I published a new track yesterday, but the forum was down (at least for me), so I'm only posting about it now:
https://soundcloud.com/lminiero/out-of-the-void
Just as with Lies, this was long in the making. Unlike Lies, though, for which I had written a MIDI at the time, I had the themes for this in my mind for more than 20 years, but only started writing the piano part down last summer. It then took me months to get me back to it and keep working, until I finally finished recording it last night. Not sure why it took so long: in part it may be because it was too complex for young me to sketch; it's also the most personal track I've shared so far, though.
I remember feeling quite down at the time. Not depressed, that's a serious matter that should not be made light of: but I did feel lonely and empty. At one point I remember thinking: "so many songs come from love, happiness, rage, etc.; what inspiration can come when you feel nothing at all?", which is how the "Out of the void" title came up, and stuck. What can come out of the void? Of course, I didn't realize at the time that I was indeed feeling something, and so it wasn't void at all. Those times are past, luckily, so no worries! I wonder what feelings this will give to listeners today, especially in light of the distressing times we're living in (in particular in the US).
Anyway, moving to more on-topic matters, I did experiment a bit more with this, especially for the bass guitar and acoustic guitars:
- The track was always meant to sound pretty much like it came out: completely acoustic intro (a bit à-la Opeth, I guess), piano verse+bridge, and a more "airy" refrain (that I always loved) that should feel like the culminaton of the whole thing, just to be cut down by the same acoustic guitar as the intro. The piano part in particular was tricky to write down, since it was more complex harmonically than what I'm used to.
- I originally sketched the piano part down in Lilypond, but then rewrote it in MuseScore, where I added the other scripted instruments as well. I used Salamander to render the piano, but to make it sound closer to what I had in mind, I used the una-corda and sustain pedals: it still doesn't feel as "grand" a grand piano as I'd like, but it's not bad.
- For strings, I used again a mixture of VPO (the second part) and KH Strings (the whole track). I think they don't sound as well as they did in Lies, but that may be because of how they were orchestrated.
- For the first time I added a Mellotron as well: I always loved the sound, and found what I think was a nice soundfont for it. I hope it makes the whole thing sound more "progressive"
- Drums were as usual DrumGizmo+Muldjord kit, that I tried to fit into a non-metal song. For the first time, though (and I feel silly for realizing this just now!), I discovered that Hydrogen has a quick way to randomize velocities for a series of hits, that I abused to make it more "dynamic".
- One of the areas where I experimented more was acoustic guitars. I ranted in the Scheherazade thread about how the pickup I bought pretty much sucked... I bought another one (Thomann's TrueType SH-20) which was better, but still not "good". Remembering past exchanges with @milo on the matter, I started recording using a mic instead, which did indeed give better results. I was still not very satisfied, though, so after chatting with a friend, he suggested actually recording both at the same time, since they really capture different things. That did indeed make them sound much better I think! It was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to get Jack to capture two different devices, until I found zita-a2j which solved it very easily!
- I played more with the bass as well. Another friend suggested ways to make it pop, that I tried to follow. More precisely, I recorded it once, and then copied the result to two different tracks: I then applied different effects to them all, i.e., leaving one as it is, cutting some frequences on the other, and only keeping mids and adding distortion to them on the last. Not sure the bass sounds convincing, but I think it definitely sounds better than in my previous attempts.
- Electric guitars are the usual mix of Rakarrack and Guitarix. I added a solo again, more melodic this time: it was supposed to be more complex at the end, but I just couldn't play it, so I had strings do the heavy lifting for me
. I recently bought my very first Telecaster (Squier of course, I'm poor ), and you can actually hear it here: it's the Telecaster pretty much for all electric guitars in the second part (except for the solo, that I had recorded already). - Obviously I abused @Michael Willis' excellent Dragonfly Reverb again.
I'm glad you liked it! I didn't think it could be considered doom, even though it's a genre I like a lot and the first part is indeed dark enough. Actually, I think a good deal of inspiration for the first part at the time came from the 