MOTUNATION (formerly UnicorNation) is an independent community for discussing Digital Performer and other MOTU audio software and hardware. It is not affiliated with MOTU.
Forum rules
The forum for petitions, theoretical discussion, gripes, or other matters outside deemed outside the scope of helping users make optimal use of MOTU hardware and software. Posts in other forums may be moved here at the moderators discretion. No politics or religion!!
My new album, cinematic, is now out and available. You can listen to it in its entirety via the flash player at the official cinematic website. (The player will start at a randomly picked track and then loop the whole thing.)
cinematic is available at CD Baby and soon also as a download at iTunes.
Lots more info at the website, poke around!
For the past few months this album was pretty much all I worked on, thought about, and obsessed over. I am very happy with how it turned out. Hope you like it as well!
Why post this at unicornation? Well, besides the fact that many a question I had was answered in these pages, and many a tip from the invaluable "DP Tips and Tricks" thread went straight into this album, I'd also like to point out that DP (and also MachFive, I use a lot of custom made samples) were essential in producing "cinematic". Among many other things I'd like to mention the absolute ease with which DP handles meter and tempo changes; that was crucial. But of course it didn't stop there, the list on how DP made my life easy in this production goes on and on and on... brilliant piece of software.
It will be on iTunes, but that may take a month or two, they work quite slowly there in Appleland. And yes, CD-baby is a little bit more lucrative for me, financially speaking, but of course also a tiny bit more expensive for the customer.
However, you do get a pretty gorgeous looking CD, and all the tunes in their uncompressed 16/44.1 glory on their own sturdy backup medium, and no restrictions or strings attached as to how many times you can copy it into your various iPods and iTunes libraries at home and at work and in the car etc. etc. (As long as you don't give it away to the rest of the world via file-"sharing", of course...)
I juust finished listening to it all the way through.
Lovely intoxicating stuff.
Made me think of Steve Reich in a few parts
and Brian Eno in others.
Once I've feed down the credit card beast a bit more
I'll certainly purchase the CD.
Well done.
Thank you very much!!! Very glad you like it. And what lovely company you put me in...! Flattered I am.
I know everything there is to know about the credit card beast... it paid for this CD (and now needs a good bit of feeding from me, too...!) So I most definitely know what you mean. No worries!
Kubi wrote:However, you do get a pretty gorgeous looking CD, and all the tunes in their uncompressed 16/44.1 glory on their own sturdy backup medium, and no restrictions or strings attached as to how many times you can copy it into your various iPods and iTunes libraries at home and at work and in the car etc. etc.
You know thank you for reminding me of that. We've been listening to everything in our living room off of my laptop so I've gotten lazy about buying CD's Those are all excellent reasons! For me it isn't so much the price as it is the instant gratification!
Hey Kubi, excellent work, I listened to it all the way, and I am ordering the CD. I like its originality and tranquility. I am specially fond on the variety of sounds that you have achieved, and the very well accomplished blend of electronics, acoustic instruments and soundscapes/sfx.
Maybe you will like to expand on the production process, at least I am interested in knowing more about it.
It's hard to say more about the production process without much of a specific question, but I'll try:
Most tracks began as piano sketches that were then "orchestrated." I usually start out at the piano with scoring paper, then go to DP and input as a series of basic "layers" i.e. melody, countermelody, bass line. These are usually input with a basic piano sound or something like that. I then create a tempo map (only two or three of the 12 tracks have a steady tempo, and those are the ones that do are supposed to have an almost machine-like quality; the rest fluctuate. I use either tap tempo, or I refer to a live audio track recorded without click, and adjust barlines.)
I then go back to paper and flesh out the layers some more, then go back to DP and input. Of course every stage involves corrections and changes in prior stages.
Some tracks (i.e. Long Time Coming) were built around a full-length electronic/sundscape collage, so in that case the same steps as above apply, only this time the electronic 'backdrop' is the first sketch, not a piano sketch.
At this point I may have a few key parts already recorded or programmed with the final sounds. Now I 'orchestrate' the rest, using fake instruments as stand-ins for the ones to be recorded live later on.
After that, I bounce all VI's to audio, then record the live instruments, and finally mix.
The album was mastered at Threshold Mastering by Stephen Marsh.
As far as blending electronics, acoustics and sfx is concerned, I'm always interested in crossing the lines there. So I'll try and have sections where the acoustic instruments try and sound electronic (i.e. the violin in the last section of "The Man in the Park"), and I treat the sfx as if they were instruments (i.e. by letting a brake-squeak come out of a flute note, thereby emphasizing the "instrument-ness" of the brake-squeak). But then I let them be unwaveringly acoustic, electronic, and sfx again.
I find that by blurring the boundaries this way, one can create a very "closely-knit universe" where the various elements are merely different variations of a common "ur-instrument."
Hope this tells you some of the things you wanted to know. I'll gladly answer more questions if you have them!
Hey Kubi,
I'm listnening to your album as I write this. Some of the best music I've heard. It's is already one my favourite, and when I buy I cd, it's going to be im my iPod beside some other music I enjoy ( Lyle Mays,Claus Ogerman,Steve Tavaglione,etc.).
BaSSic wrote:Hey Kubi,
I'm listnening to your album as I write this. Some of the best music I've heard. It's is already one my favourite, and when I buy I cd, it's going to be im my iPod beside some other music I enjoy ( Lyle Mays,Claus Ogerman,Steve Tavaglione,etc.).
- MachFive, often for samples I made myself, plus it plays all my old SampleCell libraries.
- EWQLSO Gold and EWQLSChoirs
For synths and electronic sounds:
- Lots of Absynth (a patch or two in almost every track.)
- Some Atmosphere
- Some Cameleon
Many tracks also contain acoustic recordings processed with SoundHack or with mangling plugs such as Altiverb using weird Impulse files, or with Pluggos.
I'd say the relationship between synth/sample tracks and real instruments/real recorded sfx is usually about 50/50
