How I Did It
by shimoda
Uses samples from:
more...Tools I Used
Cubase SX2, iZotope Ozone 3, blood, sweat and lots of tears (as in of the fabric of the universe), Guitar Rig 2 plug-in for distortion and amp-modeling
Samples I Used
All of the samples came from CC and Magnatune, originally most were downloaded a couple of months ago when I joined and was browsing through things to get me started. I also used a bit of one of my samples, Decider near the end of the process and one sample of sine rhodes not yet uploaded.
Original Samples
Nothing was created for this mix, it was already there and was manipulated to work here.
Process
I began by importing Anchor's pella and giving a few listens, then imported sounds I thought I could work with, only one of which I decided against using (Farka Toure pells). When I pushed play just for grins, I got the sound of an orchestra (industrial) tuning up. I ran with that and developed the scope of movement as the piece went. I decided to split Anchor's pells up so that I wouldn't have to follow the pace, but wanted to keep the general spirit nonetheless. Near the end, I put down some tracks to bring the song full-circle and though I feel I may have overwhelmed the end of the tune, but in some ways I felt the tune needed to come back around to its original cacophony. I used Guitar Rig to model distortion on a couple of jazz pieces and particularly some cello lines, which I really ended up liking the sound of and will probably mess with again. I also used the Megaphon preset under GR2's vocal presets on one loop of Anchor near the beginning. I used Ozone to do some compression, eq tweaking and harmonic exciting. I'm very new at that and working with Creative 4.1 speakers and headphones, so I ask for understanding there. I also added some reverb to vocals. I had thought of using a gate near the end to glitvh things up some, but it didn't end up having the effect I wanted and it was already difficult enough to balance 18 (if memory serves) tracks of audio along with their panning and volume envelopes. This one was really like wrestling hyenas in a vat of olive oil. I think I should take it easy and do a nice pop or dance pice next, for my sanity.
Other Notes
I wanted to make this a soundscape as much as anything. While I'd like it to be enjoyable on an intellectual level and sound good from a production standpoint, don't assume I'm using counterpoint here. This was a difficult piece to get my mind around and I don't think I ever did or will but that's okay. The subject matter is a bit itself about being out of control. The main idea here was to create something somewhat shocking using a palette much the same way I do when I paint.
This site uses