Mini album

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Tiadiad
Posts: 111
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:55 am

Mini album

Post by Tiadiad »

I recently became obsessed with vintage style EQs and compressors, so I've been saturating everything I write. Got meself a laptop too so I've been messing around on my headphones in the yard...late at night..you might even say almost the next day...thus this little mini album was born. Written in a matter of 3.5 weeks, they're not the best the songs, but somehow I feel something while listening to them. Also a little light on the mids, my room apparently has a rich, lusheous midrange which means no mids in the mix. I would do the creative part on the laptop and the mixing part in my bedroom. Long live Buzz!

http://m.soundcloud.com/tiadiad/the-letter-aaah
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Joachip
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Re: Mini album

Post by Joachip »

Interesting sound and mood. Quite enjoyable!
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szaszhareen
Posts: 527
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:15 am
Location: deep beneath the earths crust

Re: Mini album

Post by szaszhareen »

this is wicked man, I'm really digging it. since you described it this way, i can definitely feel the "backyard" vibe - makes me think of late nights alone outside after everyone else has retired. good stuff! :D

do you get eaten by mosquitoes at dusk out there?

also, which vintage style effects are you using?
Tiadiad
Posts: 111
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:55 am

Re: Mini album

Post by Tiadiad »

Thanks guys!
@Szaszhareen:
No mosquitoes here haha, although I was bit a couple of days ago by one of their rogue scouts.
As far as my vintage obsession goes, I like to use some emulation plugs, my favorite being the PSP NobleQ. Also IK Program EQ, Nomad Factory Pulse-Tec, NF Program EQ...etc. Some Vintage compressor emu's too, IK 670, IK White, Nomad blue tube comp's...a lot of tube stuff. Fab Filter Saturn can work almost like a program EQ, the key is to barely drive the tube sound and use the EQ sliders for separate bands. The best thing about using something like Saturn for this purpose is that you can have a tape-driven eq, or amp driven, or any of the distortion modes it offers. I was surprised to learn just how much a good EQ or a compressor can do for your sound. Some people stand firm in doing their own emulations with using some sort of a distortion effect and then using a digital EQ on it (no emu), that can produce some radical results. The beauty of a good emulation plugin is the careful balance of that valve sound with the EQ. You can really get away with a lot when using something like a high-shelf filter on a program EQ, somehow it helps to bring out that lush, in your face, yet still pleasant sound. I don't want to get stuck in a habit zone though, where I use vintage style gear on everything.
Also master buss compression, I used to have a hard time just pressing those peaks, somehow I could never leave the punch in a song, it would become washy and transient-free. So syncing compressors attack and release stage to the global BPM and a slight gain reduction of no more than 3db on the mid (mono) signal and a little more on the side. You can really play with the stereo image when you have a M/S capable compressor, I compress the side signal a little more than the mid signal and that way I can bring it up without nasty peaks.
So if you have a few lazy $ lying around, I'd strongly suggest getting PSP NobleQ, or any of the emu's that catch your eye. Of course you can never get too close to the real thing with a plugin (SOS released an article where they talked about emu's, and they wrote that to accurately recreate just the first stage of the pre-amp section on a Fairchild you would need a 20 core CPU), but they do things very similarly to the analog gear so the sound is still there.
I think I'm going to start a topic in the "Users" forum to see what people out there like to use to saturate their music.
Thanks again guys for listening! Sorry about the download size, it's 700 Mb haha, geeeez!!! 24/48 so...
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