Mu Mesons ROMANCE
Most of the second half (save the Coda) written in 1981. This is a pretty different version than any previous, in case anyone remembers it.
Danger, serious dynamic range: The Coda is improbably quiet (but I like it).
year later revisit and replace file: ultimately had to give some gain to the Coda. heard it on the radio and the DJ went for the fader and it was a disaster
filthy/hot/sweet
-
- KVRian
- 1030 posts since 14 May, 2008 from Tralfamadore
-
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I'm having to upload it to their site. It's supposed be connected to all folders on my network and updating the file on my drive(s) updates it there. Sometime it just fails to do anything.
works now. *thank you for your patience*
works now. *thank you for your patience*
-
- KVRAF
- 5948 posts since 19 Jun, 2008 from Melbourne, Australia
Thanks for sharing - sounds great. Shades of Frank Zappa in places - excellent 
Peace,
Andy.
Peace,
Andy.
... space is the place ...
-
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
thanks!
the section I wrote in 1981 was highly influenced by a couple of lines in Yo Mama, and some thing that the next door neighbor always played by Toto or somebody I had no escape from, the piano was against that wall, a small apt, no help for it. I was 24 and had just started writing.
the section I wrote in 1981 was highly influenced by a couple of lines in Yo Mama, and some thing that the next door neighbor always played by Toto or somebody I had no escape from, the piano was against that wall, a small apt, no help for it. I was 24 and had just started writing.
-
- KVRAF
- 11506 posts since 13 Mar, 2009 from UK
Love that guitar sound. Like a cat being squeezed through a toothpaste tube. Awesome. Love the other instruments too. The bass seems to have a mellower tone than your recent recordings.
......You should never smoke in pyjamas
......You should never smoke in pyjamas
Last edited by seismic1 on Sat Aug 20, 2011 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
*and if you play the game* particularly.
that thing: C# A E D was the line that kept coming thru the wall. I liked that part of the song but it was pretty irritating trying to work on ideas with that going on.
FZ's On the Bus (aka Toad-O Line) was out of him basing a whole solo on Hold The Line. I can relate to that.
this section was originally part of a pop song, I superimposed the melodies here, as counterpoint. I managed to remember these things all through the years, I lost all the notes I took, or whatever I did, a long time ago.
that thing: C# A E D was the line that kept coming thru the wall. I liked that part of the song but it was pretty irritating trying to work on ideas with that going on.
FZ's On the Bus (aka Toad-O Line) was out of him basing a whole solo on Hold The Line. I can relate to that.
this section was originally part of a pop song, I superimposed the melodies here, as counterpoint. I managed to remember these things all through the years, I lost all the notes I took, or whatever I did, a long time ago.
-
any1particular any1particular https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=175870 - KVRian
- 981 posts since 12 Mar, 2008 from Detriot Michigan USA
Wow! This music is fascinating. You wrote this in 1982? I wonder if you would share what the instruments are/ samples etc etc? And how you went about putting it together? :^\
-
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
the part from where the vibes melody kicks in til the coda I wrote the melodies for in '81, but the stuff before and after that in December 2009. The genesis even of the 12-09 business is a long story. You asked for it! this is a chance to write the memoirs. This piece is the most problematic thing I have ever done. I made a lot of weird choices I had to live with, and some bad choices along the way.
the 2009 began with a drone sort of thing with patches I made in Absynth. I was going to improvise a guitar solo over it, modal, more or less mixolydian mode basis. it took on a life of its own however and that event never materialized.
pretty much a blob that I play-doughed into shape, dragging notes around in Cubase... the beating that arouse out of sums and differences, and detuning - a couple of the patches effects came out of tuning experiments - suggested the rhythm in the second area of the composition, the bit that begins in 3/4; I got out some china crashes and what-not out of VSL percussion and firmed those up, and a little melody arose out of that, so I arranged that bit by bit; bass and drums, and mallet percussion taking the tune and it became a little song.
it was all a bit sweetness and light for a while... all that opening stuff was still just synths and kind of ambient, though there was an odd vibes patch, and a sort of redux *tines* (cf., DX7) I had made... the patches were done back in early 2006 and made to complement each other, for a piece that never happened. I think I kept it nebulous and vague for a while because the detuning presented problems for melody or anything like it. It sounded really rich... it was also rather quiet...
the middle area moved easily into a tonality that for some reason called these melodies up from 30 years ago. I'd kept them in my head and worked with them in various ways and thought of them as the basis for a raga for a time. That section flowed out of me easily, and the Coda happened directly following.
Now, ALL of this stuff was overlaid over the initial pad basis, which never changed. from 0:00 thru to the end was all completely built first, with only the sort of basic overlays I describe above. This was necessary as they used pretty long envelopes in Absynth, that #1 were CPU hogs and #2 I had to wait until they ended to resume recording anything else. Ultimately I just rendered them, committed to them.
I was using two basses, OTS Cherry Core and Iconic Bass: Jaco. I doubled the pseudo vibes with vibes from VSL. Now at this stage serious tuning problems came to the fore. The basses don't perfectly intone anyway. These two aren't in great tune with themselves, I hate to say. The vibes are very reliable as a basis, fortunately. At this point A = 432. Which in theory I love. That was the basis in the Absynths I built, albeit with some variances that was a part of the sound design, there is a rich effect I got that inspired many things, which ironically was a nightmare later on. it vibrated just so!
As I got more sound of the thing in general, compressing things, getting the bass tones together, the tuning was more of a problem still. In fact, up until this latest revision it remained so. I don't remember when I got the horns involved... these are WarpIV. There was Tuba out of the Kontakt VSL earlier on, pretty much when I started finding melodies, is when I put that underneath. It's two tracks of Tuba over the Absynth in the Coda. It's very subtle there, it gives a fat pillowy bed there that's essential for those tubas. that section, whispering tubas, has to be humanly impossible at that dynamic level. that isn't lower gain, that's just ppp. in fact the gain of these tracks is mastered up to +6dB.
I digress; after there was a solid ground incl bass and drums (BFD2, there is a 27 piece kit here there are so many cymbals) I got out the guitar. There are three amps here, the first one 'real' with two sends. I got a performance that I think KILLS, which would never happen without that Tone. The old material was solid before this step.
So - the composition was solid by now and I had versions I presented, so I date the composition Dec 09, Xmas day actually - I decided on 'bones, bari, alto. to double some lines... They never worked @ A=432, just had a sour tone.
MORE INTONATION PROBLEMS! (Now, A = 436, regardless of the committed to Absynths. I got away with murder here.) Somewhere in here, I committed to bass and drums. Prematurely, it was a bit too sloppy... the more I brought things out the more exposed these niggling details were.
In the first parts, I did some gestures with cymbals and percussion to bring out the form and drama. There are things like bowed gongs, and verrophone, glass harmonica (VSL Glass Instruments), that I mixed ebow guitar with feedback in with, as it sounded a lot like that as it was. Eventually I foreshadowed the '81 themes with the horns and basses (and marimba, vibes). Eventually I felt like what I had was something I heard well, but wasn't explicit really. I went for a take on the guitar with that tone in the beginning and the character of the section was forever changed. I got more and more explicit with the horns and basses... the thing got very busy and I had real problems mixing it when I had all of these parts going. To compound that was the replacement of a lot of the bass parts. To this day the project is A MESS. There were unpredictable things I couldn't replace particularly in the Jaco instrument, so there is an amalgamation of audio and midi with muting and unmuting in the bass parts, of which there are many, I rendered reverb and compression sends separately rather than a coherent submix; there were things I loved that I wasn't going to replace in the interaction of parts, it was a juggling act. I will never do this kind of thing again. I learned a LOT doing this motherf**ker.
These fretless leads were never right w. IB: Jaco. the Round robin was too dodgy to rely on for the round tone I needed. Finally, more replacement! Trilian did the trick, in fact I got the sound at once.
I WASN'T DONE TUNING!!!!
Some of the instruments (Kontakt) are detuned using cents + or - from '0', which is A = 440 of course, but some (VSL, Trilian) are approached by defining A. there is no exact correspondence except at A = 440, no detuning.
There are things in the basses that had me in the list editor compensating by ear, guessing how many of the 8192 steps will get me in tune. Eventually I had something I could live with, this version. There are variances in the fretless and Jaco, and Jaco is hitting a great deal of the higher positions out as far as correspondence with Cherry. The end result involved abandoning a lot of Jaco.. however there were things in the first performance that couldn't be replaced. I had a template in the instruments host VE Pro corrupted and lost and I couldn't duplicate the tone. Never use this many sampled basses without serious planning.
this sensitivity to pitch is a kind of curse.
The tone of the guitar in the beginning is a special thing and it made mixing this another nightmare. But the balls of the thing couldn't be tamed and not lose the effect. Eventually the stereo field is narrowed severely to make room for crucial things, even though it might seem like it eats the whole room, the tone is so saturated and large.
All in all I must have six months in this damned track. I love the composition and I had to realize it up to its real potential. Nightmare from hell.
the 2009 began with a drone sort of thing with patches I made in Absynth. I was going to improvise a guitar solo over it, modal, more or less mixolydian mode basis. it took on a life of its own however and that event never materialized.
pretty much a blob that I play-doughed into shape, dragging notes around in Cubase... the beating that arouse out of sums and differences, and detuning - a couple of the patches effects came out of tuning experiments - suggested the rhythm in the second area of the composition, the bit that begins in 3/4; I got out some china crashes and what-not out of VSL percussion and firmed those up, and a little melody arose out of that, so I arranged that bit by bit; bass and drums, and mallet percussion taking the tune and it became a little song.
it was all a bit sweetness and light for a while... all that opening stuff was still just synths and kind of ambient, though there was an odd vibes patch, and a sort of redux *tines* (cf., DX7) I had made... the patches were done back in early 2006 and made to complement each other, for a piece that never happened. I think I kept it nebulous and vague for a while because the detuning presented problems for melody or anything like it. It sounded really rich... it was also rather quiet...
the middle area moved easily into a tonality that for some reason called these melodies up from 30 years ago. I'd kept them in my head and worked with them in various ways and thought of them as the basis for a raga for a time. That section flowed out of me easily, and the Coda happened directly following.
Now, ALL of this stuff was overlaid over the initial pad basis, which never changed. from 0:00 thru to the end was all completely built first, with only the sort of basic overlays I describe above. This was necessary as they used pretty long envelopes in Absynth, that #1 were CPU hogs and #2 I had to wait until they ended to resume recording anything else. Ultimately I just rendered them, committed to them.
I was using two basses, OTS Cherry Core and Iconic Bass: Jaco. I doubled the pseudo vibes with vibes from VSL. Now at this stage serious tuning problems came to the fore. The basses don't perfectly intone anyway. These two aren't in great tune with themselves, I hate to say. The vibes are very reliable as a basis, fortunately. At this point A = 432. Which in theory I love. That was the basis in the Absynths I built, albeit with some variances that was a part of the sound design, there is a rich effect I got that inspired many things, which ironically was a nightmare later on. it vibrated just so!
As I got more sound of the thing in general, compressing things, getting the bass tones together, the tuning was more of a problem still. In fact, up until this latest revision it remained so. I don't remember when I got the horns involved... these are WarpIV. There was Tuba out of the Kontakt VSL earlier on, pretty much when I started finding melodies, is when I put that underneath. It's two tracks of Tuba over the Absynth in the Coda. It's very subtle there, it gives a fat pillowy bed there that's essential for those tubas. that section, whispering tubas, has to be humanly impossible at that dynamic level. that isn't lower gain, that's just ppp. in fact the gain of these tracks is mastered up to +6dB.
I digress; after there was a solid ground incl bass and drums (BFD2, there is a 27 piece kit here there are so many cymbals) I got out the guitar. There are three amps here, the first one 'real' with two sends. I got a performance that I think KILLS, which would never happen without that Tone. The old material was solid before this step.
So - the composition was solid by now and I had versions I presented, so I date the composition Dec 09, Xmas day actually - I decided on 'bones, bari, alto. to double some lines... They never worked @ A=432, just had a sour tone.
MORE INTONATION PROBLEMS! (Now, A = 436, regardless of the committed to Absynths. I got away with murder here.) Somewhere in here, I committed to bass and drums. Prematurely, it was a bit too sloppy... the more I brought things out the more exposed these niggling details were.
In the first parts, I did some gestures with cymbals and percussion to bring out the form and drama. There are things like bowed gongs, and verrophone, glass harmonica (VSL Glass Instruments), that I mixed ebow guitar with feedback in with, as it sounded a lot like that as it was. Eventually I foreshadowed the '81 themes with the horns and basses (and marimba, vibes). Eventually I felt like what I had was something I heard well, but wasn't explicit really. I went for a take on the guitar with that tone in the beginning and the character of the section was forever changed. I got more and more explicit with the horns and basses... the thing got very busy and I had real problems mixing it when I had all of these parts going. To compound that was the replacement of a lot of the bass parts. To this day the project is A MESS. There were unpredictable things I couldn't replace particularly in the Jaco instrument, so there is an amalgamation of audio and midi with muting and unmuting in the bass parts, of which there are many, I rendered reverb and compression sends separately rather than a coherent submix; there were things I loved that I wasn't going to replace in the interaction of parts, it was a juggling act. I will never do this kind of thing again. I learned a LOT doing this motherf**ker.
These fretless leads were never right w. IB: Jaco. the Round robin was too dodgy to rely on for the round tone I needed. Finally, more replacement! Trilian did the trick, in fact I got the sound at once.
I WASN'T DONE TUNING!!!!
Some of the instruments (Kontakt) are detuned using cents + or - from '0', which is A = 440 of course, but some (VSL, Trilian) are approached by defining A. there is no exact correspondence except at A = 440, no detuning.There are things in the basses that had me in the list editor compensating by ear, guessing how many of the 8192 steps will get me in tune. Eventually I had something I could live with, this version. There are variances in the fretless and Jaco, and Jaco is hitting a great deal of the higher positions out as far as correspondence with Cherry. The end result involved abandoning a lot of Jaco.. however there were things in the first performance that couldn't be replaced. I had a template in the instruments host VE Pro corrupted and lost and I couldn't duplicate the tone. Never use this many sampled basses without serious planning.
this sensitivity to pitch is a kind of curse.
The tone of the guitar in the beginning is a special thing and it made mixing this another nightmare. But the balls of the thing couldn't be tamed and not lose the effect. Eventually the stereo field is narrowed severely to make room for crucial things, even though it might seem like it eats the whole room, the tone is so saturated and large.
All in all I must have six months in this damned track. I love the composition and I had to realize it up to its real potential. Nightmare from hell.
Last edited by jancivil on Sun Aug 21, 2011 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
- KVRAF
- 11506 posts since 13 Mar, 2009 from UK
So I'm guessing that the mellower bass tone I heard was coming from what was left of the Jaco.
I remember when I first heard Heavy Weather back in '77, that bass sound/playing really blew me away. I didn't hear Hejira until 1980. That was the same. A fantastic album and an inspired choice of bassist.
Anyway, this is a great piece of music which IMO, justifies keeping a track on ice for 28 years!
Great work and 10/10 for persistence.
I remember when I first heard Heavy Weather back in '77, that bass sound/playing really blew me away. I didn't hear Hejira until 1980. That was the same. A fantastic album and an inspired choice of bassist.
Anyway, this is a great piece of music which IMO, justifies keeping a track on ice for 28 years!
Great work and 10/10 for persistence.
-
- KVRAF
- 16977 posts since 23 Jun, 2010 from north of London ON
I like how that piece evolves over it's length. The interplay between the bass and guitar was what grabbed my attention ... And, yes, I had the same impression regarding the guitar sounding somewhat akin to the cat being drawn through a tube of toothpaste 
And, yep...definitely Jaco in there...
And, yep...definitely Jaco in there...
Barry
If a billion people believe a stupid thing it is still a stupid thing
If a billion people believe a stupid thing it is still a stupid thing
-
- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
the really fat, more rolled off one is Cherry Core. The Jaco has a lot of treble for a bass; the one that cuts in the first section. The one that takes the main theme is Trilian 'Jaco Fretless'. (That was the problematic area, the RR is such that there are two tones, one is round-sounding and the other just isn't. So the chances are 50:50 more or less, and in a render, one section might be right and the next one isn't. I had to bail. That's the main theme and it should sound really luscious, and it was always compromised. I came back after months of 'it's finished', which was really 'I'm abandoning this to do something else') They are mixed in a lot of places for an overall effect none of them would provide alone. There are like ten tracks for the bass. It's an ugly project.seismic1 wrote:So I'm guessing that the mellower bass tone I heard was coming from what was left of the Jaco.
This was one of the first I did using VE Pro, which I didn't use properly, you have to fix the IP addresses, who knew... so there were corrupt templates, unstable Cubase projects, bad vst performance all around, complicating my other problems from the dodgy choices I'd made. I didn't do a lot else in my life in Dec 09. I learned so much from this, what not to do.
thanks for your comments!
Last edited by jancivil on Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
any1particular any1particular https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=175870
- KVRian
- 981 posts since 12 Mar, 2008 from Detriot Michigan USA
VERY interesting Jan (?).
Your music is intriguing to say the least.
I thought the brass instruments were real?
Are you a guitarist? Can you share a bit about your self?:)
Your music is intriguing to say the least.
I thought the brass instruments were real?
Are you a guitarist? Can you share a bit about your self?:)
