[Prog rock track] La gloire de mon grand-père

Community Made With Ardour
#1

Hi everyone !

A few weeks ago I published a new track of mine.
I called it “La gloire de mon grand-père” (translates to: my grand father’s glory) as it’s talking about rural exode that emptied our countryside and still keeps on emptying it…

I used audio samples from a French documentary called “Paysans cinéastes” (prod. La Huit) which totally resonated with this track I was composing back at the time.

I recorded and mixed everything myself. Enjoy !

9 Likes
#2

That’s great stuff! While listening, I was instantly reminded of some of Serge Gainsbourg’s proggish work, which is a huge compliment in itself. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just because of the French spoken vocals.

The production is simply flawless. It sounds fantastic on my monitors, which are anything but flattering. You literally filled the room with music through such tight control of dynamics and stereo space. How did you achieve this? Production skills are obviously the main factor, but there must be something else going on as well. An aural exciter? A tasteful use of a Roland Dimension D style chorus or some other fancy stereo effect? Since we’re on a technical forum, I’m kindly asking you to share some technical details.

Technical aspects aside, I just love this track. Thanks for sharing.

#3

Hi !

Thank you very much ! I’m really touched.

On the technical aspect, and it surprised me as well, it’s all pretty basic.
On my previous works I used to put effects here and there… But now I have monitors and a DIY-treated room (was mixing on “good” headphones), I think that those effects were there to try to fix my headphone issues rather than fixing the mix issues…

So, about the dynamics/stereo effects, I used those ones on the tracks, pre-fader:

  • x42 parametric eq (I love the isolating right click feature a lot ! Thanks x42 !)
  • EQ4Q Stereo (I use it in addition with the x42 eq when I need to get steeper cuts of very sharp notches)
  • LSP Compressor

Then post-fader, I built myself a few FX busses which I make sends to (long and short plate, reverb, drum room and reverb, chorus). I used the following plugins:

  • Plate reverb from Steve Harris
  • DragonFly Hall and Room Reverbs (love their sound and the parameters to tweak the sound)
  • TAP chorus

On my master bus, I only have a LSP compressor and a x42 Digital Peak Limiter.

Maybe the “fancy” thing you refer to is related to those two stuff:

  • I double tracked two guitars (the one you hear up to the end and an acoustic one starting from the second man speaking), one track panned deep right, the other deep left.
  • The electric guitar tracks are recorded from my Zoom X1On in stereo with pedal effects which may already have reverb/chorus or so, which eventually get “multiplied” when it pass through the post-fader FX I mentioned above. I usually put long and short plate sends on all guitars, play with the send level, optionally add a reverb send too when required.

One thing I always do (which may sounds pretty classical based on what’s in the literature) is to remove “bad” frequencies (boxiness, harsh freqs, resonances…) from the tracks. My goal on this stage is to get a more leveled sound, sometimes going closer to only keeping the frequencies that makes the musicality of the track.

And I think that’s pretty much it…

One last word, if you like “La gloire de mon grand père”, then you may also like some of my other stuff, beginning with Endurance ? Feel free to check the other ones too !

Thanks again for your feedback !

1 Like
#4

Thanks for the detailed explanation. So my conclusion is simple: if one has good taste and the right skills, there’s no need to do anything fancy. We all know this, yet I’m still astonished when listening to this mix.

I’ll definitely check out your other work!

2 Likes
#5

This is a really nice tune, remyzerems, excellent work. A touch of post-rock in there too, dare I say.

How did you go about the percussion?

It’s a really good mix I think, listening on my Koss KTX Pro 1 headphones while drinking a morning tea. The balanced sound and lack of abrasive harsh frequencies / resonances really compliments this style of music. Quite cinematic with the samples too. Nice one!

1 Like
#6

Thanks @willy_dinglefinger !
I really like the details you added about how you listened to it ! Pretty cinematic too haha !

For the drums I used MT Powerdrumkit. I routed each drum part to a dedicated bus so I could tweak them to my taste. All those busses mix to a final “drum” bus which also applies a bit of the Dragonfly reverb and maybe a compressor too (sorry, I don’t have the DAW on hand).

You mentioned post rock and cinematic which I agree and appreciate you identified that. It reminds me I have a bit of a trouble when I try to categorize my sound…
I often tell it’s atmospheric rock/post rock or cinematic post rock or progressive rock… But the cinematic thing make people think it’s something with orchestra or so… And also it’s not really post rock, there’s that metal-ish sound I don’t really know how to deal with… Possibly something pyschedelic-ish too ??
Do you (or someone reading this) have some ideas ?