Jammin' on a Sunday morning

Sorry about the recent decline in activity, hope to get a lot of recording done in the near future. In the mean time, have a Sunday morning jam session :)

Space sounds

A long weekend again, so I had some time to record new stuff. Take a listen to the below video, it's a little bass/guitar/piano piece with some ambient synths and a some simple beats, all tied together with the message the astronauts from Apollo 8 sent to Earth. 

Enjoy!

More voxing around

Yesterday I continued experimenting with the Tonelab, and since I just watched Crazy Heart, I was kind of tuned to blues. I ended up recording a few layers of guitars, even a bit of slide play. I really like how the mixes sound using the Vox patches, it somehow feels more natural than my previous material.

 I searched the web for some matching images, an I put a few of them together to serve as some visual aid to the audio track. They are all pics of rusted out cars left in the dust, kind of the dead horses of modern cowboys. I like the feel of the whole thing, check it out.

(Links to all original images can be found in the video description, thanks to their respective creators.)

Enjoy!

Voxing around

The little home studio I'm building is getting bigger fast. I found a great deal these last few weeks, and I managed to put my hands on a second hand Vox Tonelab SE. This processor is one that I had my eyes on ever since I heard it at one of my friends place, in the office of The 4th Floor branding studio.

The Vox Tonelab SE - out of production, into my collection.

So what makes this old, outdated, heavy and huge floor effects unit so interesting for me? It has a vacuum tube driven preamp section, powered by a lonely 12AX7, which makes all the difference in warmth of tone, fatness of distortion, you name it. It has a different vibe than anything I ever played before as far as processors go. Generously makes up for the lack of USB compatibility and whatnot. And what I like about it compared to it's newer generation buddies is the twin assignable expression pedals - a real treat for creating unique dynamics and effects.

I have it since Monday this week, but today was the first time had a little me time with my new toy, so I quickly dialed up some inspiring tones, made a few clicks to get a pretty groovy drum track going, and recorded a few tracks to see how the unit would do. And it did great, at least I am very pleased with it - unlike with my general skills in improvising a guitar solo, which is a story for another day. Clean sound, very nice tones from the factory patches, easy to tweak, so yeah, it was well worth the buck, even though it's missing a button, and generally has a noticeable mileage.

For anyone curious this is what tonight's fiddling sounds like: 

I really hope I'll get around to doing some serious recording with this unit. Thanks to everyone who was involved in getting this piece into my hands. Cheers!

Suspended in a sunbeam

I finally got around to mixing down and tweaking a draft that has been sitting on my shelf for too long. I think this is one of the most complete songs I ever managed to write and record. The speech at the beginning is from the first chapter of Dr. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, entitled You are here. I have the audio from this [link]. (No copyright infringement intended.) The working title for this piece is 'Suspended in a sunbeam' - no doubt you will guess why after a listen.

I wanted to take a peek into what it means to think in a post-rock fashion. I really can't judge whether I succeeded or not, maybe you can be of assistance with this issue. I usually find myself in trouble categorizing my work.

The mix is far from perfect, somewhat uneven at parts, the kick drum could have a bit more... well... kick, there are some peaking parts, the solo guitar is a bit off and whatnot, but this is a track that I am sure I will take the time to rerecord, and mix properly, as I am really pleased with it. Maybe even include some keyboards - I can't decide if it makes it too crowded or not.

I am really curious of what anyone else thinks about this concept, so please, if you give it a listen, leave a comment on YouTube, any and all suggestions are more than welcome. Enjoy.

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here cover

I was very eager to try out my newly configured rig, so I jumped right in and did a cover of an old favorite, Pink Floyd's Wish you were here, off the album with the same name, which appeared in 1975. I did a little improvisation over the end, I couldn't help including it. This is the first time ever that I made a video like this, hope you enjoy it.

A step closer

My new favorite spot

After a few years of experimenting, after much (utterly appreciated) advice, trial and error, saving up money, and after reading kilometers of forums, I finally have the first complete version of my little home studio. I could hardly be any happier.

Last night I got my Roland Quad Capture USB audio interface, and in retrospect I have to say that it probably should have came well before many of the other gear I bought. It changed the way I can record completely.

The Roland Quad-Capture

 I finally have all my stuff set up on my desk, all the cables run, everything connected, and I won't have to rearrange this setup. Period. I can use the same drivers to record MIDI and audio (until now I actually used my laptop for MIDI and my desktop for audio, and a USB stick to carry material),  no more popping and clicking noises, no more latency with software synths. I have Sonar X1 LE - which came bundled with the interface - instead of the older version I was using up until today, live headphone monitoring, balance knob between playback and input volume... everything. I am very anxious to see what I can get done with this rig finally in place.

The softer side of electric guitars

The Stratocaster

I recorded this track not too long ago, right after I got my Squire Stratocaster. The maple neck, single coil pickups and tremolo really combined to give a guitar sound that I could not achieve before with my Epiphone, and I felt really inspired.

My Pink Floyd
score tattoo

The lead guitar was carefully written along with the backing track, not using my usual approach of improvising over and over again until I hit something I like. I even saved the project as Study in G minor, as it felt like I was taking a much more methodical approach than usual, like I was studying the key of G minor - just as someone with actual musical knowledge, unlike myself, might do. The synth chord progression was chosen from a part of the keyboard track from Shine on you crazy diamond by Pink Floyd, which is one of my all time favorite songs (so much so that I even have a tattoo with part of the guitar solo score on my leg).

The synth plugin blew me away, it sounds awesome, and it has named parameters such as 'Butter', which I really thought was great. The user interface is really friendly, the included presets sound cool, I can only repeat myself by saying how pleased I was by this little chunk of software. Here is a link to the VST [link] - it is free, which is a really valuable attribute for anything these days.

I hope you like the track. Enjoy!

Heavy metal

This is an older experiment of mine, but I really like the main riff and overall feel of the song. I'm looking forward to redoing it, the drum track really screams for a retake, and I have some ideas on how I should tweak the guitar sounds as well.

The World War experience

Tonight I had just enough time to piece together the first half of song I wanted to do for a really long time.
It was a double blessing: I got around to record a sludge/doom piece, as well as try out my Axiom controller for drum recording.

Drums via MIDI

I have to say it was strange at first. I'm used to drumming with my fingers all the time, but not actually having pads that correspond to drums. Its strange, but its really cool. The only thing holding me back right now is latency, since I don't have a really good sound card yet, and this resulted in some hits being out of sync. But anyway, the concept is done, by the time I'll have to record the drums for real, I'll have a different sound card.

I'm really please with how the mix sounds. The song will be about three times the length of this clip, since I want to take the time to change the tempo a few times, to make the experience a little bit more dynamic, not just one feeling throughout the song. Although I plan on keeping it sounding just as heavy all the way through.

Here is the draft:

From plan to product

Since the blog is a 'making of', I thought I'd let you in on how I'm getting about creating material - gear, workflow, stuff like that.

Still life in my bedroom

Most of the time if I have an idea, I will take it to a guitar, and try to find a chord progression, melody, something I can use to get started. Then I create a rough plan around it: if I have a riff for example, I try to write a bridge and a chorus to match it. Once I have these main blocks, I try to figure out what other instruments I need, and start recording them bit by bit. I usually have the main theme planned, figure out the tempo/groove, use a simple drum placeholder to help record the guitar parts. Then I change the placeholder to an actual drum track. The bass guitar follows, and samples if the song has any. Everything else is trial and error based, add this, remove that, reshape some stuff, until I have a full length draft of what I want.

Way too many cables

Once I'll have these rough drafts for all the tracks, I plan on recording all the drum tracks, since recording everything else in good time seems easiest to me with the drums done. Once the drums are done, I want to start creating the guitar, bass and synth sounds for each track, and recording the themes using them. Once all the tracks are done and recorded, effects, samples, mixing, mastering will follow - just add water, and you have yourself a demo album.



I hope it will actually work out like this - this is by no means an approved way of doing home recording or songwriting. But it's really fun.

Where the magic happens

I record everything using Sonar LE, via signal coming from either a Boss ME-25 for the guitar and bass tracks, or an M-Audio Axiom 25 MkII for MIDI tracks and drums. The final drums I hope to play myself on a Roland HD-1.

My gear

The full list of gear I use is as follows: a Squier Standard Stratocaster, an Epiphone Tony Iommi SG400, and a Fender Sonoran are the guitars, an Ibanez SR300 bass, an M-Audio Axiom 25 II. MIDI controller, and a Roland HD-1 drum set. The amps are a Roalnd Cube 60 and a Behringer BXL450A. As an audio interface I use my guitar processor, a Boss ME-25, until I put my hands on a Roland quad capture. I'll post updates to the list if anything changes.

I plan on documenting what tricks and methods I find useful regarding the technical side of the recording process, and hopefully enraged professionals will read it and yell me the proper way to do it in the form of flaming comments. I always come across really swell people during such experiments, I hope this will be no exception. I really love to learn anything related to my interests, so I value the chance to listen to experienced people.

I'll start posting more specific stuff once I figure out how to categorize them. Even if nobody adds anything, I hope to have a vaguely organised blob of notes that together describe the solutions to all the challenges that have/will arise.

Intro

So right now I'm in the process of writing the material for the tracks, which means I am constantly recording ideas, and creating drafts. The point is to create the atmosphere I want from each track, so I can later develop the rough drafts into more fine tuned pieces of work. For starters I thought I'd post the first draft of the intro track.

It contains the reading of one of my favorite poems. I hope it won't feel like I massacred a great literary piece. This is the sort of dark, eerie feel I want to reach with many of my compositions. Enjoy.

Welcome to my imagination - about this blog

This is a 'making of' blog.

The making of an album.

A yet nameless album, from a no-name band.

The temporary logo

Briefly summarized the W Musical Experiment is my one-man-army style project, where I try to create songs, sound clips, all sorts of audio concepts. I work alone, except for the tremendous amount of advice and constructive criticism I receive from a lot of really nice people I met over the year. Most of them are my friends, some of them are random people I never met in person, but what they have in common is more experience and know-how then me, and a willingness to share it with me, helping me improve the results of my fiddling. I am in great debt to them.

Myself - Wagner Tamás

Since I don't have a band to play in (unfortunately), I decided to create a proof of concept album. The concept I wish to prove is that I have enough original ideas to fill a few tracks with them, and the skill and perseverance to actually create these tracks. From writing, recording, mixing, graphics - everything involved, I want to get this project done. And if it's never finished, I want to sink my teeth in and enjoy the work every step of the way.

This is why I am making this blog. I want to document as much as I can, so I will have something to look back on, whatever this idea might end up becoming. And if there is anyone interested to read such a blog, even better. I honestly hope that I can share things that might help, amuse, inspire people, or just make them smile.

If you are curious and read the blog, post a comment, listen to a clip, think a positive thought, send a good luck wish - I sincerely thank you.

Peace and rock on.