Space Monkey

http://soundcloud.com/aaudiomystiks/spacemonkey
 
Here is another from the vault but this is one of the lost gems: Space Monkey.  I was fooling around with Cakewalks now defunct Project 5, using their midi and audio loops.  This song came about from using one of the supplied bass midi loops and the a free 303 emaulator called Tau.  The drums and the songs name came from an audio loop, for some reason I couldn't get the loop to gel, so I programed an approximation and mixed up a few drum samples in the Velocity frum sampler.  The vocal was recorded at the time, using a behringer $90 pre-amp and an Audio Technica microphone. 
 
The vocal is a prime example of recording super hot.  When you listen to the song you will notice the vocal is a belter, so already it's going to be a loud signal, I have fed this into the Behringer tube pre-amp and to get decent 2nd harmonic distortion, I've turned it up loud, so loud we are clipping.  To combat this I have used the Creamware effect Soft Clip shaving off a millimeter so we don't get digital overs.  This is a new mix and has a new guitar solo at the end.
 
Neb

BenMMusTech

The vocal is a prime example of recording super hot.  When you listen to the song you will notice the vocal is a belter, so already it's going to be a loud signal, I have fed this into the Behringer tube pre-amp and to get decent 2nd harmonic distortion, I've turned it up loud, so loud we are clipping.  To combat this I have used the Creamware effect Soft Clip shaving off a millimeter so we don't get digital overs.
 

Sounds like a lot of trouble to go to to get that result Ben. Why not just record at a usable level, there are many ways to get a loud vocal without clipping.

If there's '2nd harmonic distortion' present, I'll take your word for that, it's subtle enough that I can't hear it.

I didn't care for the song, lyrics or guitar tone, but I suspect that's not the important thing for you about this post.

I like this kind of stuff in small doses. A little bit of Neb goes a long way!

I think you have moments where you sound like Jim Morrison. Keep it up Ben!

Hey Lynn, I am slowy running out of useable material, if I hadn't lost a whole heap of stuff I'd probablly never need to write another tune.  On sayaing that this going through the vault is just my way of killing time until I get my new "live" rig up and running and then I'm going to experiment with different ways of putting songs together, using Sonar's idea of non-linear sequencing.

I'm also going to branch out into more sound art, like at the end of the song, which is actually Malcom McDowell from the 1968 Lindsey Anderson film "If" (Great film for those who haven't seen it) the line is "One man can change the world with a bullit in the right place" the rest of the sound collage is my response to that I suppose.  I don't know if I agree with the notion but I do know change is needed, how we acheive change is the question and the whole song is about how we're in the final quarter and do you really want the truth.  Were down but not out, the confronting lyrics are "truths" on the fringes of socity this is what is happening.

It's all well and good James and James not likeing the lyrics but maybe they don't know or care to know how fractured society is.  They don't want to know the score but this will come back and bite them in the bum someday.

James 1213, perhaps then you can't hear whats going on but then again maybe you can, that track is riddled with different forms of harmonic distrotion real and simulated.  For instance the bass synth has the old Tape Sim FX, the vocal, actually is a good example of combining a cheap transistor microphone with an ultra cheap tube pre amp (they're 50 bucks now) and virtual saturation.  On top of this over the whole track is a light smattering of real tube by way of my TL Audio A2 which has a seperate knob that allows me to dial in 2nd level harmonic distortion.  I dial in just a light amount to the point where I can just hear it.  It beefs up everything, it's hard to explain but there is def tube harmonics going on.

Why I said you might be able hear whats going on is you picked the guitar sound and I had so much trouble with this and this was because I didn't record the guitar super hot and I just used the DI on my MOTU interface and your right it lacks punch, I wish I still had that now 55 dollar pre-amp, it works superbly on amp sim guitar tones by beefing the guitar sound up, it helps the guitar sound cut through.

Neb

I'm holding out for Project6... For vox? You should use the same rule as everything else, try to hit "around" -12, you can compress it a little on the way in, but not too hard. Then you can use amp sims, and other tools to add distortion. The trick, and "I know it's a trick" is to get the style of vocals you have here without overpowering the input. It's a subtle dance between the singer, mic technique, and keeping it low on the way in to achieve that -12ish threshold.

bandontherun19


I'm holding out for Project6... For vox? You should use the same rule as everything else, try to hit "around" -12, you can compress it a little on the way in, but not too hard. Then you can use amp sims, and other tools to add distortion. The trick, and "I know it's a trick" is to get the style of vocals you have here without overpowering the input. It's a subtle dance between the singer, mic technique, and keeping it low on the way in to achieve that -12ish threshold.

Exactly when you have a powerful singer that can really belt out a tune how do you contain it, I choose not to and did it "my way" and it worked.  This is not to say that I am right or it's going to work for everyone but hey it worked and there is no distortion even though on the pic on my soundcloud page you can see that it is clearly at the max.  So I must be doing something right.
 
As for Project 6, were you a fan?? I have Project 5 V2 on my machine because of all the proprietary synths.  Cakewalk is a bit like me sometimes, too many ideas.  I suppose what they have done is combine elements of Project 5 into Sonar X1 and we now have the best of both worlds but for those who don't have the proprietary synths it would be good to see Cake release them, as they did with the effects.
 
Neb

John T


Soundcloud maximises the vertical size of waveform graphics regardless of actual level. You can test this yourself by putting something that you know is quiet all the way through on there. 

I'm not talking about the waveform on the soundcloud page John, I'm talking about the pic next to or the one that represents the song!!!
 
Neb

John T


Oh that. Well, it certainly shows you did something loud. "Right" is another question. 

Well is there any distortion on the vocal??  I said it was my way and it may not be right but again this whole audio engineering business is subjective and maybe just maybe I have stumbled onto a third way!!!
 
Neb

Don't fight city hall Ben... It may feel right sometimes? But in the end, well, it never ends well. People here who listen and comment (not me!), some of them? Some of them are really experts... Don't listen to everything everyone says? But when you hear some "who are clearly very good at the mix? (again, that's not me.)" starting to echo the same things? Then it's time to start waving that white flag "trust me."

bandontherun19


Don't fight city hall Ben... It may feel right sometimes? But in the end, well, it never ends well. People here who listen and comment (not me!), some of them? Some of them are really experts... Don't listen to everything everyone says? But when you hear some "who are clearly very good at the mix? (again, that's not me.)" starting to echo the same things? Then it's time to start waving that white flag "trust me."

Thats my job!! Ok whats your opinon on the mix and the master BOTR, nobody has commented on the mix or the master.
 
I know that there are a few experts on this forum I as I said (on the softclip topic) am not an audio engineer, I am a music technologist, so there is a big difference.  A music technologist is someone who may have a basic grasp on audio engineering but mainly I have grasp on what is happening with the technology, past, present and future.
 
So as I say, I come accross full on but I am introducing ideas from what I am reading and from my experiments, see that last word experiments.  I am an audio scientist or as I have put in the past, I am a scientific artist.  I know somewhat pretentious but hell artists are.
 
Neb

BenMMusTech



It's all well and good James and James not likeing the lyrics but maybe they don't know or care to know how fractured society is.  They don't want to know the score but this will come back and bite them in the bum someday.

It's not that I didn't understand the subject matter, I said I didn't care for the lyrics. There are ways of writing about such issues without being crass.

Here's a good example of that; No, Surrender

Song is terrible, by the way.

No, the mix is really quite poor.

Lyrics are ridiculous. Where exactly is this race war, kicking at your door, happening?

There is no distortion on the vocal, as others have already pointed out. That thing about meters in the red in Sonar can be misleading. Depending on this or that factor, you can have every track meter pinned to the red across many tracks and still have no distortion. I'd explain why this is, but you wouldn't listen, so what's the point?