Mr. E's

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Michael Willis
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Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

Some of you have already heard this one from when I posted it in Original Scores and Recordings. I mentioned there that it's intended to be a progressive rock song, and I have a friend who was going to record guitar/bass parts, and he was going to talk to a percussionist about recording live drums.

That collaboration didn't work out so I'm looking for anybody interested in doing guitar, bass, or drums. It's been a number of months since I worked on this in earnest, so I've forgotten some of the details about the harmonies that it is built on, other than it is all in a variety of D keys (including Lydian Dominant D, Mixolydian D, Aeolian D). It's all midi, some of it recorded live from a midi piano and edited, the rest entered in Ardour's piano roll view with the mouse. I can go back through it and figure out what all of the chord progressions are.

Furthermore, let's assume I know almost nothing about audio effects, mixing, or mastering, so I am open to any guidance about such things. In particular, now that I listen to it again, it seems like several parts have multiple instruments competing for the same acoustic/frequency "space", instead of complimenting each other.

This is really still just a rough draft of several ideas glued together. If anybody wants to collaborate on this post-modern electro-symphonic progressive rock song, I'm completely willing to chop it up, remove parts, put in new parts, swap midi and audio tracks back and forth, whatever it takes to make it a fun piece of music.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-sr81 ... sp=sharing
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by tavasti »

Your work sounds great! I would like to play bass & guitar for it, but not sure if can make something good enough.
Do you have some idea what kind of guitar sound you would like, what kind of role for guitar? Or do you have some track in your mind which has related soundscape you would like to create?

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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

tavasti wrote:Your work sounds great! ... Or do you have some track in your mind
Thanks! I hesitate to name specific tracks that inspired this, because I don't want to limit other musicians' creative freedom. In general just listen to a lot of progressive rock and progressive metal and you'll get an idea of what I'm going for, although I would prefer to avoid the aggressive angry sound of some progressive metal - it's supposed to be a positive piece of music. If you're wanting at least some more specific bands to listen to, try listening to some of Pink Floyd's progressive albums, maybe Mike OldField, and some of the earlier albums from Rush.
42low wrote:Like it very much... If nobody jumps into drums i'm willing to try some with hydrogen... Which bpm is this?
I'd love to hear what either of you can do on guitar, as well as some percussion with hydrogen. I think this is a steady 160 BPM through the entire thing, but like I said it's been months since I worked on it, so I'll have to open it up and check.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by tavasti »

42low wrote: @tavasti. Will you do lead or rhythm guitar?
Right now, now idea at all what that would be. Just go ahead what ever you have in mind. Don't count on my output.

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Re: Mr. E's

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Where is the original midi file? It's better to work from that.

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Re: Mr. E's

Post by tavasti »

42low wrote:
tavasti wrote:
42low wrote: @tavasti. Will you do lead or rhythm guitar?
Right now, now idea at all what that would be. Just go ahead what ever you have in mind. Don't count on my output.
Don't count on mine either.
I asked because you were first and i don't want to walk in front of you. If i know what you do, i could do the other part.
Don't want to make a competition off it. I don't like competition.
Tried few times today play something to it, but no, can't, everything sounds awfull. 42low, go ahead.

At least for me that midi file would be helpfull to get idea where are we, I am too novice to play anything complementing with only by ear.
Too untalented and untrained to go on without notes what is going on. And won't promise I could create something to it even with notes available :-)

Somehow listening this brings me some feelings from Camel, something from Dream Theater.

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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

I'm glad this one has picked up some interest. To be honest I got burned out after working on it nearly every day for about a month, so I set it aside. I'll try to make some time this weekend to go over it again and write down what I can about the scales and chords.

I did all of the midi in Ardour, I'll also see what I can do about exporting it (or maybe just sharing the ardour project?), which might be helpful for setting what notes are being played, even if we don't end up doing much editing of the midi or re-rendering the audio.

I was never really satisfied with the synth part at the end. I'd love to hear a solid guitar solo there, and I would either cut back on the synth solo or remove it entirely.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

Ok, it looks like exporting a single midi file from Ardour might be trouble, so I pared down the Ardour project to just the midi tracks. My full project was kind of a mess because I started with my full orchestra template, which in retrospect was probably a mistake. You should be able to load this project with Ardour 5.x; it will complain about missing some audio files but you can tell it to skip them all, since they were on an extraneous track that I deleted (I'm still learning how to manage Ardour projects).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-sr81 ... sp=sharing

Since I deleted everything except for the midi tracks, this project won't play audio unless you wire up some plugins or apps to the midi tracks. For what it's worth, here are the virtual instruments that I was using:

Moog Synth track: Bristol Minimoog
Piano: Maestro Concert Grand (loaded in LinuxSampler)
Everything else: Virtual Playing Orchestra (loaded in LinuxSampler)

I had two instances of Hibiki Reverb (the .exe version) loaded into Carla Rack with the carla-win64-bridge, both starting from the small hall preset, one adjusted a little forward and the other a little further back.

Anyway, with all of that said, I'm not opposed to exploring some different virtual instruments and effects. In particular, I'm interested in what kind of sound somebody could give the synth track with a different plugin like synthv1 or zynaddsubfx or something. I think this is how I had Bristol set up: http://imgur.com/a/dc221
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

tavasti wrote:Tried few times today play something to it, but no, can't, everything sounds awfull. 42low, go ahead.
Don't give up! Maybe you could do electric bass?
42low wrote:But could you please provide me a BPM number?
Oh right! I forgot to tell you, the entire thing is 150 BPM.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

Nobody else has mentioned working on a percussion track.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by forestandgarden »

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h6ftwmc32ake3we/test.zip?dl=1

I've begun playing along/learning , here some early results, a melody and chord guitar each for just one fragment, plus a rough mix of how that fragment would sound with these guitars added.

Cannot promise much, because my production means are limited in many respects (just 2h electricity daily currently, small laptop). Would love to play a bass, but I don't owe one. Programming hydrogen sounds like a rewarding task, but rather than just emphasizing the existing accents, I'd like to introduce new ones, and the trouble is, these should correspond to yet-to-be-written guitar/bass lines.

But hey, what's done, is done, and everybody else is free to work with 'my' parts or leave them.
some of my stuff is ending up here https://alooshu.byethost17.com and here https://clyp.it/user/i4p5dng1 , and you can love me at https://liberapay.com/aloo_shu
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by finotti »

I'd like to take a shot in making a whole production out of it, if that's OK. I'd program bass, drums (maybe extra synths, but I don't think it will be necessary) and record the guitar parts. Then, mix it all...

I'm quite new to this and it will probably take a long time (over a month) to get anywhere presentable, though. But I am a huge prog fan myself and think it would be a great all around exercise.

I'm still finishing my most recent production, but I hope to start it in a week or so.

Let me know if there are any reservations on working on it.

Thanks and nice work!

P.S.: If you are interested, here is my first and second productions.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

42low wrote:Almost vacation. In about a week or 3-4 i will pick this one up.
Awesome! I'm really looking forward to hearing what you do with this. I'll see what I can do about going over this again this week and giving you a better idea of the harmonies that I used; they are kind of all over the place.

Also, don't be afraid to suggest changes, I'm open to constructive feedback. When it comes time to mix it, I can give you each track as a separate audio file.
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by finotti »

Just as an update: I've been working on this for a little while. Today I think I've finished sequencing bass and drums. Next I will choose the sounds and print the tracks and record the guitars. Then on to mixing! Hopefully I can get this done in about a month. (I'm very slow...)
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Re: Mr. E's

Post by Michael Willis »

finotti wrote:Just as an update: I've been working on this for a little while. Today I think I've finished sequencing bass and drums. Next I will choose the sounds and print the tracks and record the guitars. Then on to mixing! Hopefully I can get this done in about a month. (I'm very slow...)
Hey, that's great! I was just feeling bad the other day because I realized that I never went through it to takes notes on the chords and such to share here. Did you end up using the Ardour project? Honestly, feel free to do any modifications that you want, I kept hoping that a good guitarist would do a nice solo at the end, possibly even replacing the synth solo which I kind of considered to be just a placeholder.
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