Salvage & Demolition

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Impostor
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Salvage & Demolition

Post by Impostor »

Not only a wonderful novella by Tim Powers, but also the title of my latest creation: Salvage & Demolition. As with the novella, it involved time travel of a sort, in addition to some salvage and demolition: I demolished a track I made earlier this year, and salvaged whatever I could use again. It so happens to be the same track which I previously scavenged for parts to use in Shades Of Memory...

https://devloop0.bandcamp.com/track/salvage-demolition

Arrangement-wise I made an utter mess of S&D. Drums and percussion from two drumkits and a couple of soundfonts are partly merged and partly separated, and routed over two aux tracks, and divided among six midi tracks. The other sounds weren't treated with much better ordering. All in all S&D has 19 midi tracks, some not containing much more than a single short note occasionally, and some others being a jumble of overlapping parts.

In spite of all that, I think S&D sounds surprisingly clean and coherent! But, does it make sense***?

Following the kind advice of a fellow forum member, I postponed publishing S&D for an entire day! The idea is learning to exercise restraint, one step at a time. But I will revise S&D a couple of times in the next couple of days, without any doubt :)**

Constructed in MusE Sequencer, with the tools:
The Black Pearl
A GM/GS drumkit
Odin2
Calf Monosynth
Pianoteq
More GM soundfonts
A variety of Calf plugins (EQ, delay, reverb, stereo tools, flanger and more)

**Of course I was right. The synth drum now sounds much better, and the song structure in the beginning is much improved.
***Edit 30-11-22: I've been searching for a couple of days for how to pound some sense into the composition. I think I found it now:)

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

Post by oscillator »

Hey this sounds great! Maybe I miss a bit of treble (high ends) on the drums?

Very intense.

You know, my strategy is not to postpone things, I act quite the opposite. "Hey, I can improve that in the next song.". Maybe it is a leftover from my years as a journalist -- you can always make it better tomorrow. :)

MusE DAW running on Debian 11 Testing/XFCE4.
https://oscillator.se/musik

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

Post by Impostor »

oscillator wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 8:55 pm

Hey this sounds great! Maybe I miss a bit of treble (high ends) on the drums?
Very intense.

Hello, thanks for the feedback. I honestly don't know what to think of it myself anymore. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I despise it, sometimes simultaneously. Need some fresh ears:)

oscillator wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 8:55 pm

You know, my strategy is not to postpone things, I act quite the opposite. "Hey, I can improve that in the next song.". Maybe it is a leftover from my years as a journalist -- you can always make it better tomorrow. :)

The idea is more that I publish a track too soon, since I'm revising it for days afterwards anyway. Before publishing, I should stop working on and listening to it for a couple of days to clear my head, and then listen with fresh ears and revise what needs revising; at least, that is the idea. I'm not there yet :)

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

Post by Tenaba »

Very interesting percussion in this track. I like the mix of kits and samples you used for it.

oscillator wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 8:55 pm

Hey this sounds great! Maybe I miss a bit of treble (high ends) on the drums?

Very intense.

You know, my strategy is not to postpone things, I act quite the opposite. "Hey, I can improve that in the next song.". Maybe it is a leftover from my years as a journalist -- you can always make it better tomorrow. :)

I've been thinking that way a bit more recently too. You'll always have something to fixate on if you keep looking for it.

I make music as Tenaba! Bandcamp

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

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Tenaba wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:40 pm

Very interesting percussion in this track. I like the mix of kits and samples you used for it.

Thanks! To be honest, yesterday I changed the bongo percussion in the middle part, but now I wonder if the original wasn't better.

Tenaba wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:40 pm

You'll always have something to fixate on if you keep looking for it.

Yep, see above. It's a fine line between fixing up and fucking up. If you don't know the difference anymore you really should stop working on it for a while...

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

Post by oscillator »

Tenaba wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:40 pm

I've been thinking that way a bit more recently too. You'll always have something to fixate on if you keep looking for it.

I think this is a very important question. And it seems that everyone has their own answer -- which of course is fine, and right. It is kind of a variant of the old "quality vs quantity" question. :D

Well, for me, the answer has been not to strive for audio perfection. I am more interested in composing -- and FOR ME that means making another, hopefully better, song. :)

Next time, the next song. There is always a "the next song". At least a couple of more years, I hope.

MusE DAW running on Debian 11 Testing/XFCE4.
https://oscillator.se/musik

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Re: Salvage & Demolition

Post by jeanette_c »

Hi @Impostor , very fitting title. I like it that this piece fits the title in so many ways. I can almost hear the scene going with it. It's always nice to mix and match.

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distro: ArchLinux, DAW: Nama, MIDI sequencer: Midish
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