Song#3 Runaway - Final Product

Song #3. Last part. Plz enjoi.

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

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

Soundcloud upload

So I uploaded to my soundcloud...



And I realised due to the Multiband Compressor I applied to the Vocal tracks, the ambient noise was much amplified, giving that background hiss. So I went back to Ableton and gated the low decibel noise before applying the Multiband Compressor for the track to be used in Youtube.

Music Video

So, I went around the Internet neighbourhood to search for stock footage and found some at videezy.com. I collected about 3-4 clips of the same series of a guy jogging around the suburbs of somewhere and one more at the car dashboard driving up to a house.

Using inspiration from tofubeats' 'What you got' MV of some random stock footage people dancing and repeating that 100x with edits, I did exactly the same for my MV. I flipped the clips, repeated cropped and cut the clips to fit the music. Then I got lazy and copied the clip sequences for the chorus to all other choruses. (screams internally at the dedicated MV editors).

Final Product

I uploaded the video to both my erushii FB and Youtube account! Enjoy!

Song#3 Runaway - Mastering Stage

I'm trying to find motivation to write this post, as I'm already thinking of the next song...but oh well, here goes:

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

As always, please visit this project's intro blog. 

Mastering

As usual, the tracks were grouped into instruments, vocals and others. For this song, I started using the 'send' function of Ableton, where I routed a portion of the track output to Reverb and/or Sidechain Compression (where the kick drum input was the trigger for the compressor)

Sends with varying degree

Sidechain compression settings

For the instrument part,  I adopted an EQ filtering technique I picked up from Wickimedia's mastering videos. Putting all tracks together to play at the same time hides the important hits from the Arp One samples (Electric Grand VST) and the softer samples (also from the same VST). To solve the problem, one might opt to pan left or pan right the tracks to give it more 'space' in a virtual recording studio or simply just increasing the volume of the track relative to the rest. However, the better technique is to EQ filter frequencies that clash/collide with the intended instrument.

Take for example the Arp One hits, which peaks at 1K Hz according to the Spectrum analyzer.

Arp One hits frequencies

From here I used a comb filter pattern on EQ eight for all instruments playing at that period of time such as below.

Arp Poly Lead comb filter on EQ eight

This method still retains the sound of the EQ'd instrument but gives space on the frequency spectrum for the target tune to occupy.

Also, this song included a Sub bass track, for reasons I do not fully comprehend, other than just following some Youtube video's suggestion. Sub Bass sounds are practically inaudible to the human ears but if you played it on a really big diaphragm speaker, you would be able to feel it in your body (kinda like the whoosh-whoosh feel). The theory is that adding it (it follows the audible bass line notes), adds the extra kick to the mix. I hope there's some effect nonetheless :)

All other tracks have the same basic devices, such as Gate, Auto Pan, EQ eight, Glue Compressor etc.. while the master group track had a comb/valley EQ filter to accommodate the vocals at 175Hz (it changes to 359Hz during the chorus)


The vocals group had the usual processing. This time I added fancy effects like Simple Delay for the repetition of the last syllable at the bridge and Reverb for extra feel. I decided against adding Vocal thickening tracks with the current setting with Grain Delay device (it sounds terrible) as compared to the previous song. After all there's the harmony track. During the bridge, I sampled the 'Runaway' part using Sampler and added an Overdrive to it. Using the sampler, I assigned trigger keys to set rhythmic playback of different parts of the sample. So, I could either play R-r-r-unaway or Runaw-w-way, you'll get the gist.

Sampler with different trigger keys

Finally, for the Master channel another glue compressor and limiter was added to the chain. Nothing much, nothing really new, just another day in mastering.



Stay tuned for the final Part V of  V for this song!

Song#3 Runaway - Recording Stage

Well well well well well, iiiits recording time folks!

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

If you look closely, you'll find info on this blog here :)

Recording

Using my beautiful Blue Yeti microphone, I proceeded to scream into it. Not literally, but somehow or rather I decided that the chorus should be pitch as high as the Beegees, you can guess the outcome of my vocal chords.

There were occasions throughout the day where I could hit the high notes perfectly, but can't even croak any after meals. The recording was done in two shot, using the guide tones I set in Ableton Live, with the V-Station synth. I had my phone is one hand and the mouse to stop and start recording in the other. On the phone was my lyrics, zoomed out as much as possible to reduce scrolling during the singing.

After singing for what seems forever, I ported the audio to Melodyne, this time without any processing through gates whatsover. This is due to the mistakes in the previous song, where there were clippings i.e. silent gaps in the singing when you listen closely. High-pass gates work where sound above a certain decibel are allowed to pass-thru while softer ones are cut out completely.

The mistake in the previous song was that I processed the audio even before porting to Melodyne. It made the singing sound awkward when softer sounds were cut away (like singing with your nose pinched). So this time, I opted for a post-Melodyne-postprocessing.

The first take was not that good, where I missed certain syllable (blame lousy lyric writing), so I used it as a backing harmony track. The second take was the main one used.

Red is the main vocal, yellow is the harmony

Like I mentioned in the previous post, the harmony this time was more of a trial-and-error kind of workflow, where I just tried pitching a 3rd above and adjusting notes that sounded weird in the particular chords at that time.

For the electric guitar ,  using my neighbour's PRS Tremonti se, I hooked it up with a Mooer Hustledrive (overdrive) Pedal and a Mooer Re-echo Pedal. Being not really a guitar person, I just strummed haphazardly and using power chords that kinda matched the chorus original chords. Also, I used his Roland Microcube as amp while I routed the leadout/headphone jack to my computer mic jack - with reducer add-on of course. That took about several takes before getting the desired track.

Stay tuned for Part IV of  V for this song!