Hi!
My name is Chris and I´m working on my electro-blues-punk-project OONAZOONA. I´ve got an EP out (MACHINE BLUES) and I am acting as some kind of electronic One-Man-Band.
Now that it´s time to produce my first full album, I decided to share the process of recording, my thoughts on it, and possible issues I may stumble across, with you, fellow readers. I hope you enjoy reading.
My music is a mixture of blues, grunge, and electronic influences. For this production I intend not to use any software instruments with the exception of a sample library for the acoustic drums. I´m going to use guitars (of course), analog synthesizers and hardware drum machines. The problem I often had to deal with in previous productions, was the „fix-it-in-the-mix“-mentality. With fully storable software instruments you are able to easily postpone your decisions regarding sound to a later production stage. I am trying to avoid that by getting the sounds right from the start.
The DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) I use is Cockos Reaper which is great once you figure out how it works. For cost concerns I will mix in the box. During a long pre-production stage I recorded detailed demos of the whole album, which means that the arrangements of the songs are ready and I am able to focus on getting the performance and the sounds right. The tools I have available are a few analog synthesizers, two drum machines, my guitars and amps, three microphones, and a very nice microphone preamp I recently purchased. I will talk about that gear a lot in the next episodes of this blog.
One of the main differences to more common rock productions is the use of synthesizer instead of bass guitar. In addition to the acoustic drums I am going to use drum machines for the rhythmic background. My intention is to overlay vocals and a lot of dirty guitars over these electronic basic tracks.
Up to date I laid down some of the rhythmic background. I have used the acoustic drum library and the KORG VOLCA BEATS for this. IMHO the KORG is a fantastic dirty little machine. I´ve noticed that some users complain over the sound of the snare which is funny because that´s one of the reasons I like this machine so much. The drum sounds are editable but not storable. You can save a few drum patterns in the built-in sequencer though. The KORG has no velocity and no modern controlability. The only way to change parameters and to create a little dynamic is to tweak the knobs during recording. Very old-school and very awesome.
I had some issues with syncing it to the DAW. The midiclock from the DAW isn´t very accurate. Of course you can move the recorded samples until they fit to the grid. I often did a work-around by recording the analog sync-signal supplied by the KORG VOLCA on an audio track into the DAW.
Then I sliced the recorded sync-signal, changed the position of the samples until they fit, and lead it back to the VOLCA. It turned out that the communication between the KORG VOLCA and the DAW was far better this way. That´s the only way you are able to sync a TEENAGE ENGINEERING PO12 to other gear by the way. But that´s another story. More on that in the next episode.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned!
