I released a “new song” to SoundCloud today:
It’s an Advent hymn from The (Episcopal) Hymnal 1982, number 67: Comfort, comfort ye my people.
My goal with this piece was to practice singing, playing, and recording before I attempt to record a “real” Christmas song. This is the first piece I’ve recorded since 2010, and I had to setup all my equipment and software from scratch to do this.
I used Reaper and Renoise for all of it.
Percussion
I started with Renoise, building a percussion track out of samples. Most of the samples I recorded myself (sometime around 2010, actually): Tambourine, bongos, finger cymbals. The “bass drum” is actually the sound of hitting a large blank painting canvas with a wooden stick. There are some finger snaps in there too, but I buried them because they sounded too much like a digital glitch hehe.
If I had had unlimited time, I might have worked on “humanizing” the percussion more. I could have recorded live tambourine and bongo tracks. I also thought about overlaying some Eggz shakers, but I just ran out of time. Advent is almost over. :)
(Incidentally, I wanted to control Renoise from Reaper but for some reason I couldn’t get Rewire to work. I had to render the percussion track from Renoise and load it into Reaper.)
Acoustic Guitar
I used my Taylor acoustic guitar. There are two tracks of acoustic guitars, capoed at the 3rd fret, panned left and right. (Except during the outro when I only used one of the tracks panned to the center–that’s because I messed up the chords on the other track.) I tried to keep them simple and percussive. I used one of my favorite picks of all time, a green nylon Dava Control pick which I’ve had since the 1990s.
I recorded the guitars with an AKG C1000S microphone. I didn’t use any room treatment, I just stood there in the middle of my wood-paneled, wood-floored living room and recorded. If you were to solo the tracks, you might hear my cat bumping around at one point. I didn’t even put new strings on the guitar.
I applied some compression and EQ to scoop out the middle and roll off a lot of bass.
I think the final tracks were the second recording attempt. The first try was a little too hot and distorted a tiny bit.
Electric Guitar
I used my venerable old ’93 American Standard Fender Stratocaster, modified with DiMarzio humbucking pickups and new tuners. It’s an aging wreck, but it served well enough for this.
I recorded direct from a Line 6 Spider V30 practice amp through the USB port directly into Reaper.
The first electric guitar track is buried deep in the background starting on the second verse: Finger-picked bar chords that sound, by itself, somewhat like an organ, using Spider preset 07B “Mod: Rotary.” It was buried completely in the mix, however.
The funny thing about that track is that I had to take the first verse and loop it for the rest. That’s because I’m so out of practice that I physically couldn’t hold the bar chords for the entire song and my left hand started cramping toward the end.
The second electric guitar track is, of course, the solo. That is Spider preset 08B “FX: Rezodecay.” Originally I was just going to play that on my Taylor acoustic, but I thought that preset sounded really neat, almost like a pipe organ.
Bass
There is one track of “bass” that starts on the second verse which is a VSTi plugin that sort of emulates a Moog synthesizer. I played this on an Oxygen 8 MIDI controller and tweaked the note velocities afterward. The best place to hear it is in the outro.
Incidentally, I had to install Windows 7 drivers to use that MIDI controller. They’ve already stopped supporting it and it’s less than 10 years old.
Vocals
Recording this reminded me that I am incredibly out-of-practice. It also reminded me that singing church hymns “straight” requires a great deal of precision, diction, and breath control, things that I never had even on my best days, and certainly not after 15+ years of laxness.
So what you hear is basically my best effort, and not even close to what I would consider “good enough.” I simply ran out of time and needed to move on.
The lead vocal tracks were recorded with a Rode NT1 (condenser) microphone. The backing and harmony tracks were recorded with a Stedman N90 (dynamic) microphone.
I’m not sure but I believe I was sitting down to sing most of the tracks, which from past experience I know to be a mistake. But the NT1 microphone is attached to my computer desk for recording game videos, so it wasn’t easy to use it standing without moving it.
For the lead vocals, I recorded each verse individually. I recorded three attempts (“takes” in Reaper), and compiled the best of each takes to make each verse. My singing was so bad that at times I had to pick out single words from each take to splice together into something moderately adequate. I also applied a great deal of pitch correction. Compression and EQ, too, of course. Mostly rolling off the bass, and I think I put a small notch around 1100Hz which seems to be right where I have a yucky nasally resonance.
In the first verse I tried to sing very quiet and relaxed. (It is fascinating how the moment you press record, all relaxation ends and everything feels like a strain.) In the second verse I tried to sing a lot louder. In the third verse, I started quiet and ended louder.
In the end, it didn’t matter how much tea I drank or how many exercises I did or how much I tried to clear my throat, I felt like I sounded really phlegmy and nasally and gross. Not really sure how to correct that going forward.
I didn’t do any “corrective” work on the backing vocal tracks. I just let them go as they were, since they are fairly quiet, and doubled anyway.
Summary
In summary, it’s the best I could do in the time I allotted for myself. It still needs a lot of work, though.
In any case, I achieved my main purpose which was to practice with my recording setup so I will be ready for my next song.