LinuxMusicians

Hi folks

here I have another track recorded with Ardour 2.8 under Linux using
free Software, free Samples and some Guitars and voices excluselively:

ogg or mp3 - you choose:

http://lapoc.de/demos/maria-katharsis-f ... 080709.ogg
http://lapoc.de/demos/maria-katharsis-f ... 080709.mp3

The singer is from siberia:

http://www.myspace.com/marachowska

(still dwelling in the evil, not-so-good looking empire of imperator
Darth Murdoch and the rotten HTML/JS-code from hell - the so-called
"myspace")

She sang the tune in her russian mother-tongue accompanied by herself on
an accoustic guitar, miked with an AKG Perception 100 and an RFT DM122
so voice and guitar is not separated. A man named Vincent played a
slideguitar and a metal-ish outro and I added some additional clean and
heavy guitars using my Ibanez RG and Guitarix and
AMS-Guitrack(C*-Plugins) and some fat Drumsamples using a Behringer
U-Control and Specimen.

Everything was recorded and mixed with Ardour 2.8 with some CALF and
INVADA LV2-Plugins plus several LADSPA-Plugs(TAP, C* and SWH) for
reverb, delays, FX and compression/EQ. In the end we mastered it with jamin.
We hope you like it,
*All* kinds of comments are highly welcome....

best regs

HZN/Berlin

Hi.. it sounds really clean.
It is encouraging to hear recordings made with linux with a so good quality

I'm surprised that you used specimen for drums instead of hydrogen.. What advantages do you find ?.. I guess that when it's not required an extensive use of percussions, it's also factible to use samplers not specific for drumming (layered, ...)

Yeri wrote:Hi.. it sounds really clean.
It is encouraging to hear recordings made with linux with a so good quality

Thanks for the flowers;-)

Yeri wrote: I'm surprised that you used specimen for drums instead of hydrogen.. What advantages do you find ?.. I guess that when it's not required an extensive use of percussions, it's also factible to use samplers not specific for drumming (layered, ...)

H2 is designed to emulate a "realistic" drumkit. I tend to prefer a different paradigma of a vritual percussion-set with some features taht do not fit in a emulation modeled after a real drumkit. Especially I like it to have a single sample on 6-12 different Notes so I can have a tom sound higher or lower as I wish. I also made the experience, that Specimen works more stable and smoother for me than H2. If you want to try one of my Specimen-drumpatches get it here:

http://lapoc.de/spinoffs/specidrums001.tar.bz2

just unpack the archive, enter the folder and mind the README

Hi!!

I like this piece of music a lot. The timing of the drums seems to be a little bit "off" sometimes, but it doesn't hurt a lot Great voice! The only (very small) downpart for me is the distorted guitar, there's a lot of noise ["rauschen" ]. I know that it's quite impossible to ommit that, i've tried it a lot and failed most times when recording distorted guitars. I guess that's part of the analog feeling


Just FYI: We've got a branch in hydrogen which is called "new_fx_rack_and_sample_fun". It holds some new features like a midi-out,a sample editor or a piano-roll editor which changes the tune of a sample ( like what you did with specimen). Of course that doesn't help if hydrogen runs not as expected for you

mauser wrote:Hi!!
The only (very small) downpart for me is the distorted guitar, there's a lot of noise ["rauschen" ]. I know that it's quite impossible to ommit that, i've tried it a lot and failed most times when recording distorted guitars. I guess that's part of the analog feeling

Yeah -to be honest: I hate the hiss/noise on the guitartracks too but we decided to trade it for the sound and atmosphere. In the end: it has to sound like an amp at high gain so be it. Though I plan to invest some more effort to mask it in the final master to geht rid of the nasty noise-only parts of the guitartracks(200+ cuts again, meditative work at its best )

mauser wrote: ... new features like a midi-out,a sample editor or a piano-roll editor which changes the tune of a sample ( like what you did with specimen). Of course that doesn't help if hydrogen runs not as expected for you

The piano-roll thing would change everything for me
Indeed I like H2 a lot and it has some features I sorely miss when working with seq24 and Specimen. Still I can do stuff with seq24 plus Specimen, that are hard to beat such as layering 3/4-patterns and 4/4, 6/8 etc to get polyrhythmic structures. I also noticed, that stability and intergration into jack have improved a lot in H2 so I will use it more then now as soon as the pianoroll is at hand

Thanks a lot for you tipps and review. If you (or any other) like to get more of our stuff, it is here:

http://lapoc.de/downloads.php

here you can also download some free licensed drum/percussion sounds I have recorded for my own purposes.

zettberlin wrote:Though I plan to invest some more effort to mask it in the final master to geht rid of the nasty noise-only parts of the guitartracks(

Wouldn't it be easier (and cheaper considering the time) to simply re-record the guitar?
For my ears, the entire track sounds a bit lifeless and artificial. Actually, I think it sounds pretty good, and the music is great, but I can "feel" that the percussion is not real, and the electric guitar sounds rather thin, while the acoustic lacks some "sparkle". Seems more a lack of resources than talent, though

spm_gl wrote:...but I can "feel" that the percussion is not real, and the electric guitar sounds rather thin, while the acoustic lacks some "sparkle". Seems more a lack of resources than talent, though

Now I have read this several times, I will definately try a new version with more "natural" sounding Guitars. Though it could be, that in the end the guitars will sound even more "electronic" but in a way that is more clearly hearable as "wanted that way" And you are right as well regarding the resources: we had only a extremely short time (3-4 h for the complete recordings) I thought, I could handle this with more effort in editing etc. but you are right: I better try to invest some more time in the material itself....

zettberlin wrote:I thought, I could handle this with more effort in editing etc.

Been there, done that. It doesn't work out. Never. In the end, you spend 10 hours editing something you could have recorded in one hour, and it still doesn't sound right.