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| This section - Step 3: Recording the audio, Step 4: Editing and mixing
Intro, Step 1: Song Selection, Step 2: Arrangement
Still to come - Step 5: Planning the video, Step 6: Recording the video, Step 7: Putting the video together
Step 3: Recording the audio
Ideally steps 3 and 4 would have happened a little more at the same time than I did them. The thing is, I don’t really have a convenient place to get some good recording time in and edit while I go and such. Most of the time I’m on a ship, and it’s not like we have recording booths there. The point where I really started to work on this, I did happen to have about a week back home in between ships. So then came the decision... where am I going to record this? I needed some sort of dead room... so I thought about places in the house... where I ended up was our attic stairway. It actually is a lot of hard surfaces in there, but the thing is, it’s really small. There’s the door... a tiny bit of space, some random junk in that space... and then the stairs which lead up to a big hatch. Leaving everything closed, the sound has barely anywhere to go without hitting something, and hitting things that quickly, it dies out really quickly. So there was my recording room. I found a day where for most of it, I was the only one in the house, and that was it.
My setup was a condenser microphone hooked up to an mbox 2 mini, hooked up to my laptop with Pro Tools LE 8. No mic stand or anything, I just held the mic. Now there are certain things, like beatboxing, that, on a condenser mic, could really benefit from a wind screen. Not having one of these, I wondered, hmm, what if I just put a sock around the microphone? Some short tests back and forth, and it seemed to improve things a little, so for just a couple of the things, I used a sock as a wind screen.
What I recorded first was the bass. I had a click going for the tempo, but to make sure I stayed on pitch, I actually recorded the first part or two while hearing the original audio for some of it, though I did have to turn it off because it gets slightly off my click for the first half (it’s between 98 and 99 bpm, and I just used 99). I played around a little with the transition to try to get something that sounded like a gradual slowdown, but still with the click so I could match up the parts easily. What I ended up doing was going from 99 to 90 bpm for half a measure, then 85 for the other half, and then the next measure it becomes 80, or actually 160, since it doubles. This made it a little easier to have a consistent slowdown.
Now if I had been editing as I went along, I could have recorded some audio, played with it, determined what I needed better, and then recorded anything again if necessary. Since I knew I wasn’t really going to get to do that, I had to record good takes. In some cases, like the lower parts of the chords, I only really had to record once, and it’s such that, if I missed a note, I knew I could copy from another measure where I was singing the same note. For some of the less repetitive / more important things, like the lead parts, I usually recorded the whole thing 2 or 3 times the whole way through, and then if I thought a spot needed a better take, recorded that spot additionally.
I played around a little with whether to do the first half beatboxing with one “person” or with singing one part of the drumset at a time, and I think I did actually record it both ways. I already had in mind, however, the idea for the video of taking the drumset apart, and I wanted it to be me actually doing it the way it looks like I’m doing it, so I made sure I had some good takes of me doing the whole beat for the first half. I also kinda had to practice that jungle beat. Getting those hits in the right spots, and keeping the rest of the 16th note beat flowing is kinda tough at that tempo.
In recording the claps, I again had in mind something I wanted it to be like for the video, so I took three different takes of claps. I quickly realized, however, that in that stairway, I was getting a Chichen Itza effect... that is, clapping, when it hits hard, even stairs, bounces back with a certain pitch. Thus I was clapping, but getting a certain frequency very emphasized, and I didn’t want that, so I just recorded that part elsewhere.
Step 4: Editing and mixing
There was a lot of finding the best takes, replacing bad spots with better takes of the same notes, and getting rid of unnecessary breath sounds and other noises. If there was a certain part that was particularly tricky for me, like Chord 1 switching from a medium G to a high G, I found the best one and used that each time it happened. Pretty early on, maybe even while I was recording, I added reverb in. This helped to determine which spots I needed to swap out with another take, or which blips were not going to be noticeable in the big picture.
For the extremely repetitive parts, I looped them for consistency sake. For example, the ostinato in the first half repeats every 4 measures (almost every measure, but there’s one thing that only happens every 4th measure), so I found a good take of 4 measures, and looped it over and over. Similar situations for the second half ostinato, the first half drumset, the beginning of the second half hi-hat, the jungle beat, and the claps.
Occasionally I would change the timing on some hit, usually percussion, but I didn’t get too picky. There were also just a couple spots where I manually changed the pitch a little, but typically I left slight pitch variations be, or just chose another take.
I had played around when I originally recorded just the first half back a while ago with taking the bass down an octave and adding it slightly in, in addition to what I actually sang. This time around, I played with it a little again, but decided the first half really didn’t benefit from it. The second half does have a sub-bass included, but it’s pretty hard to tell. After all, I didn’t want it to sound like another part singing... just to add some low end to the existing bass. All the low notes that you really hear, in any case, are actually me singing it, like the low C’s that occur in the first half.
You might be amazed just how much reverb does to help the overall sound and perception of the tuning. Right now I’m listening to the whole thing without reverb, and it’s such a huge change in quality. There are some default reverb settings in pro tools that I have noticed seem to significantly alter the pitch as it decays, so I made sure to find one that didn’t do that. I then decided that for this style of piece, a really long reverb time helps with the overall mood, so what I ended up doing was taking their room 2 setting at medium size, but changing the decay from the default .75 seconds all the way to 7.3 seconds. In real life you only get that kind of decay time in like big cathedrals, but it’s good for this kind of piece.
Another thing often not thought about with music is the difference stereo makes as opposed to mono. The important things, like bass, bass drum, snare drum, and most of the leads, I kept in the center. Other things, like the 4 chord or guitar parts, I spread out, so that one end (low or high) is more towards the left, while the opposite end is more towards the right. With the claps, I put one clap of the three takes in the center, one entirely right, and one entirely left. The crash hits I took and split them up according to whether I wanted them to be left, right, or center. That kind of thing.
Now EQ and compression. In the past, I haven’t really played around with these effects, but I decided to give it a shot this time. Now for these, I actually split up parts even further... for example, the bass in the first half has slightly different settings than the bass in the second half. The lead parts, while there are only three in the video, are actually on 7 different tracks because of differences in the settings. The drumset in the first half I actually split up into the different instruments to add effects differently to each. So yeah, recorded them with one track, but split them up afterwards.
With EQ, a lot of what I did was take a frequency band and change it by a large amount either up or down. I would then change the frequency and see if I found spots that sounded better. I then dialed it back to a reasonable level in that spot. Compression was a bit of experimenting, depending on things like how punchy I wanted a part to be, or how in your face I wanted it to be in the final mix. The guitar, for example, has no compression, partly because it’s just a background part. Bass and snare drums, on the other hand, definitely have compression, because they need to be really punchy.
And of course there’s playing around with volumes between parts. It took a while to do all of these things, but I enjoyed it, and I think it turned out really well!
Next time I’ll talk about all the video aspects...
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| This section - Intro, Step 1: Song Selection, Step 2: Arrangement
Step 3: Recording the audio, Step 4: Mixing
Still to come - Step 5: Planning the video, Step 6: Recording the video, Step 7: Putting the video together
Ok, well if you haven’t been paying attention to my facebook for the last week, I recently uploaded this video to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76T6f5CA7nw
Actually, two videos... the other one is kinda a side thought... I purposely made it so people would tend to watch the main one, because the second is similar, with the same audio, and not as visually interesting. The second is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUJGukuSkvE
I put a lot of effort into these videos, and in a sense it paid off, because it’s gotten a bunch more views than any previous video I uploaded. Before, I had about 2 subscribers to my channel. Now I’ve got 49. It’s been about a week since the video’s been up, and it’s got right around 5,000 views already. My Africa video on the other hand has been up for over 100 times that length of time, and has fewer than 3 times that number of views total.
... but I’m not actually here to advertise my video... ok, maybe a little...
The point is, I decided to write an entry with a bunch of stuff concerning how I went about making the videos, and also pointing out some things you probably didn’t catch all of the first time you watched the video. I’ve separated it into steps, so read whatever you’re interested in.
Step 1: Song selection
I didn’t really choose a normal “song”. In fact there are no vocals whatsoever in the originals, so kinda interesting that I decided to make them a cappella. Donkey Kong Country 2 was one of my favorite games growing up. There are a ton of levels to work through, and I had a lot of trouble getting through some of them. It also had some really good tunes behind some of the levels. One of my favorites was Stickerbush Symphony ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67nkzoJ_2M ), which is the tune behind the bramble levels of the game. I always liked that bass line, even before I was a bass. I actually used to say it was my second favorite tune in the game, however from talking to other people, it seemed to me to be the more generally liked tune. I’ve kinda imagined it a cappella for some years now, and there was a point where I actually transcribed it out and took a shot at recording myself singing it. Didn’t turn out too bad (there’s a 30-second clip on my soundcloud), but I didn’t work on it to make it sound polished or anything.
Then more recently, we got a wii back home, including the game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was playing through the 1-player mode, and got to a point in the game where I heard the remake of the song ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MIQvBSFBSU ), and I thought it was awesome!
Back sometime this past fall, I decided it was time to make another video, so I asked people on Facebook what ideas they had for me. One person mentioned that he still wanted to hear a finished version of Stickerbush Symphony. So I thought, you know, it was sounding pretty good... might not be a bad idea to finish that. At some point I realized it could be pretty cool to put it together with the remake, because I thought the remake was awesome too, and separately they’re relatively short. So I decided I’d go from the DKC2 version into the SSBB version.
Step 2: Arrangement
Well it was really more transcription than arrangement, but there were definitely some points to ponder considering it would be done with my voice. First, stickerbush symphony.
- There are a number of lines that have a quick echo a 16th note behind, such as the ostinato line, and the first few solo lines. I played around with doing this echo with another “person”, or in the same line, but decided it sounded too messy, and was really not important, so I took them out.
- The line that starts about 10 seconds in changes quality without changing notes. For this I had in my mind a cover of Seal’s Crazy by a group called Firedrill, where they accomplished a similar effect on a similar line very well.
- At almost the very beginning, there is a sound that keeps going up in pitch for a few octaves. I played around with singing something similar, but decided to use an indefinite whistle instead. I also decided to repeat this in the similar location when the drumset first comes in, even though it doesn’t in the original.
- Around 27 seconds into the original, there is some really fast descending line. Really didn’t seem reasonable to sing that, so I thought about some other effect I could do with my voice. A wind sound is what I came up with. I then decided that, hey, this is kinda cool, and so I added it to the whistle line as well.
- I needed to consider how these lead lines would differ from each other. The beginning lines I just made normal. I wah-ified the next type of line, and decided to drop the next one down an octave, even though it’s really just a different sound in the same octave.
Jump slightly to the remake.
- The beginning chords continue similarly when the guitar comes in, but I decided it was too soft and unimportant through the first part to be worth it. I brought them back in when I thought they became important enough again.
- That guitar stuff doesn’t necessarily have the rhythm that I ended up doing it with, but it kinda sounds like it does something different when the chord stays the same versus when it changes in the middle of the measure, so I decided to not be too picky, and just go with my general impression of the line. Notice that the people who made this remake used that guitar rhythm to play off of the line in the DKC2 version (the one I was talking about 10 seconds in).
- The jungle beat. So yeah, there’s the normal snare, bass drum, and cymbals, but then partway through there’s extra sounds that get added in. It kinda sounds like the fast hi-hat stuff also continues, so I decided to take those ideas and combine them into the jungle beat. It’s got the general fast pattern, and also hits that happen at specific times every 2 measures.
- The violin line at the end gets really high, so I decided it would be better to take it down an octave
- The percussion starts to get a little crazy 1:23 in (1:23 into the remake that is). While the orchestra hits are happening, I’m not sure if the hits are actually doubled in the snare, but the beats could use more oomph, so I decided to make them two different snare sounds. Also, on the last beat of the measure before the orchestra hits come in, the secondary snare sound sounds something like 2 16ths and 4 32nd notes... some kind of roll basically. So that was a perfect opportunity to finally use the lip buzz snare roll!
Then in the middle is the transition: the only real compositional part that was actually done by me. I needed to transition from the first part in Am(ish) to the second part in Bm, and with a slower, yet faster tempo. The beat is faster, however the lines are slower... for example, you may have noticed that the ostinato line is the same idea in the remake. Well the way I wrote it out anyway, one ostinato phrase takes up one measure in the original, but two measures in the remake. I kept the ostinato line going and slowed the tempo down so that it could just morph into the new line. I brought a hi-hat line in as it started to slow down, and then suddenly doubled its tempo when I got to the actual start of the remake. The cymbal roll that occurs at the beginning of the remake also applied very well to making a transition. Then of course I had to consider how to actually change key. The normal key change methods I could think of didn’t really fit the mood of the tunes to me, so I played around with things until I came up with something else that I liked. The original in that part jumps back and forth between Am7 and CM7 chords, while the remake jumps back and forth between Bm7 and DM7 chords. What the transition ended up being was ...Am7 CM7 C#ø7/E (or Em6) Bm7...
Next section talks about the audio...
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| You know, I never have really fought hard to get the girl I wanted. If she liked me back, awesome... if not, I just wished she did, and I wouldn’t do much about it.
On the one hand, I’m not trying to force or fool anybody into liking me. If I’m going to be with somebody, it’d be based on them liking my personality, not just them giving me a chance to prove myself. No smooth tricks here. It’s something that makes me the nice guy and not the jerk. One thought I had in watching some of these movies was, wow, flirting, even when it works, can seem pretty pathetic if you really think about it.
On the other hand... does it mean more for a guy to really fight to win over a girl? You can try really hard for something and still not be the jerk. Showing a lot of effort could show you really desire it.
And on the other side of that other hand... what if they’re just like me... not going out of their way to show they could be interested in me... and they just don’t know that I want it because I won’t show enough effort.
I think I’ve gotten a ton better in trying to be less shy and be friendly (somebody here disbelieved me the other day when I said I have shy tendencies)... but if I’ve got a crush on somebody, I still have a really hard time doing anything about it if I don’t sense that they like me.
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| Well I just posted a bunch of massive facebook statuses on the same topic, so this could really make more sense in a blog entry. So here we go, some thoughts on the Sing-off, Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2.
First half of the first episode down. Yellowjackets - just ok. You're still high on Kenya, we'll forgive you. Fannin family - potentially cool... Loved Afro-Blue's Put Your Records On! And Delilah is quite impressive.
Second half done. Rap typically goes over my head, but I liked their performance... I think seeing it helps a lot. Cat's Pajamas... this guy's thoughts summarizes it pretty well: "They cut to a live performance (for an audience of old ladies..., and suddenly I realize that they're trying really, really hard to be Rockapella circa 1998, perhaps too much." Basically, my thinking is, they've already got it going well, why are they here? Although it is kinda interesting to think about a Rockapella-like group getting eliminated first... As for Vocal Point... well I think I'm just tired of Jump Jive and Wail, between singing it with Hawkapella and playing it in the showband...
Ep. 2 first half: Ah Dartmouth... I love guys college a cappella. Pentatonix does sweet stuff, and girl is cute. Messiah's Men, I think it's cool that they're on the show. Totally agree with Shawn, and I also think that they did a good job of not rushing the song... I think most groups would have. Sonos, well I already have one of their albums, 'cause they're kinda already known in the a cappella world for their arrangements, which are great (like this). I liked the performance a lot!
Other tidbits about Sonos: that album I have has them doing Gravity WITH Sara Bareilles lol. They also used to have another guy in the group, which might have helped...
Ep. 2 second half: Collective: Rachel Lampa? I totally have a few of her songs, 'cause she's been on wow albums. Anyway, I totally wanted to fix the empty spots in the arrangement during the chorus. Soul'd Out: you are Not glee... but anyway... Um, not sure what was supposed to happen in that song transition, but it didn't. North Shore: the charm of Jerry Lawson, with better tuning, but perhaps less soul. I liked it, though it's probably not for a modern day CD. Impression before hearing them: Deltones = Pitch Slapped. Afterwards: Deltones = Backbeats. And friendless girl is gorgeous.
Overall impression for the first round of the Sing-Off:
Pretty much agreeing with the judges. The most surprising cut was Cat's Pajamas, but on the other hand, I don't think they have a reason to be on the show. They can do what they're already doing great, and it isn't what the modern world wants on a CD.
Favorite song from the first round is Put Your Records On, gonna have to download that one.
Definitely noticing the trend for collegiate-ish male, female, and co-ed groups showing on the various seasons. Male - Bubs, On the Rocks, Vocal Point, Aires, (Whiffenpoofs is a slight exception) - have a certain fun, energetic, grounded feel to them. Co-ed - Pitch Slapped, Backbeats, Deltones - have another feel, wider... and something else I can't describe. And female - Noteworthy, Delilah - doing what female groups kinda have to do to do well: hit you in the face.
Man I like this show... hope I get to watch more episodes soon!
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| Time for an update! What about? I dunno... but it's about time for one...
You know it's coming up on 8 years that I've been on xanga... that's pretty long... many of the more popular xanga sites haven't been here nearly that.
It seems to me that the reason to be on xanga has changed... at least for me. I was in high school when I started, and in those first few years, I had a number of friends who also kept up with their own xangas, so my posts tended to be some thoughts for the day or a little bit about what's been going on. But nowadays I don't have much of anybody that I've met in real life that uses xanga anymore... not that I know of anyway. My other xanga has a specific purpose: to keep people updated on my ship stuff. But this xanga doesn't have a specific purpose, and so nowadays I feel like I need to feel like talking about something and take the time to write a decent-length entry to be worth updating, because let's face it, not many people read this thing, and I don't have the kind of time to build myself up among the xanga community.
On the other hand, I do keep on reading the ones I'm subscribed to... which usually means I stumbled upon multiple of their posts in the past that I found particularly interesting, or they friended/commented me and I thought their posts were worth reading... even if they probably don't look at my xanga, like, ever hehe. But nobody's done that recently, so I haven't had any new subs recently...
Anybody feel like gaining a subscriber? You might not see much activity, but I'll be reading :)
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