A while back for proof of concept I did a song in a heavily modified Linux-native energyXT 2.7 on life support with yabridge hacked in. It was surprisingly stable and there were a lot of things to like about it’s MIDI implementation but it’s Audio implementation was sub-optimal at best and it’s Linux support tapered off more than a decade ago and I had to give up on the little Frankenstein… Luckily I stemmed out the Audio files and I gave the song a do-over in Mixbus 10 with a fresh drum track (AVL Blonde Bop this time). The genre is… ‘Space Folk’…? Probably the most MIDI heavy project I’ve ever done… Lots of Loomer Aspect synth patches setBfree and a couple of guitars tuned to FGDGBD… No doubt there are some things left to tighten up but here’s a plateau mix.
This is amazingly good. Really like the drums in particular. I’ve watched your tutorials on AVL Drums and am impressed with how natural you can make them. Do you program the midi or play it? The cymbals are very warm. Would you mind describing the mix process?
Well I think it’s helpful that I play drums as a second instrument so that helps me make decisions on programming and helps avoid programming things that aren’t physically possible. I really listen to the rhythm section when I listen to music in general so I’m interested in how builds, fills and flams are used and also things like how drummers will start a drum fill in straight time and shift to triplet time and vice versa. Music nerd stuff I guess…
This song was all mouse programmed in Hydrogen, I don’t have eDrums to play into a sequencer. I had a update hiccup with the Addictive Drums workflow I often use I thought I’d do something I’d never bothered take the time to do before… I exported the drums as individual tracks from Hydrogen which was the only way for me because I use ALSA not JACK or PW so routing from H2 to Mixbus wasn’t an option. I was kind of bummed by how H2 handles exported stems and I made some feature requests to them. First it exports everything as Stereo tracks… nope! drum shell channels should definitely be Mono. Luckily AV Linux has several SoX file-manager actions so I could very quickly convert the exported stems from Stereo to Mono but then the next problem showed up… Hydrogen generates the stem filename from the Song title+full kit piece name and there is no mechanism to maintain the track order so they end of being arranged alphabetically with honkin’ long file names… This is a problem because once imported into a DAW the track order is alphabetically random AND the piece names don’t fit on the track header so before importing into Mixbus I had to number and short name the stems in the order I wanted them to appear in Mixbus which was tedious. Another annoyance (but also potential benefit) is every kit piece is on it’s own track so for example the snare sidestick, center hit and edge hits aren’t all on one ‘Snare’ track they are 3 separate tracks. All told it was 21 drum tracks but once things were grouped a bit it wasn’t terribly overwhelming. I did quite a bit of panning to put the kit across the stereo spectrum and a bit of EQ on the kick and snare only and various degrees of compression and some reverb from a Mixbus with Fabfilter R2 on it. As far as the cymbals other than a tiny bit of compression and Reverb they are pretty much as-is.
Great work Glen That’s a lovely wee tune with a very nice, warm, vibey feel - particularly like how the guitar(s?) and groove keep everything gently moving along as the melodies develop.
And I agree with lordbullingdon - that percussion track is fantastic I always thought the AVL drums instruments were a bit ‘light’ and not really capable of serious intense proper real drum tracks but in I Agree they honestly sound excellent.
What a lovely little thing! I quite like the vibe!
Please veer away from a static mix, and do dare to highlight the meaning more. Push the ostinato (continuous, permanent) elements to the back, and bring what’s changing and what is saying something more to the front.
Also, you absolutely must compose more: continue the journey around 1:50 instead of returning already after having barely stepped out to the porch… the song was finally going somewhere there, nice dialogue between instruments, I would urge you to expand and elaborate a lot on that part… add some quiet sections, the shaker is lovely to keep a well audible but quiet rhythm in the background while your main instruments dance and talk for a good while. Then swell back home again if you wish (or show another scenery), before approach and observe a different theme… then come back home again, and then observe the two themes simultaneously, synthesizing them compositionally. If you can, add some homey humming vocalizations (as if someone was playing the guitar for a while… but then liked the how music ended up developing so much that they instinctively started to hum/sing along). Also, don’t completely abandon the “space synths” you started with either… bring them back periodically and have them talk and dance with the others altogether… sometimes very earthy (like it is mostly now), sometimes a concert, sometimes more space-y (experiment with composting human voice to the space-y parts as well, if you feel like).
This is a problem because once imported into a DAW the track order is alphabetically random AND the piece names don’t fit on the track header so before importing into Mixbus I had to number and short name the stems in the order I wanted them to appear in Mixbus which was tedious. Another annoyance (but also potential benefit) is every kit piece is on it’s own track so for example the snare sidestick, center hit and edge hits aren’t all on one ‘Snare’ track they are 3 separate tracks. All told it was 21 drum tracks but once things were grouped a bit it wasn’t terribly overwhelming. I did quite a bit of panning to put the kit across the stereo spectrum and a bit of EQ on the kick and snare only and various degrees of compression and some reverb from a Mixbus with Fabfilter R2 on it. As far as the cymbals other than a tiny bit of compression and Reverb they are pretty much as-is.
That’s a lovely wee tune with a very nice, warm, vibey feel - particularly like how the guitar(s?) and groove keep everything gently moving along as the melodies develop.
I always thought the AVL drums instruments were a bit ‘light’ and not really capable of serious intense proper real drum tracks but in I Agree they honestly sound excellent.