2 new Tokyohunter tracks

[Tokyohunter]

Hello all!
I've just uploaded my first 2 tracks of 2005 over on Electromancer.
I seem to be getting more organised again having been working alot latel;y here and even over in Ireland.

Anyway one track is called "Arrival Point".The is my proposed intro track to a future Tokyohunter cd.Therefore I was going for a vibe of anticipation.I wanted to get in flavours or hints of some of my favourite sounds,kind of like a sneak preview so there are quite a few full on synth sounds going on.The beat comes in halfway to raise the vibe.
Here's the link:
www.electromancer.com/showTrack.php?id=1131321759

The next one is a slower track which is again synth based though this time it's beat-free.The original aim with this track was to create something with long notes.This developed into the melancolic / flashback / retrospective vibe that the track has.I have no idea what anyone will make of this as I've just posted it and it's never been heard by anyone but me!
Here's the link:
www.electromancer.com/showTrack.php?id=1131314316

Any comments/reviews/advice/questions please give them.Let me know how they sound on what you're listening on and what that is,headphones or speakers? Any adbvice on eq / mastering will be much appreciated.
But tracks have been processed through Vintage Warmer as recommended to me ages ago by the Captain himself.

[secretagent]

I,ve listened a few times now and out of the two ,memoirs of a sword is my favourite although it could do with a bit more variation later on.

I like the idea of the track being used as the closing credits to a film,but sometimes when there are endless credits 2 sometimes 3 tracks are played,usually completely different sounding,so i can imagine this finishing then"get your rocks off"blasting out straight afterwards

Sound quality of both is excellent ;D

[Minimoog]

As ever Bern you've crafted some gorgeous textures into some outstanding atmospheric soundscapes. I'm in awe of your ability to control what should be a mess of echoes and reverb tails so that everything moves around in its own space and for the most part it comes together beautifully. I think only the lead patch early on in Arrival Point didn't sit quite as nicely as it should, but I'm being very picky. You have a very distinctive sound and many of your signature timbres are in here. I love 'em There is room perhaps for a little more analogue grunge, Vintage Warmer notwithstanding.

I wasn't sure about ...Sword until the mellow bit at the end came in and that just hit the spot. Reminded me of The Ninth Wave by Kate Bush, and in the context of film credits the rest of it works well too.

Edit: Listening again and what this track needs to me is real accordian and strings. That would be ace!

What I think is really needed though is these sounds and textures applied to a track with a killer riff or hook. Manage that and you'll be selling me a copy of that CD ;D

Listened to it on my Tannoy monitors. You're about to tell us you did all this on cans again aren't you? If so that's a bloody good job well done.

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Right then, Secret Agent, thanks for the comments,yeah someone else elsewhere mentioned adding more variety to "...Sword" will have a play with it.

Minimoog:
Yep I'm still on the Sennheiser HD 25 SP headphones they look wrecked with the foam protection coming off and the wires are dodgy now too.
I try to play back tests with commercially released stuff to gauge how they sound in comparison,it's not perfect but it's fairly good.I need to get my head around the technical stuff cause at the moment it's purely judged by listening .I'm sure Shaun could improve these tracks with his pro mastering.
About the possibility of more analogue grunge,funny you should say that cause I've been listening to Depeche Mode's new album and that made me tweak the sounds more in that analogue grungey direction.I think on the final version I will try and add more distinctive character to each sound.Did you mean the kind of "alert/warning" type sound near the beginning was not quite right? A bit odd or not appropriate? I'm curious...
I like the idea of a real accordian... I also should maybe consider using the same sounds as heard nearer the end in a more "catchy" type track.I have some of those coming up soon.One of which has a working title of Secret Agent!

[dlm21uk]

Thanks for the tips secretagent. I'll try them out tonight ;D I must say that I've never known of another website/forum where the members are so willing to help each other out as they are in Dubsounds. It's great to be part of this forum

Group hug anyone ?

[Tokyohunter]

Hello Dannymoog!
So did you get to be able to hear the tracks yet?
And how about the Captain?

[dlm21uk]

Hi Tokyohunter. I am now able to download from Electromancer after following the excellent tips from Secretagent - thankyou.

I LOVE the sounds you have selected/created for both these tracks. Your ability with the effects and mixing is superb.

I think my favorite is Arrival Point overall - LOVELY!. Memoirs of a Sword sounded very lush and atmospheric but I thought it could do with some drums or rhythm (maybe around the 2 minute mark) It sounds very interesting at the beginning but I found myself waiting for something different or additional to happen (if you know what I mean).

Having said that I enjoyed them both and am so impressed with the feel you manage to get accross in your music & sounds. Looking forward to hearing some more. ;D

Daniel.

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks Daniel for the comments
Arrival point seems to be more the popular track of the two generally.A few people have made the same comment that you did about Memoirs of a sword needs something more to happen so I need to experiment with that more.
I've started doing a more fleshed out version of Arrival Point,and thinking I will add more variety to it generally so that where I keep the sounds that repeat they may change into completely different sounds,while some repetitions will be reduced,I updated the track description to say that some of the sounds/effects used on the Arrival Point track were influenced by the Human League's Travelogue album and more recent Depeche Mode stuff.I avoided writing this before before I didn't want people to think I'm saying it's on the level of their classics,but often to encourage people to listen it becomes necessary to give a better clue of what to expect from the track.
There are lots of good stuff on Electromancer that's definately worth downloading!

[Tokyohunter]

Could you give me advice/feedback on these 2 tracks Dubsounds/Shaun?
I considering a shorter version of Arrival Point and also a longer (and less repetitive) version of it too.
The other track I'm not quite sure what to do next to it.
You are usually brutally honest but always spot on with tips and recommendations.

Bern

[Dubsounds]

Further apologies Bern...

I downloaded the tracks but I felt so grotty this weekend, I stayed in bed and watched DVD's.

I will get round to it as soon as I can mate ;D

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks Shaun ;D
I look forward to reading your advice.

My top tip: drink water mixed with honey first thing in the morning... it can do amazing things to the body!

[Dubsounds]

Arrival:

There's a digital-fuzziness that's not nice in the sounds here Bern. I think you don't filter enough top end off your sounds (where it patently isn't required) to discern the individual voices. Everything seems full spectrum - no contrast.

I hate to bang on but if this was done with old analogue gear it would have a squelchier, warmer sort of early DM sound which to me is what your arrangement screams for and I wouldn't mind betting is how it sounds in your head too.

I was waiting for this to go somehere but it finished too early having only explored the one riff. This is the sort of dit that I put in my ideas folder to be honest as it needs more sections to make it into a song. Even a breakdown and a bit of contrast would have made it more memorable.

Nice idea... now finish it



Memoirs:

Again, you seem to have unecessary top end on your voices that could be filtered off to make things warmer and empasise space and contrast. Is it just a case of "well it has top end, why would I want to loose it?".
The plunk is nice but there you could roll off the bottom which isn't being used for instance and the sweep could definately do with a roll off at around 8K. The strings - perfect. Accordion sound? (no comment)

Yeah, I get the feeling I'm onto something here with this frequency business Bern. If you narrowed the bandwidth of each sound to pick out the fundamental parts you really want to project, the depth and warmth would be superb. Keep mids mid, bass bassy and tops
warm. Don't use full spoectrum unless the sound itself makes ful use of it is my best advice.

Efects and panning? Top notch ;D. Couldn't do a better job if I tried.

This is definately the better of the two tracks mate. Far more emotive and one I will revisit!!!



I know you wanted some constructive advice Bern and this is my best shot for you mate. Written in a sort of "If I was standing over your shoulder during the mixdown" kind of way.

I love where you're coming from musically and the last track is superb for conveying where your heart is at. Take it all as positive. I wouldn't bother if I didn't think you were close to something as you are.

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks for the feedback Shaun.
This is exactly the feedback I need.
I know exactly what you mean about needing to get into eq-ing stuff.This eq-ing is definately my weak point.I understand the concept of what you're saying completely,by using only the frequencies that are the essense of each sound(and removing "excess" frequencies) there will be more room to distinguish each sound as they will be manipulated into their own part of the frequency range ,not all sharing the same space.....the thing is I'm a visual person so I tend to imagine the sound automatically as certain shapes with certain colours (not quite synesthesia but similar) so is there a software that visualises the soundwave so it can be manipulated or should I go for learning about frequencies like you are mentioning "8k" etc.I'm willing to put the work in learning this stuff so what do you recommend? The are many eq/mastering plugins but what would you use on my stuff?
I think I definately need monitor speakers too,though most of the time I'm doing music late at night so it would be on headphones (Sennheiser hd 25 sp)anyway.

I'm glad you liked the second track (the ambient one) as some people hated it due to it being ambient...The first one Arrival Point, I have progressed further and decided to make it a fully fleshed out track,removing certain repetition and creating a new aspect to it.I do need to address the eq-ing issue though.

I'm sure if you have heard some of my other tracks,such as Aurora Vibrations and Hidden Frequencies(2004) I'd imagine you would find the same eq issues with those.

Thanks again,I look forward to any further advice you have.

[Dubsounds]

This is very interesting Bern. I'm very visual too and find that... (take a great leap with this one) I can "see" the frequencies as easily as I can pick out colours. It's totally subconcious and I'm not really "seeing" as such, its far more an intuitive feeling, very much like the sense I have for space and dimension.

A sound has a weight, size, tone, depth, direction and distance within a mix for my ears. I'm aware of each separate frequency as much as I can tell you're wearing blue trousers and a red shirt. I'll even tell you they are cobalt blue and that the red is faded and has a yellowish tone to simplify the analogy.

The stats I chuck around like "8k" for instance sound very technical but its just experience. I've been working with equalisisation for nearly 30 years in one form or another so I'm at a stage where I just know without looking what 8K sounds like. It's exactly the same as knowing when you need to change gear in a car from the engine tone.. just pure instinct.

Getting back from the airy fairy, I would imagine thet you would probably find a combination of VST graphic and parametric EQ useful Bern. You can use a graphic to box in your range for each voice and a parametric will give you the potential to pinpoint very specific frequencies for emphasis. You should also make use of High and Lowpass filtering on the synths themselves. The latter will produce the most dramatic results and you can save the custom patches in the way you do normally.

Which ever way works for you. It's just a simple matter of using your intuition with EQ. Just sweep the bands up and down until you hear something you want to keep or find some spaces you can afford to loose.

That's pretty much it mate.

[Dubsounds]

Bern, you might want to look at these:



Anwida Soft PEQ1V






Anwida Soft GEQ31V


I can't honestly say I've used them but they do look like excatly the sort of thing for a pc based set-up and the specs are pretty hot.

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks for those links.I have downloaded them and have started playing with them.
It would be nice to see the waveform being cropped and warped in a kind of visual display.The tweaking of actual hipass and lowpass filters on patches is definately something I should explore.
In terms of specifics like what frequencies to chop of a kick drum is this something to do by ear or are there specifics to the overall frequency range generally irrespective of other sounds?
Maybe a Dubsounds mini feature on specific topics like eq etc with before and after sound snippets would be helpful to most? Might be a bit time consuming to put together though.

[Minimoog]

Here's a few articles on the subject. Five minutes with google should turn up more.

www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/eq/2.asp

www.phys.tue.nl/people/etimmerman/recordingfaq/ThoughtsOnEQ.html

www.homerecordingconnection.com/news.php?action=view_story&id=154

I like the idea of the audio clips though.

;D

[Tokyohunter]

Thanks for those links Minimoog.
Lots to study!
Shaun if you want I could upload some 10 second sound snippets of one of my tracks to be used by you for a before and after eq showcase.For example a one snippet could be just a synth melody another could be a kick drum or hi hihats.Then we could hear what the difference sounds like after you have eq-ed them(and saying what frequencies have been cut off and why etc)... Just an idea.