My primary instrument is my voice. I’ve been composing instrumental pieces both because I want to, but also to develop my skill so that I can start putting out my lyrical pieces. Getting that perfect vocal recording is hard. But that’s because I’m picky.
Yes, I agree that each song I put out shows progress. It is pretty cool. Volume 4 has the most pieces of what I would consider good pieces to date. I personally really enjoy: Fortune, Glory, Bad Bard Strikes Back, and Minus One. This isn’t to say the other pieces are bad, but I’m just particularly proud of those four for different reasons.
36 is very cool! Great work.
Squirrel War a.k.a. “For the Nutz!” releases tomorrow. I’ll put a link in here when it is live.
My plan is to have my first lyrical song release on my birthday. August 28th, 2023! It will be my birthday gift to the world! LOL Kidding. It will be my birthday gift to me.
Oh. Since I’m posting. I was recognized by a fan last week. I was in the grocery store and a couple of people came up to me and said “You’re The Rock Bard right?” And I’m like “Yeah…?” And they said “We love your. We listen to it during out D&D session!” Then they told me about their campaign, which was a lot of fun. Seriously cool to have a fan. And have them be like legitimately excited to talk to me.
Yes, as I get back into Reaper, I remember it’s a good tool, Well worth a $60 personal license.
I only went to Cakewalk when they made it free because I had a lot of older material in that format from the old Sonar days…
I like it! It does sound like squirrels getting ready for war, and if I’m not mistaken, I caught some recontextualization of Grieg’s ‘Morning Mood’ in there? That made me smile! The staccato bounces and larger interval leaps throughout are very reminiscent of the ways squirrels bounce around, and the production was pretty crisp and clean. Good job!
I’ve has a similar experience to your grocery store one, when I was out CD-shopping with my vocalist. It’s a pretty fun experience, eh? Keep making good music, and it will happen again to you!
36 is done for now; it’s an evolving piece that needs the story to catch up, at this point. It’ll probably get updated in 2 years or so. I’m currently tweaking the mix a bit, and planning for an 8/2 release. I also did a string quartet this past weekend that I added some drunken, Tom-Waitsian drums, guitar and bass to that’s proving interesting. I’m letting that one sit and congeal for a bit before I decide whether or not to unleash it on the world.
Out of curiosity, when you’re mixing orchestral pieces, do you do any track-level volume/expression automation in the DAW, or do you achieve intra-instrument balance solely via dynamics in the score?
So funny story about that. I was trying to come up with a tune for a pleasant peaceful meadow prior to the battle. I could not get Grieg’s piece out of my head. Everything I wrote ended up being a variation of it. So I said “Fork it, I’m just going to use it. He’s dead. He won’t mind.”
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I like it too. I really feel like it captures the silly and the epic. The last part was changed slightly based on a friends feedback. He said to up the epicness and make it sound like a battle for the ages and get rid of the piccolo. I did up the epicness by adding the choir, but I kept the piccolo because it is the squirrel’s instrument. When I sent it back to him he said “Perfect. You were right to keep the piccolo” and I said "You were right to add the choir.:
It’s pretty wild isn’t it? I was listening to my own music a couple of days ago, and I thought you know, some of these pieces are actually quite good, am I sure I wrote them?
Give us a link to 36 when it is released. I enjoyed what I heard so far.
Early on I did that, but now I mainly try to use the dynamics since that’s how a real player would do it. Every now and then I do some track level volume adjustments for specific purposes. Say a fade out/fade in on “Fortune”. It is usually pretty minor, one of two dB just to get something just the way I want it but I try to stick with dynamics. Of course, there are dB adjustments in the mix that apply across the whole track.
EDIT: So I misunderstood your question. Yes, I use track-level volume to achieve balance.
The production? Good God, no! I just do the instruments and the songs - I’d far rather have somebody who knows what they’re doing set up the mics and all that! My home studio is strictly for creating the songs and the first demos.
Here’s the personnel on this song -
Doug MacNaughton – lead and backing vocals, guitars, bass
Jessica Stuart – backing vocals, guitars, bass, percussion
Ryan Granville-Martin – backing vocals, drums, percussion
John Sheard – keyboards
Music and lyrics – Doug MacNaughton
Producer – Jessica Stuart
Recorded at the NUCULAR LIBARY in Toronto
Recording and mixing engineer – Ryan Granville-Martin
Mastering – Fedge
I’m pretty sure that must be me on the bass on this one - the harmonic in the chorus is a dead giveaway! There were four songs where we shared bass duties (and I remember what it was like trading the instrument back and forth - I play in a drop ‘D’, Jessica plays in standard. She’s a far better player than I am - I over-play terribly given half a chance.) I was supposed to play bass on the other four songs, but I got Covid and spent two weeks flat on my back.
Not so far. I used Reaper for a while a few years ago when Sonar was discontinued, and I’m just getting back into it now that free Cakewalk is being discontinued. I’m rather a tinkerer, though, and tend to push tools to their limit, so I may get into that area in a while.
Quite impressd that Reaper seems to have found all my VSTs without needing any manual reconfiguration, and in fact seems to be able to incorporate Cakewalk’s virtual instruments too. There seem to be some good programing skills at Cockos!
Hi, everybody - I just wanted to let you know that the Lyric Video for my third single, “Nous”, will premiere tomorrow, Friday, July 28th, at 12 noon EDT. Here’s the link - "Nous" - Lyric Video - YouTube
Have a look and let me know what you think.
Actually, I’m curious - this will be the third lyric video where I’ve included the chords as well as the lyrics; I’m interested to find out if anyone finds that useful or interesting in any way.
So, 36 released on schedule, I just forgot to come here and post the link…whoops!
I’m not sure I’m happy with the mix and some of the expression automation, but I was planning on revisiting this in a couple of years anyways, when the story it tells has more chapters (36 year-long story at this point!). I am pleased with how it turned out musically, since this is the first time I’ve created exclusively by scoring (no human performances at all, and DEFINTELY no generative ). The process was Notion (score software) → DAW/samples (Studio One and EW Hollywood Orchestra) → mix using some Waves’ Abbey Road plugins.
After I did that piece, I decided to have some fun and transcribe a solo guitar piece I’d written a few years back. It ended up as a string quartet, and then I had some fun passing the lines around the various instruments. It’s here: Transformations AlphaQ.
Enjoy?
@Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela - I, think it’s great you added the chords too. I like reverse-engineering songs, and having the composer tell me what they played is faster (and presumably more accurate) than figuring it out by ear, for me at least.
I have succeeded in my New Year’s Resolution. It was to release at least one song with vocals this year, and my first one, “Sailor Girl”, releases on Sept 15th! Huzzah!!
I just wanted to let everyone know that “Energize”, my most recent single, was released on Friday. You can listen to it on Band Camp, Apple Music, Spotify, or here on my YouTube ‘topic’ page - https://youtu.be/QRfGQTW8IZg?si=wP1v2d82NY02rXhv
Sadly, there won’t be an official video for this one, at least not at the moment - I’m out of money to produce videos!
Volume 4 has the most pieces of what I would consider good pieces to date. I personally really enjoy: Fortune, Glory, Bad Bard Strikes Back, and Minus One. This isn’t to say the other pieces are bad, but I’m just particularly proud of those four for different reasons.
The staccato bounces and larger interval leaps throughout are very reminiscent of the ways squirrels bounce around, and the production was pretty crisp and clean. Good job!
). The process was Notion (score software) → DAW/samples (Studio One and EW Hollywood Orchestra) → mix using some Waves’ Abbey Road plugins.