How I Wrote Relapse!

This is just some insight for any song-writers that are curious how other artists write their music. I thought it would be "fun" to document how I wrote this song. There is nothing special I did with this song, I personally don't follow a strict process to write  music but there were a few checks and balances I did towards the end. So here's the current version.

The Idea

So a few months ago I posted about my summer holidays and the idea of writing a concept album. Here is a photo of the page that started it all, dated 9 January 2018.

This was one of the first times that I wrote lyrics first. And really, it only happened this way because I was on holidays and I didn't have any instruments to jam with. It actually worked out well, because it made me think about the structure of the song more rather than just jamming and tying a bunch of riffs together.

You can see some notes on the side - I was thinking about using Phrygian mode in C - the verse ended up in F# Phrygian, so it was close. Chorus appears to be planned for Ab Mixolydian, but it never happened - not sure why, but I don't use Mixolydian in this song at all.

Drum and Bass

Looking at the project back ups - I start this project 13 January, 2018. Something that I almost always do, is lay down the drum tracks first. This is usually for inspiration. Occasionally, I'll be playing around and I'll come up with a riff on it's own, but it's usually on top of a drum beat I've already put down. I almost always change the kick drum to align with whatever bass or guitar riff I come up with. For this reason I split my drum MIDI files up into kick and everything else. This also helps with the use of a humanisation plugin.

To further explain this, I use a humanisation plugin, which randomly add timing and velocity changes to the MIDI notes. Depending on how strong you make it, can vary how good or sloppy your drumming sounds. Kick drums in particular, I've found at least, are better off always quantised - that is, no timing randomisation. And random velocity on kick drums doesn't work out great either but I do add a little to mine. At least, that works for me. Everything but kick has random timing and velocity changes to it, just to make it sound a little imperfect.

Regarding the bass for this song - well, I'm a huge (YUGE!) Pete Steele fan from Type-O-Negative. And at this time, I was playing around with fuzz on my bass. As a 45 year old metal musician, I was also trying to play something "Djentish". It never really works out for me, but it was an attempt none the less.

So here is what the earliest version sounded like of Relapse.

There are 4 riffs in this, namely A, B, C and D. They are played ABACDCAB. They are all 8 bars long. Song is 2:24.

Riff A is a 7/4 repeating polyrhythm (I think that's what you'd call it?). It's on the B note of my bass, which is tuned to BEAD. The drum beat is a very simple 4/4 @ 120 bpm, with the kick aligned to the riff. There was an attempt to do guitars on this riff, but it was unfinished and not in the recording.

Riff B is an interesting one. It's triplets over 4/4 @ 105 bpm. But here's the kicker - the bass line repeats every 16 triplets. Looks like the riff is in D major.

Riff C is simple - 4/4 @ 120 bpm, bass lines are two variations of a 4/4 riff. Looks like it's in F# Phrygian.

Riff D is a variation of Riff C. The drum switches to ride cymbals and the bass line gets a bit more complicated in double time.

All up, it's a short repetitive piece that generally fits together. It stays in this form until about 8 June 2018.

Shake It Up, Add Synths and the Vocals

So it looks like I decide to shake up the song structure a little, and repeat a few riffs. Still 8 bars each, but a bit more variety and repetition. New riff order is now ABACDCADCAB. Song is now 3:12.

Guitars riffs are still not more than experimental, nothing worth including in the renders.

And as I've decided to stop and start each song on my album with the continuation of synth sounds, I add synths to give it some ambiance. The starting synth note is the same as the ending synth note in the previous song.

I start playing around with vocals and effects. 

It's starting to take a bit more form, but it's still largely repetitive fixed length riffs.

The Guitars and Jazz Breakdown

Up until 19 June, things stay relatively the same. I decide it's time to get serious and add the long awaited guitars. While doing so, I realise there are a few things missing from my song, namely:

• There is no variety between verses
• No dynamics (loud and soft pieces) in the song
• There is no real bridge
• Now that I've added guitars, it needs a drum and bass only piece
• There is no melody or melodic variety for that matter

So I shake it up again.

Latest riff order is now ABACDCAB(12 bars)DCAB. Song length is 3:40.

I really like Riff B, C and D bass lines. So I decide to repeat Riff B and turn it into a bridge, because it only gets played twice. I can make this bridge tick off some of the points above, such as:

• We got a bridge
• Drum and bass only
• Make it soft for some dynamics

And let's be honest - as a lead guitarist, I love a solo. And this bridge is looking like a great place to have one. And as I always like to make things difficult, I throw in some chords on the piano that give it a bit of a jazz feel. Why the hell not I say?!

So there is still not a huge amount of melody or variety in the verses, I decide to play around with where the guitars come in and out - shake it up a little.

Oh and I almost forget, sound effects. Some reverse guitar, piano and snare hits. I tune the piano ones to come in at the same note as the chorus starts for a bit of fun.

And I think that's about it. That's how this song got this far. Let's see what further changes happen up until it's time to release the album!

Video Tutorial - Phase Correcting blended Impulse Responses

Video Tutorial - TuxGuitar and Reaper

The follow up to my Bass MIDI Sampler video. In this one, I show how to get TuxGuitar and Reaper to communicate via MIDI, so that you can compose in TuxGuitar, but play all your sounds using your own sampled instruments.

So what next?

So the main driver behind doing this was to compose and document my riffs in TuxGuitar (originally GuitarPro 5, but ir doesn't support 8 strings). I found TuxGuitar to be a fantastic free replacement. The learning curve is not too hard. Some stuff is not intuitive (I could do another video on that) and the one feature I'd really like to see - Support for MIDI Time Code (MTC) or Song Position Pointer (SPP) - would be great if they could add it.

loopMIDI

loopMIDI are (free) multiple virtual MIDI cables, used to create virtual (loopback) MIDI-ports that interconnect MIDI applications in Windows. This allows two or more applications to send and receive MIDI signals from each other - and that's how I get TuxGuitar and Reaper to talk to each other.

Within Reaper I set the appropriate MIDI channel and arm recording on the track, so that it is now listening for MIDI events on that loopback MIDI channel.

TuxGuitar

I only really looked at TuxGuitar (TG) a few weeks ago. I had low expectations - as much as I love Open Source Software, quite often the quality is less than desired - but not with TuxGuitar. It's a really nice application. Yes, it does some weird stuff. Yes, they don't seem very responsive on their support tickets or forums - but hey, it's all volunteer efforts (I should know I wrote Open Source software for years), and that's just part of the package. Fingers crossed, they think what I'm asking for is important enough to code.

On a brand new TG project, I setup the track to be for a bass guitar. Some of the settings are applicable to the internal MIDI synthesizers (like my selection of Picked Bass instrument), and don't affect what I want to do in Reaper. As long as I select Channel 1 (CH #0 in TG), then we should be good.

At this point, you can try it out - you should technically hear it come out of your default speakers using the internal TG FluidSynth [MagicSFver2] synthesizer. This is probably a good test. But if you want it to redirect into Reaper, you need to change this to loopMIDI Port. Not sure why two of them show up, but both seem to work.

Reaper

Once you've done this, you should be able to hear the sampler you setup in Reaper.

Last Words

So the last thing I wanted to show you is how I use this.

I do most of my drum grooves in Reaper customising stock grooves from MT Power Drum Kit. As I do this in Reaper, I will export to TuxGuitar as time goes on and the "Master drum beat" is maintained in Reaper. The only tip about doing it this way, is you have to create a MIDI clip, select All and change the MIDI channel to Channel 10, otherwise TG doesn't recognise it as a drum beat.

The rest I do in TuxGuitar, primarily to maintain the guitar tablature. If I was to re-export out of Reaper I would lose all that information.

When it's ready to go into Reaper, do the export and add MIDI items to my Reaper project. Here's a couple of screenshots not in the video.

Thanks for listening. I hope you've found it useful. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Video Tutorial - Bass MIDI

Hi everyone - my first video tutorial. I'm using Reaper to DIY sample my own bass, so that I can compose in MIDI and get pretty close to my sound. There is a second video for using TuxGuitar to compose and play in Reaper using this sampler.

If you want to just watch the video, here it is. I'll write up the info below for those who prefer to read about it.

But why?

So why would I bother? Well, when I started using Guitar Pro 5 I really didn't like the sounds. Even the RSE sounds just didn't do it for me. I also found that while composing, simple changes to riffs and bass lines would mean I'd have to re-record stuff and it was time consuming and inefficient, especially in the early stages of composition.

So I started writing in MIDI. But again, even in Reaper or Guitar Pro, when it's not your sound - you can't really get into it.

Where to start?

So I had used Reaper's ReaSamplOmatic 5000 (RS5K) when migrating my Virtual Drum Kit from Ableton to Reaper last year. I knew I could get away with one WAV file for my samples, so I went about creating the sample WAV file.

The WAV file above is just me playing the open strings on my 4 string bass. I tuned to BEAD.

The Sampler

The next step is making an RS5K instance for each string.

You can see in the FX chain above, I have an RS5K instance for each string on my bass. I basically set the Attack and Release markers around the open string section that I am mapping. The instance above shows the lowest B string.

To ensure I consistently setup the samples correctly, I usually zoom into 100 spl/pix and setup the Attack marker on the first hit of the waveform. At the same zoom level, I ensure the Release is happening before the next sample.

I tried both Modes, Freely configurable shifted and Note (Semitone shifted). The second one would have been useful if there was no starting point for each sample (it just tunes the sample however you configure it). But for my four samples, they start at the open string note and therefore raising 25 semitones (seems to be 24+1) on that string makes sense when trying to capture the tone of my bass guitar.

The Note start on my open B string was a B0 (23) and as its a 24 fret bass, technically, the highest note I'd want this instance to play to would be B2 (47) - Note end. There are many ways I could have done this, but this way worked at the time, so I went with it. The Pitch@end setting is the maximum semitone shift this sample should accommodate.

Pitch offset got used on the other instances where the tuning of my sample needed to be corrected. Max voices was one I had to play around with. I tried Max voice of 1, but what happened was, if  say you played a B0, followed by a B1, this instance of RS5K would evaluate "well I could play B1, but I'm only allowed a single voice, so I'll accept the MIDI note (and remove it) but won't actually play it" - rather than saying, "we'll I can't play it, let me pass it to another string". I reduced the number of voices as the strings got higher to encourage the lower strings to be used, but I don't think that setup is ideal.

I could try and play around with this again, see if I can get it to work - but it's all about order of RS5K instances and order of the MIDI notes you play. If you're slightly out, playing higher notes first, the lower strings will accept them, leaving no room to play the lower notes coming afterwards.

Remove played notes from FX chain MIDI stream is enabled, because once we've played a note, we don't want other instances playing it again. And lastly, Obey note-offs is enabled, to ensure I can  mute strings if I have too.

After the Sampler

If I didn't have the sampler, I would have my bass track with a prototype FX chain to get a sound similar (but cut down) to my production bass tone. In my blog post How I Record my Bass in the Box, I cover off my full-blown bass tone setup. But for the purposes of composing, I can't afford to be that complicated. But I do want something that sounds like my bass.

Bass Setup

So in the track, where I would normally plug in my bass, I redirect the output of my sample so that I can continue to shape my tone.

After some basics like Compression and Gating, I used a TSE R47 fuzz box, BOD SansAmp clone and some free Ampeg impulse responses. I usually automate the fuzz pedal as I need it, and have the BOD try to be as bassy as possible (not much grit).

There is a part 2 of this post, TuxGuitar and Reaper which shows how to get MIDI communications between those programs.

One Year On - The Concept Album

Well it's almost one year since my first blog post! I've been very slack these past few months posting here. In all honesty, I've been making music, which is exactly what I should be doing. But I should also touch-base here once in a while, to write down what I've been up too.

Looking at my statistics, it looks like I went quiet around January. Around that time, I went on holidays and started thinking seriously about writing an album. A Concept Album - something that would tell a story, where each song was related to the next and kind of flowed into each other.

The Subject

I looked to my favourite concept album - Pink Floyd The Wall. I needed to tell a story, something that meant something.

I've noticed that my work to date has not been very personal. More experimentation really. I decided I needed to write something more personal. Something that showed a more vulnerable side.

I found myself hospitalised October last year with an intestinal infection, later diagnosed as Diverticulitis. This after years of never really having to visit the doctor apart from cholesterol tests and the odd check-up. This was a huge shock to me - 6 weeks past 44 and I'm in hospital with life changing health issues. But this first instance was just a sample. In hindsight, I wasn't really treating this change with as much respect as I should have been.

Another 5 weeks later, I'd be back in hospital with a bowel obstruction, a lot of vomit and a pipe through my nose to my stomach. During those 6 days, it really hit home how out of control you are with health issues. At one stage, I thought I was in there for the long haul, as I didn't feel like I was getting better anytime soon. I felt like shit. Feeling insignificant and irrelevant to the scheme of things, I realised it was all completely out of my control.

Grief - The First Demo

And that is how the song Grief came about. Grief is that moment - when I felt like the whole world had fallen around me and I was wondering well what happens next. I probably should have called it "Despair", but it really felt like a grieving moment. Like you were letting your life and health decisions to date, all those decisions of what to eat, drink, do, abuse, enjoy, etc. - all come back to haunt you, with responses like "but I didn't even know that would make a difference?" - and you have to accept it is all now out of your control, a thing of the past and let it all go!

So Where To From Here?

So I've got 7 tracks, all named and in order - telling the story of my little experience last year. The framework is there, just need to write the songs. I got two almost completed, about 3 others started and 2 more just lyrics that haven't begun in song.

Working Title - Tenets Of War

So I've got a working title for the album - Tenets Of War. Because when you're sick and helpless, it really is a war. And there are no rules, you are at the mercy of fate and luck.

You'll find out stuff you had no idea about, family histories, how many other people you know already have what you have and you never had a clue.

Is It Still The Same Genre?

That's a really good question. My next demo to be released - The Shock - well, it's a bit different to what I've written to date. It still has metal in it, but I've already been told it's the most commercial thing I've written to date. So be prepared - things might change. For better or for worse, we are all still to find out. Hopefully I'll have this second demo out real soon and you can be the judge.

Grief (demo) - Tenets Of War

So where have I been you ask? Haven't heard from me for forever and a day! My last post was back at the start of January and I've had multiple reminders on my phone telling me it's about time I posted something! So what's new?

An Album - Tenets Of War

So I've decided to write an album! And sing on it too! Can I sing? Well, not extremely well, but I'll see if a bit of practice helps things along.

The working title of the album is Tenets Of War. I had some health issues the last few months of 2017, and during that time I went through a lot of emotions. The war part is me fighting off health issues and the trials and tribulations of having the state of your health completely out of your control. It was quite a roller coaster ride. I'm pretty good health-wise again, but I knew that some of the best albums I've ever listened to, were written when those artists were at their most vulnerable. So I decided to write about my experiences and use them to help me shape my songs.

Grief

At the moment, I have about 4 of 7 songs in some work-in-progress state. Grief, is probably the best one in a demo state. Far from polished, it is a rough cut of the song but give you guys an idea of what I'm doing. It probably should be called The Despondent, but Grief was the first thing that came to mind. Anyway - details, details!

The songs I'm writing for this album do feel different to the first 3 singles I did last year - at least to me they do. Some aspects remain similar, but I'm experimenting more with synths and pianos, still trying to incorporate some kind of Djent feel into some riffs and playing around with new stuff, like distorted bass and vocals.

Yes, I know I still have a lot of practice ahead of me, but it's really challenging for me to extend beyond my known boundaries. I've spent the past year learning the audio engineering side of things, recording, mixing, effects, etc. Now for the first time, I'm playing around with vocals. It's a whole new ball game, but good fun none the less.

Have a listen, let me know what you think.

How I Record my Bass in the Box!

This blog post is a continuation of the other articles I wrote, How I Record my Rhythm Guitars in the Box! Like the other series, I'll take what I've learnt from a few YouTubers and Internet sources, only use free VST's and do my best to walk through my thinking and how I got here. I'll cover it in three parts - background information, tracking setup and the mix.

Background

One of the common themes I picked up watching these videos is the splitting of parallel chains - one for clean bass sound, the other for distorted mid range.

Mixing Metal All About That Bass! Compression EQ Saturation Parallel Bass | MixBusTV

This was the third video in a MixBusTV Mixing Metal Series focusing on the bass.

• Uses an API 512c analog mic pre-amp
• Distressor (Distorted Compressor like an Empirical Labs EL8)
• ‎Then split the signal into parallel clean/dirty channels

Clean Channel

• ‎Ampeg SVT4Pro / BA500 amp/cab simulator, centre close (no air) mic
• ‎EQ, boost 800Hz, LP 6kHz, HP 80Hz to make room for kick
• ‎Deesser to remove clicking
• ‎Limiter make headroom

Dirty Channel

• ‎Ampeg SVTClassic / 8x10" amp/cab simulator, off axis close (no air) mic
• ‎Dynamic notch @ 150Hz for bum frequencies

Combined

• Use saturation to sit bass back in the mix
• ‎EQ HP 20Hz, boost 40Hz - to even it out compared with kick and guitars in mix
• Full tape saturation 15ips
• ‎Dynamic notch @ 100Hz for bum frequencies
• ‎+2dB@50Hz API 550 EQ to shift energy away from 100Hz notch

That last point is a great one - when cutting a frequency. compensate by moving the power up or down a harmonic (half or double the frequency).

How to record Heavy Bass | SpectreSoundStudios 

This video from Spectre Sound Studios explains how to record a great heavy bass tone using freeware VST's.

SansAmp Channel

• Start with DI into SansAmp (or TSE B.O.D.) and dial in some grit
• EQ with HP 70Hz, LP 5kHz and scoop mids @ 700Hz
• Distressor 2 on the dial attack, 0.5 on the dial release, 8:1 ratio and -7dB GR (filter HP, color HP & DS options enabled)

Distortion Channel

2nd track for mids distortion.

• Use guitar amp with distortion
• EQ with HP 510Hz, LP 1.6kHz
• Mute in quiet parts

So as you can see, it's very similar to the one above - one channel relatively clean, the other distorted to bring out the mid range.

Nolly from Periphery dials in a bass tone | URMAcademy

In this clip from Nail The Mix class, Nolly from Periphery builds his bass tone from "Periphery III: Select Difficulty".

So this one is a bit different. He's still distorting mids but he's using a multi-band saturator to do it. And then adding sub-bass harmonic content to beef it up at the end.

• Records DI with a fat sounding raw signal
• Uses EQ to bring out treble, stringiness (7.5kHz boost)
• Compresses to even out playing/pumping (1176 quick attack, 4:1 and GR approx -3 to -4dB)
• Uses Multi-band saturator to distort the midrange above 275Hz
• SVT810 cab sim using a 421 mic on CapEdge 1"
• EQ notch frequencies of bum frequencies
• Increase presence removed by cab sim
• Uses analyser to confirm response
• Uses RBass to get freq < 50Hz using sub-harmonic content

Tracking

So you'll see from my tracks listing - looking from right to left, I have a couple of utility tracks (9 & 10) for signal generators and frequency spectrum analyser (cyan).

But track 8 is where my bass DI comes in.

I have some pre-amp plugins there, Ronald Passion Bass Pre-amp, the Antress Modern Deathcore EL8 Distressor clone and my favorite tuner plugin - GTune.

This track is then split into two tracks - one for clean (track 6), the other for mids distortion (track 7). I will use these tracks to export stem files, so I leave the faders at 0dB and maximise the levels before clipping. When I'm ready to commit to a tone, I render the outputs of these two grey tracks and add them to the mixing tracks (tracks 4 and 5 respectively) and mute the plugin and DI tracks.

Clean Channel

I tried quite a few amp simulators before landing on LePou's Le456. The Ignite Amps SHB-1 was my favorite before Le456 but I found the clean channel Le456 tone was just more to my liking in the end. I recently discovered VST Analyser by Christian Budde. I love this kinda stuff - look at amp and cab sim responses. So here is a Le456 with my clean bass settings.

And this is the speaker cabinet response. Blue is Ampeg SVT, red is SWR 15 4080. I'm using Stereo just to show the two speaker responses, but it is set to Mono during playback. 

Distorted Channel

I used TSE B.O.D. VST for my distortion channel and dialed in some grit. Here are the amp sim and cab sim frequency responses using my settings.

Final Sound

So the combined sound (with distortion track at -6 to -12 dB lower) sounds like this. I have to say I was pretty happy with how it turned out, considering it's a very cheap down tuned 4 string bass.

You can see the four different frequencies on the spectrum - Preamp (green), Clean (magenta), Distortion (blue) and Final (purple).

Looking at the above graphs, I could probably increase the mids some more but I find that scoop makes room for the guitars.

Mixing

So now I have my clean and distorted stems and I'm ready for mixing. I keep them separate to allow me some flexibility in tone, mute distortion during quiet bits, etc.

Clean Mix

For the Clean mix, I add a tape saturation (JB Ferox) to start with and then my goto console strip VST - DeadDuck Channel 2. This one just has a bit of EQ to boost the sub bass (30Hz) and mid frequencies (760Hz) and cut the high mids (1871Hz) and high pass filter at 5kHz. I then have a DD De-esser on 3.1kHz.

Distorted Mix

Similar setup for Distorted mix - tape saturation, console strip and a tube saturator. Console strip is fast compressing 2:1, EQ boosting low mids (345Hz) and then HPF @ 150Hz and LPF @ 5kHz. The tube saturator (VoS TesslaProMkII) is smoothing and adding further harmonics to an already distorted signal.

Bass Mix Bus

Once both channels are combined to taste, the bass mix bus goes through the console strip (with no changes - just force of habit to place one at the beginning of every track). Then into the VOS TDR SlickEQ. This EQ further adds that analog saturation boosting bass and mids. Next, I colour the tone with a Pultec clone, Ignite Amps PTEq-X, using setting recommended for bass in this article Universal Audio Pultec Passive EQ Tips and Tricks. Lastly, I'm using the TDR Nova to simply make room for the kick and snare.

On the Send Returns, I add a little parallel Sub Bass Compression and Distressor. So this is the final output from the bass.

Conclusion

So I hope you've found that interesting. If you have any comments or questions, let me know.

How I Keep Track of My Music Things

Had an interesting question come up in the Facebook forums today - does anyone use organising software to keep track of stuff! Well funny you ask, because I do - and I'm pretty happy with my setup. So let me tell you all about it!

I started using Google Keep years ago, well before I started doing my music stuff again. When I started keeping notes of my music stuff on my personal Keep, I realised that it was getting really busy and messy, especially mixing in with shopping lists and my own stuff-around-the-house-to-do lists!

My Alter-Ego Google Account

So first thing I did is created another "persona" Google Account just for my music stuff. This worked out well because I was able to keep all my Google Documents, Google Drive and Google Keep separated from my own personal files and notes. I could also join groups and post as my alias instead of having everything with my personal accounts. This additional persona worked so well, I ended up doing the same thing in Facebook.

Sending Stuff to Google Keep

So one of the wonderful things about Keep is that you can send (or "share") a range of things to store as Keep notes - especially on a mobile phone. Here is a screenshot if you hit Share on a YouTube video on your mobile.

By doing this, Google Keep will create a note for the YouTube you're watching, looking something like this:

The last step is to add the appropriate tags or "labels" as Keep calls them, to categorise your note accordingly.

The Google Keep Tags

So over a couple of months, I came up with a set of tags I use to keep track of everything. I'll share them here for others to consider, save you some time if you're heading down the same path.

Content

• Content - Artwork
• Content - Marketing
• Content - Song
• Content - Videos

So one group of tags is Content. Content is notes that I'll use to create content such as song ideas, artwork, lyrics, YouTube tutorial videos, marketing ideas, etc.

Sound

• Sound - Bass
• Sound - Drums
• Sound - Guitar
• Sound - Vocals
• Sounds - Keyboard

The Sound group of tags are notes about tone for my instruments. It includes stuff like custom effects, plugin tips and tricks, commentary about bands in studios, etc.

Status

• Status - Completed
• Status - In Progress
• Status - On Hold
• Status - To Do

If I'm trying to keep track of a TODO list, I'll use these tags to know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Technique

• Technique - Composition
• Technique - Marketing
• Technique - Mastering
• Technique - Mixing
• Technique - Tracking
• Technique - Video

Technique tags are all about learning new techniques to do stuff. This could include tracking, mixing, mastering, composition and even things like marketing methods.

Conclusion

So using Google Keep is most useful when you're away from your PC and you need to note something down for later. Just pull out your mobile and jot it down. Sure, you can use other applications like EverNote and OneNote - the same principles apply. I hope this helps anyone thinking of doing this to get a bit more organised. Let me know how it works out for you.