I Think They're Shooting At Us

Community Made With Ardour
#1

Friends, this is somewhere around the 15th album I’ve made, in about as many years, using Ardour on Linux.

I think it would be accurate to call it protest music. Sadly, it contains no feel-good dance hit of the summer. This is a goal I have yet to attain. Still it’s a rewarding hobby!

I also made heavy use of a half dozen LSP plugins and Overtone’s FC70 compressor. By facilitating my creation of art, the developers of Ardour and these other tools over the years have played a role in the direction my life has taken: I am in their debt.

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#2

Nice one Dan :metal: I’m listening on a pair of Koss KTXPRO1 headphones while enjoying a Saturday morning brew and the whole thing sounds nicely balanced, very clean but still quite energetic and lively :+1: Not an easy ground to land on…! So nice one on this :metal: There’s some unique interesting stuff happening here.

Track one, for example - it vibes really nicely to my ears and I think the narrow mix works really well here. A super nice vibey short sweet track that moves along really nicely with enough happening to stop you wanting to turn it off and the production quality (which is top) props the whole thing up really well.

And onwards - I love these drum loops and how you’ve mixed the vocals to occupy the same space as them yet they don’t fight. The vox are right up front but not right in your face in a dramatic, overly-emphasised type of way, while the drums underpin the whole shebang. Some of these guitars are really chimey and soft while also being loose and lively.

Very impressed :+1: AI music couldn’t get near this with a stick, no matter how hard it tries…!

Mind me asking for more details about the recording process? How you recorded / arranged the parts? How did you write these songs and realise the ideas? Etc.

No need to respond if you prefer to keep it enigmatic :upside_down_face: This is genuinely a very interesting, curious and very enjoyable listen and I want you to know that your sharing it here is hugely appreciated :+1:

1 Like
#3

Thanks so much Willy!

I really appreciate the feedback and your kind words; I really appreciate you listening!

On the recording and arrangement: for many years I wrote lyrics as a cathartic practice and then wrote the music later. In the last five or ten years I seem to have shifted to writing the music first.

This time around I didn’t really have any musical ideas either :slight_smile: so nothing was written when I started. I’d never used any of the MIDI rhythms and progressions that come bundled with Ardour, so on this I used them heavily. Nearly every song started with two, maybe three of the bundled rhythms dragged onto the timeline and then copy-pasted into some sort of form - usually repeating AABA. I’d sometimes combine two different rhythms to create something weirder. Or add a delay. Then I’d add two or three of the bundled chord progressions, often running them through the Raptor arpeggiator, which is absolutely my favorite arpeggiator I’ve ever used.

All the bass, guitar, and synth parts were overdubbed (except for the guitar on television, which is one sample duplicated and pitch-bended to three or four chords).

Tracks two and five came very late in the process and were produced very quickly - perhaps an hour or two for each. The rest involved my typical method of listening a few hundred times over the course of months, making little changes every few days (fixing wrong notes, playing more wrong notes to be fixed later, removing parts that don’t work, adding parts that don’t work…)

I can’t really comment on the lyrics other than I’m concerned for everyone’s welfare and I try to have a sense of humor.

On mixing, I tend to use subtractive EQ (LSP) followed by compression/saturation (FC70). I may add some highs after that (Luftikus) to restore transients. I feel like it took me many years to learn how to use a compressor and now I’m a few years into learning how to not use one. Or, at least, how to not use three! I can’t claim I’ve learned how to do any of this right yet, but I’m very pleased to read you think it sounds balanced yet lively!

I tend to use the LSP Stereo Limiter on the master bus, sometimes in conjunction with FC70.

After sequencing the whole thing I overdubbed a few more guitar and synth parts, then ran the whole thing through a tape emulator and another LSP Limiter.

I love enigma but I’m always happy to talk shop.

Thanks again!