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

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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!