Threaded - 005 (test vocals added)

Just a rough sketch of the vocals, more to get an idea for the eventual form than to actually sound good.
Threaded005a: vocaltest

Just recorded them quickly really late at night so couldn't properly sing loud during the chorus. Will sound much better once that part's sung nice and loud instead of late-night falsetto. A few spoken notes on how it should be sung are in there as well, it's a nice quick way of leaving myself ideas on what to do.

Well anyway, it sounds crappy but it gets a melody in place and gives me the correct sort of sound to redo the instrumental parts around. Once the instruments are all completed, I'll delete these temp vocals and record the final ones. I think that unless you're lucky enough to get a great vocal track right at the beginning, it often comes in handy to do a temp track like this, just so you can build the song and then really have something to sing along to properly at the end.

Threaded - 004 (bass/drums revisited)

Redid the bass/drum track to go with the guitars i recorded. This is just a sample with the chorus section so you can hear the tambourine (quite soft, panned to the left). Little bit of tambourine during a chorus fills it up and provides an almost subconscious rise in the energy of a song section.
Threaded004a: new bass/drum sample

There's also a bit of synth atmosphere in the background of the whole thing that fills up the emptiness a bit. Anyway, here it is combined with the guitar, and without the click track.
Threaded004b: instrumental


Now just have to record some vocals (and probably redo some guitars, I think it could use some more energy here and there, and playing style has a lot to do with that. It's still a rough mix, I think the drums/bass might need to be a bit quieter in the end. But it's really like an oil painting in progress - you do it layer by layer, then go back and paint over layers that you're not satisfied with. That's how I do it anyway..

Threaded - 003 (a very good place to start)

Well, forget all that crap about building a good foundation as the first step. Err, it'll come in handy in the future I'm sure, but for the moment it seemed wise to start over with a guitar track or two. Thought it might be nice to begin the song with a nice slow build that kind of set the scene for the main riff. Recorded my acoustic/electric, playing all the way through the song with a click track supplied by Reason. (oh, and i changed the tempo to 130bpm just to speed it up a bit) Here's what it sounded like:
Threaded003a: GuitarIntro(dry)


After that it seemed like it could use a second guitar, so I just set up another track and recorded using the exact same equipment:
Threaded003b: DualGuitarIntro(dry)

You'll notice that in order to make the sounds of both guitars distinct, I panned one to the left and one to the right a bit. Little interesting tidbit: a sound panned to one side or the other in a musical mix will sound louder than it actually is, like the directional sense of our auditory neurons picks out this irregularity and emphasizes it for us. So if you have some instrumental part that you want to sound louder or otherwise stand out, just pan it to one side a bit - you'll be surprised at how much more distinct it sounds without changing the volume one bit.

The song sounds like it should sort of be a rock song in a way, so i ran each guitar track through its own instance of Guitar Rig 2:

(For the left track I used the preset "Stevie's Rhythm" and for the right used something that I think was called "British Garage" or something.) Here are the two tracks together - i think that adding some amp simulation/distortion really makes it sound like a real song coming together, especially during the buildup.
Threaded003c: DualGuitarIntro(Wet)


Alright - tomorrow just gotta put together some bass/drums (or reuse the existing ones) and patch it all together. Maybe some atmospherics too. Vocals will come later.

Threaded - 002 (bass/drums)

Threaded002: 1st Verse - Bass/Drums

Building a song's like building a house. Good to start with the foundation. Actually, that's bullshit - sometimes I start with just a vocal and build a song around that, or just some keyboard loop or something. But on the whole, starting with bass and drums means that you have a solid rhythmic base on which to build things.

So this is just a basic bass and drum track for the first verse. It's all built in Reason 3.0:

Which is great because for a crappy drummer like me, I can program in the drums with mouseclicks (or play them on the keyboard and then adjust it all so it's quantized [oh, for those of you new to this, to quantize something means to adjust it so that it is rhythmically accurate. When playing something live, you might hit a snare drum just a few fractions of a second late, or your whole beat might not stay at the same tempo all the way through the song. Quantizing the notes means that they are right on the beats. Overquantizing can lead to a mechanical feel, so sometimes when adjusting things I only choose to quantize 75% of the notes in order to keep it somehow organic]) and then adjust the tempo later.

The song's starting at 120bpm, but I think i might speed it up a little bit before recording actual guitar or vocals or other audio.

If you're interested, I'm at the moment using the "FreshB MX" drumkit from the Reason Drum Kits refill, and the bass is the "Macca Beatle Bass" instrument in the Reason Factory Sound Bank.

Well, it's simple, but it's the beginnings of the song. Gotta start somewhere.

Threaded - 001 (idea)

This song idea sort of occurred to me on Sunday morning, and I thought it might be interesting to post the evolution of the song from idea to finished recording here on the old blog. So if all goes well, over the next week or two I'll post some updates with sounds and notes on how I'm creating them and putting it all together.

Anyway, here's the idea - just basic guitar and melody, it might change a lot by the end. But then again, it might not. I dunno. For the moment I'm calling the song Threaded, but don't know exactly why. That'll probably change too.

Threaded001: Idea