Kosh Naranek
New member
Late last year, I started thinking about going back and redoing some of the parts in a song that a friend and I wrote together one weekend in 2005. We wanted to know if we could write and record something that sounded sort of like Pink Floyd.
After recording the original version in November 2005 at my friend's house, I started hearing different chord changes in the chorus, and my friend said it would be cool if the song had a long instrumental intro like "Shine on You Crazy Diamond".
So in spring of 2006 I redid the song. My co-writing friend, who lives out of state, sent me his MIDI piano and organ parts which I dropped into the song. At that time, I was living in a condo in a multi-unit building and had to record direct. For guitars I used stuff like the Hughes & Kettner Cream Machine and Blues Master, the Mesa Boogie Formula preamp, and the Yamaha DG-1000, all of which have built in direct recording outputs. I'd just started playing around with the original version of Amplitube.
Here's the 2006 version:
So anyway, late last year I started thinking about redoing parts of it and remixing it. I got a live drummer to play on it (who advised me to leave my old songs alone, move on and write something new instead, but was kind enough to play on it anyway). I got a female friend to do some backup vocals.
I had intended on redoing the lead guitar, and maybe a few of the rhythm guitars. I ended up re-recording the bass, pretty much all the guitars, and all the vocals. The bass track is now a miked bass amp, doubled with a direct track through Amplitube 3.
The clean guitar in the verses is now a miked track (clean channel on a Peavey XXX combo I got in November last year) doubled with a direct track through Amplitube 3, and also a direct track that went through a Morpheus Capo pedal shifted an octave up, then into Amplitube 3, with the swell effect on, then into Eventide Black Hole reverb, with the dry signal then removed, for that swell/shimmer reverb effect behind the guitar.
The dirty rhythm guitars in the chorus are now miked tracks played through that same Triple XXX combo.
The lead is a miked amp track layered with my attempt in Amplitube to duplicate David Gilmour's rig - two tracks with a Hiwatt amp simulation, one feeding a Hiwatt cab, one feeding a Leslie cab.
The clean guitar melody in the intro is now a miked amp.
The pads in the intro were a guitar through the string swell patch in my Digitech Studio 5000 in the 2006 version. I redid those also, recording the pitch transposed guitar (Morpheus Capo pedal) direct and using Amplitube's swell effect and Roland Jazz Chorus amp simulation, then Eventide Black Hole reverb to get that synthy swell sound.
Here's the result. I started on this in early spring and got the mix done in July.
Besides miking amps, another thing that made the new version sound bigger than the 2006 version is putting Nomad Factory MAGNETIC analog tape simulation and Steven Slate VCC pro studio mixer simulation on most of the tracks. On many tracks, I used minimal amounts of EQ, but just simulating the process of recording to analog tape and mixing through a Neve console added a lot of fulness to the overall sound.
After recording the original version in November 2005 at my friend's house, I started hearing different chord changes in the chorus, and my friend said it would be cool if the song had a long instrumental intro like "Shine on You Crazy Diamond".
So in spring of 2006 I redid the song. My co-writing friend, who lives out of state, sent me his MIDI piano and organ parts which I dropped into the song. At that time, I was living in a condo in a multi-unit building and had to record direct. For guitars I used stuff like the Hughes & Kettner Cream Machine and Blues Master, the Mesa Boogie Formula preamp, and the Yamaha DG-1000, all of which have built in direct recording outputs. I'd just started playing around with the original version of Amplitube.
Here's the 2006 version:
So anyway, late last year I started thinking about redoing parts of it and remixing it. I got a live drummer to play on it (who advised me to leave my old songs alone, move on and write something new instead, but was kind enough to play on it anyway). I got a female friend to do some backup vocals.
I had intended on redoing the lead guitar, and maybe a few of the rhythm guitars. I ended up re-recording the bass, pretty much all the guitars, and all the vocals. The bass track is now a miked bass amp, doubled with a direct track through Amplitube 3.
The clean guitar in the verses is now a miked track (clean channel on a Peavey XXX combo I got in November last year) doubled with a direct track through Amplitube 3, and also a direct track that went through a Morpheus Capo pedal shifted an octave up, then into Amplitube 3, with the swell effect on, then into Eventide Black Hole reverb, with the dry signal then removed, for that swell/shimmer reverb effect behind the guitar.
The dirty rhythm guitars in the chorus are now miked tracks played through that same Triple XXX combo.
The lead is a miked amp track layered with my attempt in Amplitube to duplicate David Gilmour's rig - two tracks with a Hiwatt amp simulation, one feeding a Hiwatt cab, one feeding a Leslie cab.
The clean guitar melody in the intro is now a miked amp.
The pads in the intro were a guitar through the string swell patch in my Digitech Studio 5000 in the 2006 version. I redid those also, recording the pitch transposed guitar (Morpheus Capo pedal) direct and using Amplitube's swell effect and Roland Jazz Chorus amp simulation, then Eventide Black Hole reverb to get that synthy swell sound.
Here's the result. I started on this in early spring and got the mix done in July.
Besides miking amps, another thing that made the new version sound bigger than the 2006 version is putting Nomad Factory MAGNETIC analog tape simulation and Steven Slate VCC pro studio mixer simulation on most of the tracks. On many tracks, I used minimal amounts of EQ, but just simulating the process of recording to analog tape and mixing through a Neve console added a lot of fulness to the overall sound.
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