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Surround Sound Planning

As I may have mentioned at some point, my next project after Warp is to mix a whole album in surround sound. But before I actually commence mixing I have to plan out how I’m going to do it and if it worth while in terms of marketability.

In terms of creativity I really want the surround sound element to add to the story telling aspect of the album and bring it to a cinematic sort of experience. This is heavily inspire by watching films such as Star Wars in the Cinemas when you can hear space ships roar past you and sounds coming from directions that match the camera angle, this really immersed me into the film and I want to bring that element of surround sound to my album.

In terms of how I’m going to mix my album I have demo I’m going to use as an example. This track has 3 rhythm guitar tracks, 1 bass track, 3 lead guitar tracks, a full drum kit, and 5 synth parts. The drums will be mixed so there’s a bit of the kick and snare in anything but the rest will be as if you’re surround by the drum kit with the floor tom panned out the right and back right speaker, hats to the front left speaker and all the cymbals panned around from front to back.

1 of the Rhythm guitars is lower than the other two and will be be completely in the front central speaker, the other two will be panned left and right both back and front. The leads will likely follow suit, except for a time when everything drops out and I want them spinning around from speaker to speaker. The synths is where I want to get real creative on this track and create some movement, There’s a real low synth that pulses that i want just coming from the as if its inside the listeners head, there’s a stutter synth I want to have jumping from speaker to speaker to create a real frantic feeling as if it’s flying all around the listener. I am yet to decide on the amount of vocal tracks but chances are there will be a few layers and it’ll be female vocals at the front and booming male vocals coming in from the back to make it obvious there’s two different characters involved.

In terms of marketability I did some research and found that although there isn’t a huge market for surround sound albums. However I don’t think it’s a dead market as some very notable names have released surround sound mix’s of their album. Nine Inch Nails did a surround mix of their album “The Downward Spiral” which went 4x platinum, Pink Floyd also released The Dark Side of the Moon” in surround sound which sold 800,000 copies. Although just a few examples, if acts as big as Nine Inch Nails and Pink Floyd are doing it, that’s a good enough reason for me to do it as well.

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Post Mortem

Introduction

After about 9 weeks of recording and mixing, all I can say is, never again. I swore in my post mortem I’d never spend as much time in lab 2 again, but I think I doubled it this trimester. That being said, I think creatively I really achieved what I was hoping to, whether or not I achieved what I wanted in terms of my mixing remains to be seen. As usual, I will reflect on each song individually and compare to what I believe is a similar work, so here’s my reflection on “Warp”.

Prelude

It’s worth noting that due to me swamping between DAW’s that have different fade functions, I messed up the fades on Pro-tools doing my final batch fades and parts that are meant to be faded out are now audible and very obvious, including a guitar jack getting pulled out, so thank you Pro-tools for that.

Darkest Carnival

Certainly the heaviest and most “traditional” song on the EP. It begun with the intro guitar riffs which i thought had quite a sinister undertone to it and I thought it would be a good song to start the album off with and  build it up. I’m quite happy with the clean guitar tones I recorded for this track and the helix FX I used I think sound really nice, my only change to them is I’d like to maybe make the tone a bit warmer from the amp instead of having to EQ it in. Then the heavy guitars came in and my problems started. The initial tones I captured from the amp were okay but definitely had to much highs and I found the sounds too piercing, the only way I was able to salvage them was to record anther take using the Helix amps sims so I’d have complete control over the tone I was capturing, however I’m still not to thrilled with how it sounds and will likely re do it at a later date. I initially had a synth solo that would kind of transition the song into the more electronic direction the EP was heading but it honestly sounded terrible and I decided the best option was to do a super 80s heavy metal guitar solo, I regret not using a wah-pedal on it and going full Kirk Hammett but I quite like the tone I used. I used electronic drums for the intro and Battery sampled drums for the heavier parts, both were fairly easy to mix but getting Battery to sound like a real drum kit was a bit of a challenge. My Idea for this songs vocals comes from Katatonia’s song “Inside the City of Glass” where it has no singing but whispers that eeire play out in the quieter parts of the song. As I wanted to keep all the vocals for this song kind of different to the usual I had a whisper track run through a delay, two reverse delays delaying at different rates, a reverse reverb and a regular reverb. I think the result of this made a vocal track that really fit the sinister vibe of the song as few words are distinguishable but it’s still obviously someones voice which i really like. If I was to compare this to an existing track I’d compare it to “The Darkness Within” by Machinehead, the tones are crushing and defined yet not to piercing with the higher frequencies which I was really trying to do, but certainly did not achieve. I think the distorted guitar tones used in this track is what I was going for Over all I find this song to be the most lacklustre but I am quite happy with the cleans and the vocal parts.

The Forlorn

This song is where the album takes more of a turn towards the more obscure electronic/metal fusion. It starts out with a droney synth, electronic drums and lo-fi vocals and I’m really happy with how this turned out, except for the vocals which are most likely place holders for now. I was going for a sound similar to Nine Inch Nails’ new EP “Add Violence” and I think i got that vibe with out it being a ripoff. The song Then suddenly takes of into a heavy saw/square wave synth that I wanted to sound like the synth equivalent of a distorted guitar, form there guitars and lead synths are added to create a sort of build up. I was hoping to replace a vocal part with a lead synth that would kind of solo through out the whole song and I quite like how it sounded when it all came together. The guitars for this track took a bit of time and a second recording session but I think i managed to achieve my goal of having a heavy but dull sounding tone the chugs along in the background, but I’m not 100% happy with the lead tone and I’m not sure what I don’t like about it. Out of all four songs I think this one was the easiest to mix and I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.

Agony

This song was the first one I wrote earlier this year and kind of what started the idea for this project. the whole song was based around the two music box riffs and the creepy lead synth I think sound sort of like a human voice doing some sort of wailing. The crunching tone that plays through out most the song is actually a bass hitting power chords because I wanted to experiment with a bass taking more of a guitar roll and I think i’ll do it more often in metal as bass power chords sound very brutal. This is kind of similar to the previous song in the sense that it slowly builds up focusing around a lead vocal replacing synth, but was much harder to mix as I found it hard making a place for everything to be heard. As per what seemes to be the theme for this EP, the guitars caused me issues and were re-recorded. I wanted them to sit in the background and not stick out to much but finding the middle ground between typical guitar levels and not being heard at all took almost all the time I spent mixing this track. The drums were a simple 4 piece electronic kit and I’m really happy with how they sound, especially the crash which sounds like someone dropping a metal sheet in a massive cave or something. I wanted the vocals for this song to be as if its another instrument instead of the usual use of vocals being the focal point for the song, so I recorded some low pitched growling vocals with heavy reverb to sort of echo out in the middle of the mix just to really create the climax of the build up. I tried thinking of a song to compare this to but it’s probably the weirdest song I’ve every written and I’m not actually sure what it sounds like, probably more comparable to came sounds tracks where its just repetition with things being added and taken away to create and evolving song. 

Malevolencia

The final song and probably the song I spent the most time on. I wanted to finish the EP on a more mellow note as most metal albums have one song that’s more calm or acoustic than the rest. I was lucky enough to be able to work with my friend Tim Mead from Treehouses on this track and I am very happy with his spoken word parts. We got it all done in about an hour and he had so much lyrical content prepared I was able to pick and chose which lines I wanted. Tim is really professional in is approach to music and recording and  really puts a lot of emotion into his writing, I hope to work with him again soon in some other musical project. This First section of this song was really enjoyable to mix, the clean guitars came through really nice and worked well with the organs, it’s my first time working with an organ I think they sound great. The EQ sweep into the 8 strings it probably my favourite parts as it bring a rather mellow song into a heavier, dronier song. Also my first time working with an 8 string guitar and I look forward to working with them more as I found it really easy to mix them to sound heavy without actually needing to gain the amp that much, which removes all the high-end that gives me headaches. The second half of this song however was a right pain in the ass and as expected, was re-recorded. All the tones had so much high-end and it was painful to listen to, only on the last day did i realise I couldn’t actually hear the organs and brought all the guitars down to make the organs audible, this really saved the song for me as I was close to scrapping the whole end as it sounded awful.

Concluding Statement

I think this semester has been the most full on in terms of skills I’ve had to learn. recording and mixing guitars is certainly no walk in the park and I’m going to have to do a lot of research over the break before undertaking my final major project of a heavy metal album mixed in surround sound with lots of synths and string sections, I believe this semester’s project has prepared me well for this. I realise that this EP doesn’t really fit in anywhere and the songs are all quite different, but I’m happy with how it turned out and I like to think they all feel linked somehow in terms of the dark feel to the whole EP. I look forward to releasing Warp along with Eco on Bandcamp, however for now they will remain on soundcloud as the graphic artist has not yet finished the album artwork and I want to do more one more final mix on each track.

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Mixing blog

Before writing the songs for this EP, I had a goal of incorporating electronic and metal elements together to form something that’s kind of in the middle. I chose this as I had zero experience mixing electronic music and being able to mix synthesisers is a skill I’d like to have. I also chose to do this as mixing metal music is what I’m hoping to do professionally at some point and this would give me a chance to try and mix metal guitars for the first time.

Having now finished my mixing I can now say that the opposite of what I thought would happen, happened. I found the mixing of the electronic elements to be very easy, as if i had already partially mixed them when I was creating the synth sounds. The heavy guitar tones gave me the most trouble, I found they didn’t sound close enough to the amp sound or they didn’t sound full enough like the ones I recorded directly from my Helix amp/cab/mix sims. The whole process really made me question how much difference a tube amp makes in recording environment. For future recording I will now have a split my guitar signal in my Helix so it goes through an amp sim and DI into the desk but also through a Helix pre-amp into my amp and recorded. This way when it comes to mixing I’ll have the best of both worlds to work with.

I mixed this EP using both outboard gear FX and plugins on pro-tools. Every guitar that is used is mixed 100% using outboard gear excluding pans and volume. To use the out board effects I sent the dry signals from pro-tools into channel 1 of the large audient desk, from channel 1 I sent them to auxiliary 1 and then to the auxiliary 1 output on the patch bay. From there I went into the mic in on my Helix, through the the effects I wanted then out the stereo outputs and into the channel return path on channels 2 and 3 where the wet signal was recorded into pro-tools. I went through all this because the Helix has some cool reverb and delays that there don’t seem to be any plugins for

As mentioned in my previous blog, I made the mistake of facing the Royer at the floor and roof instead of the amp. Although incredibly stupid, it did have some benefits. I found that for that recording session the stems from the SM57 and MD421 had to much high end in them, but raising the level of the Royer stem seemed to phase out a lot of the high end, making the guitar tone much less ear piercing.

For future mixing of metal tracks I think I should do more planning a head so I have a more clear picture of the tones I want for each song so I when I’m recording i get most of the tone done then and can spend less time trying to EQ and compress it into the sound I want which has defensively occupied the vast majority of my time. 

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Post Recording Blog

This semester for my project I’ve been recording much heavier and distorted guitar tones than I ever have before. Previously I’d only recorded clean channel and slightly overdriven guitar tones with the mind set of “stick an SM57 in front of it and she’ll be right”, so this semester I thought id experiment with more microphones and micing techniques for clean channels and the new highly distorted tones i was working with. 

In my first session I was hoping to record the distorted guitars for two of the tracks. To mic them up I set up a Sennheiser MD421 and a Shure SM57 both pointing slightly to the center of the speaker. This sessions went quite efficiently and I recorded everything I wanted without rushing.  When I went to do some mixing a few days later I found that the guitar tracks for those songs were quite empty sounding and definitely weren’t the tone I was going for, mostly due to a lack of low mids and way to much highs. So I went back into the studio a week later to track the clean tones for one song and the distorted tones for the remaining two songs. 

This time I did some research and found a helpful video by metal guitarist Ola Englund on micing guitar cabs for metal tones. For the clean tones I set up an AKG c414 xls and a Neumann u67 both pointing just next to the edge of the speakers dustcap. After running these through the warm audio compressors I was really happy with the warm and defined sound I had so left the microphones where they were. However recording the cleans took way longer than I expected due to its being rather technical in some parts and constant “studio visitors” who insisted on talking.  For the heavy tones I set up an SM57 pointing next to the dustcap, an MD421 pointing towards the edge of the dustcap at an angle and a Royer R-121 which i thought was pointing towards the outer area of the speaker cone. due to the cleans taking so long i was in such a rush to mic up again that i didn’t realise the Royer was figure 8 so it was actually pointing at the floor and the roof. 

As I was tracking I was fairly happy with the guitar tone and only changed the MD421 a little bit, unfortunately I didn’t get to track guitar for the final song so I went and booked a final session.

I used the same set up for the final session with the only change being the Royer actually facing the right way, this session definitely sounded the best and will most likely be the microphone set up i use in the future. The sound was so good i re-recorded the first to songs

 For each session my instrument set up was one of 3 different guitars running into a Line 6 Helix using different pre amps, such as a Mesa Boogie dual rectifier or Peavy 6505, then running from the mono out into the instrument send to rec room 1, this then fed into the Marshalls FX return which bypassed all the Marshall preamps and just used the power amp section to get the nice tubeyness to it.

To improve on my sessions in the future I will no longer allow people to come in for more than a few minutes, as that set me back timewise quite a bit. I will also do more research leading up to it to avoid an ugly recorded sound like i got from my first session. 

in my next blog i will discuss my mixing and how i worked with the Royer pointed at the floor and roof.

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Why Sip a Mai Tai When You Can Play It?

G’day, today I’m going to review a digital synth that I’m certain none of you have heard of as I am yet to meet someone who has, the Presonus Mai Tai. I got the Mai Tai along with the Presonus DAW Studio One when I bought one of their interfaces, so one pro already is that it’s free. The Mai Tai was actually the first synthesiser I ever used, so going into this I had no idea how synths worked, however the Mai Tai was very simple to use and came with heaps of categorised presets that I could use to build my understanding and I was quickly able to build my own sounds.

The Mai Tai can be divided into three parts; the main window, effects window and modulation window. The Main window is where you handle all the oscillators and sound envelops and is where the majority of your sound altering will occur. everything is laid out very simply and it is very straight forward with what it all does, everything is labeled and its very clear if something is a button/knob, and each section is clearly separated from the rest. There are also lot’s of different parameters for you to change and some options that I have not yet seen in other synths. An example of this is that you can have it so the frequency cut off changes depending on the note velocity, or the character parameter that replicates the character of analog synths.

The next section is the effects section, divided into FX A and FX B, which is mostly a bunch of simple effects such as flange, reverb, phaser, etc. Although in most cases you’ll like send the synth to an FXaux to use a plugin effect, the ones on the Mai Tai are still pretty good and the reverb tends to work well without ever being too much. The gater effect is pretty unique and works like a tremolo effect instead you can chose irregular patterns for the volume to lower, changing depths for volume to lower by and can be different for the left and right output of the Mai Tai, I find the gater to be great at making some really strange and unique sounds.

The final section and the only really disappointing section of the synth is the modulation window, which is split into Mod A and Mod B. In this window you can change the signal flow of the synth and where MIDI inputs like modulation, pitch shift and after touch come into effect in the flow. What ruins this section is a poor layout and a lack of a good description on how to operate it. The whole section doesn’t really make sense I tend to just jump around between presets until I find one that has a modulation section that’s similar to the sound I’m going for.

Overall I think the Mai Tai is a really great digital synth, especially for beginners. the layout is very easy to figure out and also fairly addictive to play around with. The only disappointing feature, the modulation section, is most likely only useful to more advanced users who would probably be able to figure it out. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a versatile new instrument or hoping to learn how to synths work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNUqHjxd7sY  (full video explanation of the Mai Tai)

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Library Music vs Commisioned Composers

Music can be split into two categories, library music and Commisioned Composer music. The first of the two is a royalty free, meaning it can be used with out being purchased and can be generally be found very easily online. Commisioned Composers are pieces of music that are normally requested, like a a director asking for a soundtrack to their movie from a producer and paying for the rights to use it. With increased​ access to royaly free music online from sites such a YouTube, it might appear as if the composer is becoming obsolete. However I believe royaly free is like everything else in the sense that you get what you pay for and free music will never be as good as music someone creates to make money. Because of this I see library and commissioned fulfilling different markets. Library will fill the market of low budget producttions such as YouTubers, small production companies and students, where as commisioned will be used in higher budget works such as advertising, larger productions like feature films and the higher end of the music industry

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Meadows

Meadows is the oldest song and was quite easy to record and mix. It took around 2 hours to record 3 guitar tracks and one bass track and not much longer to mix it. The song is mostly repeating the same guitar riffs over and over which may seem too drawn out to some but I quite like it, I thought the song sounded quite conclusive so that is why it is last on Eco to finish the EP off.

Over all I’m very happy with how the EP turned out and I think all songs fit together very well. my laregest regret of the project is forgetting to bounce Meadows out of pro-tools the day it was due which will result in it being uploaded a few days after the rest of the songs.

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Hollow Ash

Hollow Ash was initially not going to be a part of this project, the original song to be 5th in the EP wasn’t suiting the rest of the songs so I decided to finish this one off instead. The guitar recording was all done at home and didn’t take too long, with the exception of the second half off the song which was written intentionally to be difficult to play. I decided my QWERTY keyboard skills weren’t good enough for this song so I had the singer from Grim play some keys on the Triton on tascam which I think turned out very pleasent.

The mixing was relatively simple, all guitars and bass guitars were sent to reverbs and delays as per most the other songs on Eco. Since I was so happy with the keys I decided to have them higher in the mix than originally anticipated as well has the bass which plays a much more lead part than the typical bass line. All drums and shakers were from battery, with the shakers being the same sample played backwards and forwards to sound more natural.

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Eco

Being the title track of the EP, Eco easily occupied the most time to record and mix and probably took up far too much of my time, the biggest blunder of this whole project also happened with the recording of this song. My initial plan was to record all the guitars DI’d into the tascam then reamp then into a rec room later as this would allow me to record myself, but this was not to be the case. After around 6 hours of studio time doing DI guitars for this song as well as Things Beyond Things, I went to reamp the tracks using the headphone send as the guitar input. Upon doing this i found the signal to be very quiet and accompanied by a very loud ground hum, and no amount of tweaking, changing studios or help from the supervisors would make it go away. So After wasting that whole day I decided this was to be recording in my room with my old mate SM57 and a stack of old uni books as a mic stand (most useful they’ve ever been).

Mixing Eco took me a very long time as well, with there being 10 different guitar tracks playing at one point and each one doing something slightly different, compressing and EQing was quick however as most of that was done at the guitar pedal/amp stage. I had a reverb setup for the rhythm tracks, one for the lead tracks and then one for the solo tracks, this was done with delays as well as sending everything to the same one made everything indistinguishable. The taping guitar track, its delay and the harmonic guitar track all had an autopan on them with different settings to keep the mix moving around and stop it sounding static. The second half of the song was much more simple with the only difficulty being the second lead track needing to have some clip gain changes as the lower parts were too quiet and the higher parts were very loud and compressing it made it sound pretty average. Finishing this track was a relief as I hope to never spend as much time in computer lab 2 again.

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Things Beyond Things (Devin Townsend Cover)

Things Beyond Things is a cover of Devin Townsend’s song of the same name released on his solo album Ocean Machine: Biomech (1997) released by Hevy Devy records and is the final track on the album. As Townsend is my favorite musician of all time, my aim of this cove was to replicate the song as close as I could, and i reckon I’ve done alright. I spent a whole day recording this at home using multiple guitars running through my Line 6 Amplifi FX100 that has a Fender Twin Reverb model on it, this was then run into my Marshall JMD501’s fx loop with the wet/dry on about 50/50 with the marshall’s clean tone. However after trying 3 different guitars, an SM57 and a borrowed Presonus condenser I could not get it sounding like the guitar on the song. I then realised the track was most likely recorded on a Telecaster on the album so I had to go and grab the closest thing i had, which was a Squire Stratocaster that I had leant to a friend. Restringing only the E-A-D strings I recorded 4 guitar tracks  each with a the pick-up selector on a different setting and thankfully it sounded pretty damn close to the actual song.

The rest of the process was relatively easy. The midi drums and bass lines were easy to figure out and mixing was quite easy. All guitar are run through Townsend's typical Delay>reverb>delay auxiliary set up as well as separate delay and reverb aux’s. As the whole original song has a low-fi sort of vibe to it the synths were very easy to copy as there were just average synth strings, and the EQing was also very simple.

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Grim

The First part of Grim to be written was the repeating piano line that plays the throughout the whole song, which funnily enough came from me playing with the Oxygen Keyboard in one of Steve's ableton classes where I gave up on figuring out ableton. The tracking of the song had 2 piano tracks, 4 bass tracks, 4 midi string tracks and 2 vocal tracks. The bass lines where the main focus of this song with them all being run into multiple FX channels on Studio one. First there was a delay into a reverb channel, then a overdrive into a flange channel and the finally a simple reverb channel. All other tracks were run into different reverbs depending on the instrument. To me Grim suited the environment of being within a Grim so all the reverbs were an attempt to replicate that natural reverb of a Grim, as well as the reverb level for the storm sounds at the start slowly rising as the dry signal lowered to give and effect of walking into the Grim.

The vocals for this song were recorded in the tascam room with a good friend of mine who I believe is a very talented singer. I have her a very brief description of what I wanted and she nailed it which made the comping process very easy. However the ease for this song stopped there. Due to the large reverbs and hard hitting notes of the piano and bass, compressing and mixing this song was a pain in the ass and at the point of this blog being written there are still moments of clipping on the master fader.

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Black Seagull

Black Seagull is a song that came about as I was fiddling around with different Presonus plug-ins on Studio One at home. I found that by running a bass guitar into a delay, then a chorus and then a reverb, the final sound was as if the tail end of the bass notes had been fed into some strange alien Talk-box pedal.

The initial tracking had a rhythm bass track, a “typical low” bass track and then a lead bass track, however a second rhythm track as added with different EQ to make the mix more stereo. The two main rhythm bass tracks were run into the chorus>delay>reverb FX channel, the low bass was run into just a reverb FX channel and the lead was un 50/50 into both channels.

However i felt that the song, although relaxing, was lacking something. As with all songs on the EP, I imagined it suited a certain environment and Black Seagull suited the beach at night midnight for me. So I decided to grab a zoom mic and head to the beach at midnight to capture some ambience, which is where the wave and wind sounds came from. Unfortunately there were no seagulls making sounds so I had to search online for them, which was surprisingly easy (there’s more than one video on youtube with 10 hours worth of seagull sounds). The song finishes with storm sounds that lead into the start of the next song, which were also easily found online from royalty free sound sites.

Black Seagull was definitely the easiest track to record and mix because of its simplicity, and because of its relaxing sound I decided it was the best track to open the EP with.

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Mix Reviews

An important skill for an audio engineer to have is the ability to listen to a mix and to be able to analyse different aspects of a song, from a profession and personal point of view. This skill is called critical listening I aim to critically listen and to analyse two songs for this blog post using Bobby Oswinski’s 6 factors of critical listening, balance, panorama, frequency range, dimension dynamics and interest. Song 1- The March of the Poozers by The Devin Townsend Project

The March of the Poozers is a 5 minute heavy metal song that contains guitars, bass, drums, synths, vocals and choirs. Balance: the overall balance of the song seems to be quite even. Both guitars are at a similar volume and can be heard separately during harmonies. The bass is a little hard to distinguish from the guitars but the vibrations from its notes can be easily felt when the volume is raised. The snare and kick drum are particularly loud and easily cut through the mix to always be heard, the rest of the drums are not as prominent. The lead vocals easily sit at the front of the mix and are always the most prominent part of the song. Both the synths and choir vocals seem to be at a similar level in the mix and are heard together almost sounding like one instrument. Panorama: The difference between the left and right is not huge in this track. the hi-hats and snare are panned more the right, hearing it as if facing at the front of the drum kit. The synths are panned more left and the choir panned right. There are two guitars and lead vocals, each panned left and right. The bass and bass drum are both central

Frequency Range:The frequency range of this song is 20hz to 16kz for almost the entire song, as seen when run through a Spectrum Meter, low end frequencies bellow the 400hz mark are the highest and as the frequency gets higher the level slowly gets lower. It is like this almost the entire song except for 2:30 and 3:40 where the low end drops off and the mids pick up.

Dimension: The dimension this song gives off is that many of the instruments,  guitars, bass, drums and choir voices, seem to be right behind the listener, most likely due to their boost in lower end frequencies. The lead vocals seem to be coming from all directions due to the very high levels of reverb. Dynamics: Overall the dynamics of the song change very little through out the song. The tempo is kept constant by a heavy drum beat that has a powerful marching rhythm to it, the volume is also very constant and only lowers when the frequency levels change at the 2:30 and 3:40 marks. Interest: The part of the song that I find to be the “hook” is the use of the choir voices and the marching drum beat. It’s a part of the song I constantly get stuck in my head and find myself humming and walking in time to it around the house. The “journey” that pulls the listener through the song is within the lyrics as this song is part of a concept album that tells a story through the singing. this song in particular tells the part of the story where the “Poozers” march on earth in a War of the Worlds sort of fashion, which ties in with the marching beat that carries throughout the entirety song. Song 2- Monstrance Clock by Ghost

Monstrance Clock is a 6 Minute metal/rock song containing; two guitars, bass, drums, lead vocals, keys, organ and choir. Balance: The balance changes a little bit as the song progresses, initially the the bass and vocals are very dominant in the mix with the drums, although still very audible, being slightly quiter with the snare just cutting through and the guitars boosting a bit during the chorus. This then changes in the second chorus when the keys and organ are added, as the guitars and bass are quieter and the keys, organ and drums are much more present. It changes again when the song cuts to just organ, choir and bass where all three are very distinguishable. Panorama: When listening to the left and right of the track the differences are very obvious. The lead guitar is panned entirely to the right, leaving the left filled with all the mid and high range of the drums such as snare and symbols as well as a much quieter rhythm guitar. When the keys and organ come in they are both central as well as the bass, kick drums and vocals. Frequency Range: Through out the song the mid range frequencies are the highest, from the vocals guitar and keys. it rarely changes except for when the keys or vocals are solo’d and the highs are slightly higher.

Dimension: The dimension of Monstance Clock can be separated into two parts, the first being the rock/metal part of the song where all the instruments sound close besides the synths and drums which sound more distant. the second part being when the choir and organ come in where it sounds as if your in a church with an organ ringing out in all directions and a choir singing from the front. Dynamics:  There a quite a few dynamic changes during the song, the volume starts low then builds up for the verse then up again for the chorus, drops again for the verse and lower again for the bridge before coming back much louder for the final chorus. The tempo also changes and seems to follow increases in volume. Interest: The most stand out part of a song that would hook a listener is easily the chorus, its is extremely catchy and is the emotional peak as all the instruments come in powerfully. the next part of the song that draws the listener in is the sudden change from guitars and drums to what sounds like a choir song, a part that I’m sure that many wish went on a little longer as it is a very unique piece of music.

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Tha Big Bang

Here’s my interpretation of what the big bang sounded like. I created this by sending sounds of lightening, thunder, missiles, land mines, and lazer guns through a space sized reverb auxiliary, a few delay aux’s and a pitch shift aux.

check it: Tha Big Bang