Song#6 Mei Mun Hang Fook Di Mei Loi (美满幸福的未来) - Final Product & MV

Putting the rest aside, here's the best part.

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

One does not simply blog without intro

Soundcloud upload

Here's the Soundcloud link with thumbnail from Charlie Chaplin's movie still.

Music Video

Initially I planned for a lazy man audio wavelength animation like previous instrumentals, but I remembered about the opening audio edits I made previously. Considering that Clement wasn't game for any MV film shooting, and I neither had the time to spare, I made do with a stock photo of someone playing/busking the guitar by the sidewalk. It was kinda like playing in a public square as initially planned, but whatever :)

For the writing part, I searched for YouTube sensei on how to animate words using my other favourite program Adobe After Effects, which turned out to be rather easy. Here's the screenshot of some settings to take note:

Another video taught me about having the jittery effect by using some random noise generator and mapping that onto a BW clip. I think the video explains it better than I do here, so I'll skip the explaining (also because I'm lazy).

For the rest of the MV, I decided that subbing the singing through YouTube closed caption subs is not effective when porting to Facebook video format. So I chose the hard sub route and made it into a lyric video with some form of pleasing artwork. Where to find such artwork, you may ask? Well, if you have heard of DeviantArt and Danbooru art websites, there would be the Japanese version of it called Pixiv. There I stole correctly attributed anime and Zootopia fanart to their respective artists as artwork fodder for my MV (attribution is in the credits).

Back to the subs, I inserted traditional chinese subs mirrored with english subs in the video. For YouTube's closed captions, I uploaded simplified chinese subs.

In case you haven't realised yet, there is a secret link at the end of the video...Actually it started since song#5 where I blocked out the final 4 characters of the Goo.gl-link-shortener link. So for every subsequent video, every pair would be revealed (there's a total of 3 pairs anyway). In case you are really lazy to check (referring to you dearest :P), here's the screenshot of the video at that exact moment:

Song #5

Song #6

Final Product

Without further ado, here's my humble MV. Thanks for watching! And don't forget to subscribe!

Song#6 Mei Mun Hang Fook Di Mei Loi (美满幸福的未来) - Recording & Mastering Stage

With noting else other than recording the vocals, here's the next post in the series.

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Info on this blog? Click here

Recording

We arranged for a recording session together at my place with my trusty Blue Yeti microphone. Clement did up to three takes and a final take for the bridge and final chorus. LCG on the other hand recorded his rhythm guitar strumming and solo later on with the help of his mini amplifier and a mic-in cable direct to my PC.

I later found out that direct connection often cause cable and electrical noise problems, not to mention that my guitar pre-amp failed in the last minute recording of the solo (LCG had to go outstation immediately). I then opted for recording directly using my Blue Yeti instead of direct cable input and sounds just as good.

To find out more about audio cables, balanced and unbalanced input, I visited this site to learn all about it.

Clement at work and LCC observing

Mastering

With regards to the audio recording, I came across the term called 'comping' audio, which basically means 'compositing' the various takes of the vocal recording. You can learn more about the process through this link here.

The comping for my mixing went something like this:

Verse 1 >Take 2
Verse 2> Take 1
Chorus> take 3
Verse1> take 2
Verse 2>take 2
Chorus > take 2
Bridge > take 3
Final chorus - take 2 under FC

In fact, I planned to have a sing-over the final chorus by the vocalist, which is not possible in one take. This requires layering several takes to be possible.

Layering - the second track is harmony, third is sing-over

I did the same thing to the guitar recordings of the strumming and solo, where LCG had to do up to 5 takes just to get it right.

And so, I ran through the composited audio and exported it to Melodyne for post-processing, before exporting the final result back to Ableton.

Here's a rundown of the tracks on Ableton:

Track view

Arrangement view

As you can see the latest plugin I used for the vocal track was iZotope Nectar, which was recommended by the Red means Recording YouTube channel. Using the VST/plugin was really easy, because they supply you with tons of presets. This round, I used the Basic Enhancement preset, but adjusted for the harmony voices and the reverb amount as you can see from the screenshot below.

Main Vocals

Harmony settings

For the intro before the whole song itself, I thought of scripting it like a typical mandopop love ballad MV opening like this and this.Here, I planned for a scene where the singer/main character is singing his song in a the public square for no particular reason before cutting to a scene where he's writing a letter to the girl describing him sending a copy of this song to her as a memento of their love.

To make the effect of recording a performance in the park, I downloaded royalty free background noise of an actual park from here. Then, I used an EQ with a high-pass filter for the chorus music and vocal tracks to cut out the lower frequencies which typically won't be recorded in an open air environment. For the writing effect, I used the metal bit of the USB connector to scratch on the back of a matte plastic iPad case with my voice over.

Sends to Outdoor Reverb device with EQ8 with highpass

EQ with highpass filter

There's nothing much I can elaborate about the mastering and mixing that wasn't covered in previous songs, as you can see in the master screenshot above. I guess that's all for now!

Stay tuned for Part IV of  IV for this song!

Song#6 Mei Mun Hang Fook Di Mei Loi (美满幸福的未来) - Composing and Arranging Stage

Considering the fact that this is the next post, this has to be part 2. Wilkommen!

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

This is da introduction blog desu~

Arranging

Drawing inspiration from existing classic hits of the same genre, I worked out a rather simple structure of a generic pop song such as:

1. Intro
2. Verse 1
3. Verse  2
4. Chorus
5. Verse 1
6. Verse 2
7. Chorus
8. Bridge
9. Final Chorus
10. Outro

Composing

The selection of instruments this round started with listing down what instruments typical power ballads use - which was rather similar overall, like strings, piano, bass and drums, clean and/or overdrive guitars.

For this song, I thus selected all the above, but added my signature favorite instrument - the vibraphones/vibes, as a device to spice up the mix and mirror the vocals to some extent. The guitar was decided to be recorded using my Custom Acoustic cutneck acoustic guitar with help from my neighbour again, LCG.

Initially, I wanted to help out with the background vocals, but since I suck at reading Cantonese. So, I asked Clement to handle all the singing, while I plan for vocal thickening mixing later on.

This round, I modified an older composition which I shared to Clement as an draft idea at the start of the year, which you can hear below:





Both versions were rather plain, and don't match up to the quality of chord progressions of power ballads today. Fun fact -  those Random 6s were composed 4 years ago!

Therefore, I needed to spice things up creating a proper bridge, a pre-chorus leadup and a key change (F major> C major) in the chorus that is as smooth as butter. Here's the overall chord progression of the new song:

Verse 1
F Bb C7 F-Em7
Dm Gm7 C7 F-C7
(repeat)

Verse 2
C7 F C7 F-Edim
Dm7 Bb Gm C7 D7

Chorus 1
G C D7   G-D
Em7 Dbm7 D G-D
G C D7 G-D
Em7 CM7 D D7 G-C

Chorus 2
G C D7 G-D
Em7 Dbm7 D G-D
G C D7 G-D
Em7 CM7 D D7 G-D

Bridge
G CM7 Em G-D
Em C D7 G-D
Em7 CM7 D G-D

I learned a lot about closely-related keys here where F major - C major - G major are the closest. Basically it refers to moving between keys with the least amount of key signatures like F and G, with C major being the 'home' key. That was what I did to the Verse section progressing to the Chorus section.

The intro to the song was revised from the original Random 6 - to mirror/suit the chorus motif and mood feel. The original would have suited other piano only song, but this is after all a power ballad. I also repeated the intro as the outro, albeit a simpler form.

For the melody/vocals, I opted for a typical swing beat in order to have some flow to the lyrics. Plain singing to the beat suits slower songs, but tends to get boring after a while. After all, swing beats created the jazz style and Broadway hits like Fly Me to the Moon.

For the accompanying instruments like the strings, I tried copying runs for the bridge part, and ordinary three part voicing for the chords section. Then, I added an arppegiator electric piano as a bonus instrument for the verse 2 section. Piano accompaniment was varied in styles throughout to create musical flow, especially the emotional bridge section.

Lyrics

Clement and I went through several discussions regarding the overall theme of the lyrics. All of them included something to do with romantic encounters of couples, but we had to present some coherent plot to the overall lyrics. Some ideas included:

1. Boy meets girl and fall in love
2. A couple already in love and drifts apart
3. A long distance relationship
4. Boy sacrificing all just to be with the girl
5. Guy sending mementos of their relationship to remind his partner, a career successful woman traveling abroad

In the end, we included most of the above into the song. Considering the difficulty of writing beautiful lyrics that not just convey the meaning but sound nice in Cantonese, Clement decided to repeat the verses after the chorus to save effort :P ( it is apparently harder to write than in English - thanks Clement!)

On another note, LCC and Clement brainstormed the title (which had to start with the letter 'M') as the title of this post :  Mei Mun Hang Fook Di Mei Loi (美满幸福的未来)  which means a Happy Future, apparently ;)

Here is the lyrics (Traditional Chinese just like in Hong Kong) in totality:

Verse 1
當天廣場前 遇 見你 
你已經 深 深 吸 引 我 目光
即使當時人群 極 多
我 眼中 只得你
相戀多時感 到 幸福
我感激 你 給 我 甜 蜜 回憶
結識再多人 但 始終
在 我心 只得你

Verse 2
你傷心 我陪伴你 
別再哭 抹去 眼淚
我會給 你快 樂的 記憶
我帶你 遠走 高飛

Chorus 1 & 2
在 這 刻     
我 但願  時間 停頓
和你 在這 擁吻
不想跟你再分 離 
祈求 一起
和你 一世 我願意
還 記 得   
你面前 曾經 承諾
對你 不離 不棄
即使一起面對 難題 
任何 困苦
而 我  …… 
一生都 愛護 你


Bridge
啊……
我要跟你在一起
你 的確 十分完美
我 怎麼 會放棄
啊……
要一世 都歡喜
我跟你 幸福生活
會感覺到圓滿
要 幸福生活
會感覺到圓滿

Chorus 3   
我 但願  時間 停頓
和你 在這 擁吻
不想跟你再分 離 
祈求 一起
和你 一世 我願意
還 記 得   
你面前 曾經 承諾
對你 不離 不棄
即使一起面對 難題 
任何 困苦
而 我  …… 
一生都 會愛 你


I'll put up the English and Simplified Chinese translation in the MV later on, so stay tuned to the final section of this song!

Stay tuned for Part III of  IV for this song!

Song#6 Mei Mun Hang Fook Di Mei Loi (美满幸福的未来) - Idea Stage

Up for another song in another language? I present to you song number 6!
Intro desu~

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Source

I was always fascinated with the Cantopop Mandopop power ballad scene, where most song structure was pretty much the same, ie after the bridge, there is either:

1. Intro/recap of the main chorus, but in a simplified/softer version before dropping back grandly to the original chorus instrumentation and beats.
2. Grand dropback to the original chorus after a short pause or recap of the bridge final phrase.
3. Changing up the key of the chorus

which is rather predictable to say the very least.

Here are the list of well-known hits from this side of the Earth which I got inspiration from like:

1. Justin Lo - 命硬
2. Alan Tam - Friend of Mine | 朋友
3. Guang Liang  - Tong Hua 童话 (Fairy Tale) 
4. BEYOND【海闊天空】

and many others, too numerous to list her. This round I had to engage my friend Clement to write the lyrics in Cantonese, because my Cantonese level is only conversational level. He copied ideas from other songs for the lyrics while I copied the song structure and pacing :)

Why Cantonese? Well, I guess its undeniable that the Cantonese dialect is the language of love just like French. (can't imagine love song hits in Hokkian or Hakka)


Till the next post people!

Stay tuned for Part II of  IV for this song!

Song#5 Yang Ku-cinta Itulah Kamu - Final Product & MV

Tadaaa~ Final Product desu~

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Here's the intro blog on everything you need to know here.

Soundcloud upload

As usual I uploaded to Soundcloud first. <shamelessly promoting link here>
I used a copyright free picture of P.Ramlee himself holding a guitar, which I thought was exactly what my song was all about, guitar and the Malay language.

Music Video

While planning for the MV, I thought of the best way I could film both of us singing, but make it look casual and not formal-like. So, I just scrapped up the idea of driving and recording the whole thing in two takes.

The first problem was the location, which had to be long enough for the whole length of the song, scenic and minimal traffic. "What's the best shot that best represents Penang?" I thought. Well, nothing screams Penang other than the two sea bridges bearing its name! So I worked out the trip from the island to the mainland using Bridge 2 and back again using Bridge 1 which works out to be some 50-60km worth. Location problem solved!

The second problem was the camera kit. Initially I thought of using my pocket camera, the same one used to film the "All on this farm" MV, but struggled with mounting it on the car windscreen. Fortunately, my girlfriend had this car dash cam, which flipping it 180 to face the passengers, made for a rather decent camera replacement. Problem solved!

The third problem was finding stand-ins for the air guitar strumming, which was kinda last minute drama plot event prior to the song start. So I enlisted my neighbours LCC and LCG to do the honourable job of stand-ins and air guitaring in the backseat of my car.

We ended up shooting the first take in the afternoon, about 4pm on the Bridge 2. As I always plan things with two reasons in mind, we took a detour off the final shoot to Frog Hill, near Kepala Batas. Apparently the place was said to resemble some place in China, though all I see is several abandoned mining pools of questionable coloured water.

After spending some time there, we shoot the final take on Bridge 1 at dusk, where this round, my neighbours decided to start looking left and right for the entirety of the song (much wow).

For this MV, I chose a old-timey edit to the song while alternating the takes between take 1 and take 2. Here, YouTube tutorials for Adobe Premiere Pro CC was my best friend. I also made use of the first jazz draft of the song as the credit roll music. The biggest surprise of the shoot was that the car dash cam live preview screen and the eventual video file was different in dimensions. Initially during setup, the live preview screen showed a wide angle capture, which obviously didn't crop my girlfriend and my face - unlike the final recorded file.

Oh well, screw car dash cams next time.

Final Product

Here's the final product <drumrolls>. Thanks for watching!



PS. The Behind the Scenes is here

Song#5 Yang Ku-cinta Itulah Kamu - Recording & Mastering Stage

Putting all the theory out of the way, now is the time for some actual action!

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Info on this blog? Click here

Recording

Initially I thought of using Bigfishaudio's prerecorded riffs (they actually have one for gypsy jazz) just like what I did for the "All on this farm" song Eventually I stumbled upon a great VST that runs on Kontakt, called Django Gypsy Jazz Guitar.

The VST for Rhythm mode looks like this:

Rhythm wonder

And the VST for Lead mode looks like this:

Lead action

Anyway, I programmed the Rhythm and the Lead into 2 separate tracks, with the MIDI input through my Korg microkey MIDI keyboard. In fact, the Kontakt library files is separated into 2 lead voices and 1 rhythm strumming voice.

The great thing about the Rhythm track was that the VST accurately simulates different playing styles - up and down the neck, pick strumming, sliding and many more parameters. All I needed to do is to enter the chords through MIDI and the VST will strum accordingly.

The accompanying Lead track, similar to the actual playing in gypsy jazz was recorded sparingly in between pauses of singing to give it that little flair overall. I found referring to this website very useful in faking some licks and solo runs, go have a look!

-v.v-

On the other hand, recording the singing was a big challenge lately, due to the heavy nightly rain season - for recording is always done at night. The noise level was so loud that I had to record inside the storeroom below my stairs, kinda like Harry Potter. This round I tried out recording direct to my iPad (with the USB camera connection kit) to an app called Rode Rec, and it was awesome! The app at the very least could recognise my Blue Yeti (which apparently can be powered by the iPad) and record in near lossless audio. I then transfered the audioclip back to Ableton on my desktop

Recording my girlfriend's singing however was on a bright sunny weekend afternoon with the neighbors being unusually quiet at that hour. That recording was done in the comfort of my room, phew!

Mastering

This round I shall simplify my explanation with more pictures below.

My setup (Vibraphone, Lounge Lizard and Addictive Drums were just leftover swaps during the VST selection round):

Full setup

In fact, one of my earlier drafts didn't use guitar due to me being unaware of top class VST like Django. However it led to me making the lounge jazz version with Rhodes sounds (Loungelizard VST) which I plan to use later. The sample files per scene is still there for later mixing.

For the Bass track, I opted for the Ableton's stock instrument called Upright4 Far Bass paired with Dada Life's Sausage Fattener like in this picture:

Upright4 Far Bass

On the other hand, here's the devices for the vocalists:

Male settings

Female settings

For my recording, I had to deal with the low level noise of the outside, so I inserted a gate preset (Softly) while adjusting the threshold. Both tracks were complete with a Multiband Dynamics compressor and a Deeser with individual differences as shown in the pictures above.


This round, I sent some vocal audio to the 'A' reverb channel where a Small Room reverb device was setup, not too much though, else the vocal would sound echo-ey. 

A. Reverb Channel

Finally I glue compressor'd the vocals, and put a Gentle limiter to both the Instrument Group and the Master channel. Simplicity wins as usual (mostly stock devices and presets).

Stay tuned for Part IV of  IV for this song!

Song#5 Yang Ku-cinta Itulah Kamu - Composing and Arranging Stage

Without further ado, here's part two!

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Intro intro intro blog...

Arranging

For this song, I had trouble deciding the parts for each singer, male and female. Sometimes the chorus is repeated for each singer to have a turn, sometimes they sing together. Certain songs call for verses to be sung in turn prior to the chorus. Taking all that into consideration, I decided upon:

1. Intro
2. Verse 1 & 2  (male) 
3. Verse 1 & 2 (female)
4. Chorus (together)
5. Instrumental
6. Verse 2 (male)
7. Choruse (together)
8. Instrumental
9. Bridge/Verse 2 (female with male voiceover)
10. Final Chorus
11. Outro

Composing

For this song, I stuck to basics with the base key C major. Verse 1 & 2 was fixed to a 8 bar progression, while Chorus was a 18 bar progression. I mostly decided the chords by ear and wrote out the three / four voices chords names later. Sorry I couldn't be more technical on these stuffs for now, but as usual, add the 7th or the 9th for jazzy feel. For those interested in playing out the song yourself, here are the chords:

Intro
 C, G/B, F/A,C/E 
F, G, C, Em-5 
Dm,C, C7 
Dm,Dm7
G,Gaug 

Verse 1/ Instrumental/ Outro

Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Fm7,Fm7(b5) 
Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Fm7, EMaj7

Verse 2 
Am7,C/E, Emaj7, Am7,C/E, Emaj7, 
Am7,C/E, Emaj7, F7, Dm7, Dm7(b5)

Chorus
Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Fm7,A#m7, 
Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Fm7,A#m7, 
Fmaj7, Dm6, Bdim7, A#m7 ,A#dim7 
Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Dm7, Dm7(b5)

Lyrics

Here's the lyrics in Malay where basically the gist is couple typical banter and the guy is on the short end of the stick, but loves the girl anyway.

Malay version (Blue for male, Red for female and Green for singing together):

Intro

Wahai sayangku, inilah laguku,

Lagu baru digubah untukmu

Dengarlah musik, nyanyi b'samaku

Rentak irama, melodi

In-dah~

Verse 1

Kalau kita, bermain komputer,

Meskipun Kita sudah dewasa,

Tembak-tembak , bom bersama,

Gelak ketawa berguling sel'mba

Verse 2

Ohhhhhh, kau suka bela binatang

Oooooh, kucing, ikan, kura-kura,

Oooooh, terpijak tahi-lah,tapiiii

Yang kucinta itulah kamu v

Verse 1 

Wahai sayang, kau sering lupa,

Lupakanku 'pabila minum makan,

Hello sayang, kau lupa lagi

Masa tengok gajet di pameran

Verse 2

Ohhhhhh, apalah kau begini,

Woooooh, pelupa lagikan cuai,

Ohhhhh, ingatla pesanan iniiii,

Yang kucinta itulah kamu v

Chorus

Sehingga kita bertemu,

Ku sediakan Maggi kari,

Campur Milo dengan keju,

Makanan enak untukmu,

Bridge

Ohhhhhh, apalah kau begini, (Maaf sayang aku lupa,)

Woooooh, pelupa lagikan cuai, (Cuai tapi aku pantas)

Ohhhhh, ingatla pesanan iniiii, (Ku juga ingin berpesaaan)

Yang kucinta itulah kamu

And the translation...

Intro

Oh my love, this is my song

A song written just for you

Hear the music, sing along with me

Rhythm and tune, melody

Beautiful

Verse 1

If we, played computer

Even though we're adults

Shooting, bomb together,

Laugh out loud, rolling on the floor casually

Verse 2

Oooh, you like to rear pets,

Oooh, cat fish and turtles,

Oooh, stepped on shit, but

Whom I love is you

Verse 1 

Oh my love, you always forget,

Forget about me when drinking and eating,

Hello my love, you forgot again,

When looking at gadgets on display

Verse 2

Oooh, why are you like this

Woooh, forgetful and careless,

Oooh, but remember this,

Whom I love is you

Chorus

When we meet again,

I'll prepare Curry Maggi,

Mixed with Milo and cheese,

Delicious meal for you,

Oh my god, why do you want

Hohohoho (to fatten me)

Eating together with you,

Whom I love is you

Bridge

Oooh, why are you like this (Sorry my love I forget,)

Woooh, forgetful and careless, (Careless but fast,)

Oooh, but remember this, (I also wish to say this,)

Whom I love is you

That's all for this section!


Stay tuned for Part III of  IV for this song!

Song#5 Yang Ku-cinta Itulah Kamu - Idea Stage

And so, as some may say, your life isn't complete without gypsy jazz and sweet duet. Which is what I'm going to set out to do. Dearest, if you're reading this (which you eventually will), here's the introduction to this blog!

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product & MV

Source

Nothing screams gypsy guitar better than Django Reinhart himself. After listening to hours of his playing style, I tried playing it on my guitar to little success. I guess one could not simply replicate hours and years of training and practice :p

This round I tried minimising the number of instruments involved in my song. Based on Django's typical instrument setup, I gather that the very least you need is a guitar and a rhythm section.

Also, since this is planned to be a Malay language song, I tried getting inspiration from Malay hit classics like:

P.Ramlee swaggy dude

1. P. Ramlee's Getaran Jiwa 
2. Modern hits like Kau Ilhamku by Man Bai
3. And Aku ingin mencintai-mu by Edcoustic

just to get the feel and pacing of Malay love songs. It also helps that Malaysians study the language from primary to high school, which makes writing lyrics a breeze. Secondly, I intended this song to be a duet between me and my girlfriend, because nothing beats singing together with your loved one :)

I guess that's all for now, until the next post :)

Stay tuned for Part II of  IV for this song!

Song#4 Reaching (out for you) waltz - Final Product

Finally it came to the final stage

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product

Here's the intro blog on everything you need to know here.

Soundcloud upload

As usual I uploaded to Soundcloud first.



before fixing up the MV for release on Facebook first.

Music Video

The MV this time round involved a reuse of the Adobe After Effects template for the first song Missing Piece (lazy man's work). However there were a few setting differences in the visualizer as below:



By playing with the highlighted settings, the visualiser tended towards shifting hue and colour with the frequency and dynamic changes. I also limited the analog waveforms to just Side B (ie the outside). Other than that, the rest is all the same :P

Final Product

I uploaded the video again to both my erushii FB and Youtube account!Pls enjoi!

Song#4 Reaching (out for you) waltz - Recording & Mastering Stage

Back to recording!

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording & Mastering Stage
4. Final Product

Info on this blog? Click here

Recording

This song required a different workflow compared to the previous few. The generated music from Finale was rather expressionless and lack the human mistakes that is inherent in orchestral music. Such mistakes include slight off-timings, difference of instrument sound quality within each sections and the conductor's directions. The tempo and dynamics were also constant. Also lacking was the reverb of an actual concert hall.

To humanize the playing, I manually recorded each instrument with my MIDI keyboard, with auto-quantize function turned off. One by one, I added the layers of instrument to the overall mix.

Sometimes when the delay between playback music and recording becomes obvious, I had to edit the MIDI data. The only quantization I applied was to the snare drum playing, which was quite constant in its scoring.

For the groupings, I grouped them into their family/sections such as Strings or Woodwinds.

Groupings

I used the Ableton Orchestral Packs for this mix (which are pretty large overall). You could download them from their official website after paying a pretty steep price. Or you could be resourceful and get it free through other means :) The packs are:

• Orchestral Brass
• Orchestral Mallets
• Orchestral Strings
• Orchestral Woodwinds

As you can see in the mix above, only two instruments were not in the packs. So I had to use the stock instruments like "Selector Kit clean" drumset and Harp2 Tube as the harp. 

During playing, I paired the Mod Wheel of my Korg MicroKey to the Macro knobs on each instrument devices...

Mod Wheel

Macro knobs

 so I could humanise macros like motion (which controls the vibrato of strings) or change the articulation of the instrument (which is usually divided into legato, staccato in the RH window). The envelopes of the final product looked like this:

Motion envelope for Strings

 I also paired the MIDI control with the Pitch knob (the leftmost on the MicroKey) for the tempo. In this case, I had to set a upper and lower limit for the knob (it defaults by spring action to the centre) with my original tempo at 175 bpm. That way, I recorded the changes in tempo between each music sections as well as the slowdown at the end.

Lastly, I used my Novation Launchpad as a real-time mixer to record changes in individual instrument/sections volume throughout the music.

Mastering

Mastering the Master channel

 For the mastering part, I opted for simplicity with just a general Reverb preset "Concert Hall" and put the Dry/Wet knob down to 41% (100% is basically the echoes) paired with another useful stock preset "Mastering - gentle limiter" to fix the final volume during the loud sections. The limiter is basically a souped up glue compressor, and I didn't want to normalise orchestral dynamics too much - I toyed with the Threshold until the needle wobbled a little, with Makeup gain to a mere 2.00dB. Dry/Wet was set at 80% too.

That's all with this section everybody!

Stay tuned for Part IV of  IV for this song!