Welcome back my dear Steemit Friends! Your friendly neighboorhood Mr. Lica is talking! Today i want to start to talk with you about something very personally, in fact, how i said in my introduction post, in 2017 i had released, in free download, my first album.
To put a real fine point, this is not my first album but my thirnd, in fact in 2011 and 2014 I released a 4 tracks Demo and a 6 tracks EP with the band which i played at the time (in order Relinquishment and StatOnirico), but this is the first were i played recorded and mixed everything. The album, called “Killer Puffin” is an LP with 13 original tracks and one cover from an Italian band called 883. I know that is a very “raw” and “unripe” work, but the day i thought “ok, now i need to start to mix”, i had not any ideas to what i needed to do, and everything you can listen in this album is the son of a lot of hours of web researching, forum and (a lot of) tutorial videos on YouTube .
What i hope to do with you is talking about all the songs that i wrote for this album and try to explain what “i told” without words using, because all the songs (except the cover) are voiceless songs, only music, so it’s a little bit harder try to send your messages. Today i want just talk to you about the first’s album song and explain to you which problems i deal with during the “Killer Puffin” developing process and how to solve It. The first probelm is how to write the music that i had in my head, and for this reason i started to use a free download software developed for Linux but developed even for Windows and iOS, called “TuxGuitar”. This software allow to write music and to emulate the instruments with as a midithat you can export from this software.
[TuxGuitar screenshot of my original song Erno Rubik]
It’s seems complex, but instead is very easy to use, and I hope soon to make a little TuxGuitar guide, just the fundamental commands, here on Steemit.
In my life i learnt three instruments: bass guitar (my first instrument, i have a bass key tattoen on my leg), guitar and tin whistle, so to play all the others instruments i used VST (Visual Studio Technology) that are plug-in that convert midi in “real instruments”. On-line there are a lot of fre VST, you need just to choose the one that you prefer. Another fundamental things to have is a good recording software (i use “Reaper”) and a very good external sound card, in my case a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8. When you have all of this things you can record your music with the software and play the instrument that you don’t play with your VST (i will tell you in every song which VST i used), that you need to make recognize from the recording software as a plug-in (there are a lot of tutorial to how to do this, it’s very easy to do, but very complex to explain with just words)
One other problem that i had underrated was the guitars sound, in fact, using three guitars, i need three different sounds that the ear can recognize in few instants and each sound need to be linked with the guitar line, one for the rithmics, one for the solos and one for riffining, so i built three differnts sounds, one for each guitar thinking what kind of sound that guitar need.
The idea to call the album “Killer Puffin” borned by an oximorn, because the puffin is a very quiet and silent bird that live in Iceland, and the concept that a puffin want to kill all the people, it’s first predator and killer, on my mind was a perfect rappresentation of my music, and after a lot of problems with copyright, i created this cover using just picture without copyright.
[Pictures created with imagine CC0 Commons or without copyright]
A mistake that i committed was to record each song every time i finished to write it, and, if in this way a learned a lot of things about mixing and recording try everytime new solutions, in the other side i recorded few songs a lot of time, just for have the same technic and dynamics in every songs, and the songs that i recorded more time was the first track, “Erno Rubik”, a 8:36 long song that i recorded 5 times.
This is one of the first songs i have ever write in my life, in fact i start to write this song in 2009 and over the next year, but between re-witing, little modifications and other stuffs i really over this song in 2016, 6 years after the beginning. With this song i hope to explain how an idead could be start linear, begin to be very confused and to come back, at the end, to the beginning.
The time between 2009 and 2010 was a very confused time in my life in fact i was writing my first thesys, and often i was losted in my thought and in few instants come back in the reality with a clear idea of what to do, like a move in the most famous cube in the world, that could change all of your ideas to solve It, showing you a very clear way, and inspired by the cube, i dedicated the song to its famous creator. This is the only “not acoustic” song in “Killer Puffin” that has just two guitars, because i want to gave the ideas that i had in 2009 of this song: complex, raw and with an clear opporition between order and disorder. This song is not technically perfect at all, but i waanted to leave a lot of inaccuracy to give the idea of an old song, thinked to be impefect for all the time except in the last parts, like a “wrong move” when you solve the cube could confuse you but, at the end you know how to solve it.
Recording software: Reaper
Audio Card: Scarlett Focusrite 18i8
VST drums: MT PowerDrumKit
VST organ: B8Organ
VST piano: DSK AkoustiK Keyz
VST synth: Bass Station
Guitar: Harley Benton TE-20 BK Standard Series
Bass: Epiphone Thunderbird
Microphone to record Tin Whistle: Neewer NW-700
The song, as i said, is in free download on Soundcloud, that everytime reduce the preview image quality, and i hate this. So sorry for my not perfect English and hope you could enjoy it!
[All used pictures was made by me or are without copyright]