?

Chorus
My heart it floods with emotions
While, my eyes deny what I see
My mind can’t stop the commotion
And I need you now; release me
My heart it floods with emotions
While, my eyes deny what I see
My mind can’t stop the commotion
And I need you now; release me

Bridge
Go! I didn’t know you’d go, I didn’t know you.

Chorus
My heart it floods with emotions
While, my eyes deny what I see
My mind can’t stop the commotion
And I need you now release me

Don’t know why, but it’s taking ages for my laptop [xps1330] to boot
3 resets and then I unplugged everything, saw it fix the problem
Working on Song5
I’m going to mix the drums a bit first. I want to make it more lazy and messy.
Really want the sounds to be more awkward
Snare is leading the 1 beat. I’m going to create a fake 1 count for it by adding another snare channel with more bottom end/mids.
A one count is something used in funk where EVERYTHING, no matter what, has to at least have something going on the one beat on the phrase. This helps create the funk.
I split the snare up. I cause a delay on the high end and distort the low end.
Decided to delay the low end of the snare send (10-15ms) and then resend the original send into the snare master.
Thick and a bit phaz-ee
Placed Scream Filter on high end pass sound – pleasant surprise.
Tweaked it a bit, and this will help flavor the one
Going to get a crash going. No this isn’t a BSOD moment; it’s a Crash Cymbal
Don’t know if people realize this, but I tend not to use crashes. Personally they hurt my ears, and there are other ways to do what they do in music.
In this case the Crash is a perfect “in your head” moment where you know it usually hits on the one, so it’ll help compliment the awkward count of this tune.
This is a perfect time to announce that I love sends in Renoise. It’ll be neater when they have groups and channels that you can expand and write in, but this works a charm.
Putting on a light verb on the Kit Master then using Pre-delay to help with the messiness
Pulling accents out of the chorus for the drums to follow
It is sounding very indie electronic. Nice.
Also managed to get some double kick action in there for my drummer.
Trying to write lyrics .. T_T .. it’s hard, people, very hard to write lyrics. I feel like the chorus is so cliche, makes me sad.
Lol, there are baby birds making this hideous high pitch noise. Going to put that in the break down if I can.
Lunch
Came back fresh ears putting down bridge bit
Going to layer this out and then stop it to bring in chorus.
Going to be a nice escape moment but with energy in it.
Just mixing and arranging trying to find the right balance in everything
doing vocals takes again
finishing up the track again
the mix is really rough and has lost some dynamics. the vocals are too loud
Wow took over 10mins to render .. scary!

It is time for bed people. I have decided to take Song8 version1 and make that a new song. So I have completed the 10 (is that cheating .. lol). I’ll be taking some time off work to put this together, AND I have some much needed help, which I’ll announce tomorrow. And everyone said .. “HUZZAH!” I think I can do this people, if not we at least have 3 nice tunes .. huh, huh? When I get tired, I get a bit silly .. excuse me.

#Rpm Day4 Song5 v2

hunz — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:29:37 +0000

So it wasn’t another easy night. It started off with me plugging in my usb synth keyboard, I normally just use the laptop keys to create music. I thought playing and singing would help, and then I could lay it all down. You know, do something different. I came up with this very neat chord progression, and then everything just fell apart after I placed it in renoise and tried to find a vocal melody over it. I tried to push it here and there, but nothing would work. I let it breathe and just wrote what came back, and this is the result.

Download audio file (hunz-rpm05-02.mp3)

Hunz RPM05 02

Wanting to write something a bit more epic sounding
Came up with a nice unresolved chord progression
The sample I drew in and made into an instrument is demanding more of the spotlight
New progress came with playing on the synth keyboard
Expanded this out
Happy with how it sounds
Pulled in various snare/hats/kicks I’ve collected
heard a very strong beat as the notes played through ..
been mixing in headphones
about to change over to speakers
Sounds ok
Placed everything together
it just sounds normal
tweaking things a bit
Scrapped movement completely
Twisted drum timing around (snare – Kick)
Trying to just make the 10pm Deadline
Mix is terrible but a concept is there not very happy with this one either

I am so exhausted. I almost took tonight off to rest up (after my 1am last night), but I just needed to reach the half way mark for the 1st phase of writing. I secretly want to complete 11 – 12 tunes and then select the 10 that will work together.. shhh. I also fear the fact that most of these songs lack some middle8 movements .. Hope you are enjoying the journey. It’s certainly different to churn songs out night after night. I usually only write when I feel like it, so I find myself trying to put myself in the mood to write. I have to shout out to my amazing wife too, Thank you! On another note, I kinda regret putting (with previews) in the title .. lulz