I just posted a new song:
https://soundcloud.com/lminiero/dreams
It's a "momentous" occasion, as I dared try to sing on one of my tracks for the first time ever; since I'm most definitely not a singer, though, you may want to keep your expectations in check Besides, I decided it was the perfect occasion to get some mileage out of another guitar I had bought recently, but not used much yet, a beautiful hollow body guitar that definitely proved up to the task.
As a composition, the initial arpeggio did come from a dream (where I remember thinking of the chord progression), so that's where the seed for the track came from: as it's often happening, I went way further, and what came out was a much longer and sad song on the power of dreams, which as an occasional lucid dreamer have always fascinated me. Musically I got inspiration by a ton of works out there: definitely Lost Reflection by Crimson Glory for the basic approach (emotional song, same chords repeated over and over, a heavy section following the slow crescendo), Swallow the Sun for the overall style (one of my favourite bands these past few years), Antimatter/Anathema/Trees of Eternity for the vocal style (somber and subdued), Ólafur Arnalds and Árstíðir for the strings arrangements, Nighttime Birds by The Gathering for the gothic/doom ending, and more.
As I anticipated, I decided to try and sing myself as well: I did come up with lyrics pretty soon, and as a pure instrumental track it did feel too long and a bit "empty", so I thought what the hell... I'm most definitely not a singer (I guess you'll be able to tell), but I tried to mimic a bit the style of Mick Moss by Antimatter, especially his work on Planetary Confinement (one of my favourite albums ever), as I thought it would fit the mood of the song nicely. I messed up a few notes here and there, and it's not a very dynamic interpretation, but I think it didn't come out as bad as I thought, so I hope you'll be able to appreciate it nevertheless!
For what concerns the recording and arrangement process:
- For clean guitars I used two separate Rakarrack effects at the same time, "Nostalgia" and "Angel's Chorus". On their own they didn't give me what I needed, but I think that they sound beautiful together, especially thanks to the sound the hollow body guitar got ouf of them.
- For strings I wanted something unusual, and in fact I mentioned Ólafur Arnalds and Árstíðir before, who as many Icelandic artists often have wonderful rarefied string sections that seem almost otherwordly. Spitfire Labs has a free VST called Frozen Strings that sounds close enough, so I definitely wanted to play with it more. I ended up not using just that, though, as I also used Scary Strings and (for swells) Strings 2 from the same guys. I had already tinkered with them a bit in the past (for Mary, for instance), but only for smaller portions, while I wanted to do more this time. This led me to work with them as I would with a strings orchestra (even though I didn't score them, but "played" them instead), where I sometimes used just one, and sometimes more, of those VSTs, depending on the effect I wanted to get: I think they sound particularly beautiful in the string interlude between the two verses!
- Even though I did do vocals a couple of times, I have no clue what to do with voice (especially mine), so I just added a bit of EQ, compression and reverb to my raw take: it sounds "fine", but I'm sure more could be done (even though that may not be the case, considering the source material )
- For heavy guitars, I took half a step back, as while I decided to still use my POD X3 Live for the solo, all rhythm guitars I did with Guitarix instead. Even though I guess it would be too much to ask of it in a faster metal track, I was surprised to hear how the hollow body guitar performed quite nicely in a heavier context as well! I like the sound it has in the solo a lot, for instance, but it's not that bad when doing those heavy power chords either. For the solo itself, I chose a more melodic and emotional approach, especially for the final buildup, rather than trying to overdo it with too many notes.
- For the bass I kept things simpler as well, since I reused the "Bass FAT" that is available in the kokoko3k Guitarix preset to avoid working on the three separate tracks as I usually do. That preset seems to do both multiband compression and multiband distortion, which means it's probably doing in a single take what I usually do on the separate tracks (and probably doing a better job at it). I do like how it sounds, so I'll have to check if it's usable in other contexts as well.
- Drums are done with DrumGizmo+Muldjord as usual, but this time I decided to not do any processing at all, and just add a ton of reverb, since that's what the heavier portion at the end really needed. I think it sounds nice enough, but I also know I thought that every single time, and I've regularly been proven wrong