Vintage Synth work in progress

[Scot Solida]

Here's a track that I have been recording into Multitrack DAW:

Http://www.theelectronicgarden.com/Scot ... Ghosts.mp3

Clearly, this bit of pseudo-New-Wavery is meant to have vocals on it, and they will be added after my guitarist does his bits. It's still in an embryonic state. There are lots of tracks, consisting mainly of my vintage synths. Here's the rundown:

Modular synthesizer from Synthesizers.com (with a number of DIY modules, too. See pic below) for the sequences (this is the only "new" synth on this song).

Roland CR-78 for the drums

Boss Clapper 2 for the handclaps

Minimoog for the resonant sweep sound

Minimoog for the solo bit

Oberheim OBXa for the main glide riff

EMS VCS3 for the burbling fx

ARP Odyssey for the white noise percussion

PPG Wave 2.2 for the waveswept pad at the end

Korg DW8000 for pads

Prophet-5 for yet more pads

Oh, and a cheap acoustic guitar

The center of my music-making universe:

[moogplayer]

This is the highest quality MT recording I have heard so far -- excellent job on this. Love the gear used as well!

[Scot Solida]

Thank you, sir! We obviously share a common affinity for the cantankerous old contraptions.

I think, in the case of this track, that the "quality" of the recording is a direct result of Multitrack DAW's simplicity. Because there are no EQs, comps or effects, it is important that my sounds worked well from the start. Also, any EQ or effects had to be tracked going in, rather than added later, and though that's always a little tricky, it was a good exercise in the old-style "British" school of recording. It also means that I kept EQ and effects to a minimum, since I didn't want to get into a mess at mix-down time (the effects used here were a DIY echo on the modular, and Eventide DSP4000 for some modulation on one of the pads, and a bit of Lexicon MPX-1 on the VCS3 sounds).

Mind you, I am anxiously looking forward to future versions of MT with effects and EQs. However, in this case, the limitations forced me to work a little harder on the sound going in, and that's not a bad thing.

Now if I could could just shed this nasty cold, I could finish the thing... (cough, sneeze, wheeze)

[beyond]

Very nice! thanks for sharing, really enjoyed it.

What was your compositional process on this? Care to share any more details/insights on the process of building the track in MultiTrack? Personally, I'd love to hear about your musical construction journey on this track!

[Scot Solida]

I can't remember all of the specifics... but it started with a patch on my modular synthesizer. That patch made use of sequencer modules. I had the sequencers set up to produce changes in waveshape and filter, but not pitch. The pitch was determined by the note played from the modular's keyboard. I had the sequencer, envelope modules, etc all synchronized to the Roland CR-78 drum machine. I used a MIDI sequencer set to 128 BPM to send pulses to the CR-78.

I tracked the drum machine and the sequences to a stereo track in MultiTrack. I then went in and began adding the other tracks one at a time. Some of them I recorded in their entirety, while others I copied and pasted together from individual clips. The Minimoog sweeps, the OBXa riff where all done in one pass, while the acoustic guitar was done piece-meal (simply because I can't really play very well, so I cut and pasted the best bits).

Most of this stuff was tracked directly into MT via the little Alesis MultiMix 4, though the guitar was tracked using a Neumann TLM-103 mic, through a Chandler Limited TG2 preamp and then sent through the Alesis to get it into the iPad.

Most effects were tracked going in. Some were built-in effects (the reverb on the hand claps is from that Boss Clapper). Fades and normalizing tasks were performed in Twisted Wave.

Now my guitarist has hold of it and will work up some guitar and bass bits which will likely be imported back into MT before I add the vocals. I'm trying to do everything in the iPad itself, without ever bouncing out to a desktop DAW. I think I can just about do it, too... Mixing might be tricky, but I bet I can manage it.