Making Of voXager » Making of Song #2

And we have a winner.

helge — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:00:01 +0000

Or haven’t we?

Well, the long promised new version of song #2 is online now. Just head over to the downloads area, and listen to “Lizards”. Yes I know, it doesn’t seem as if anything has changed, but hear me now & believe me later: It has Version 38 of the song has now some more low end, and a little less treble. It should be well balanced mix-wise and a pleasure to your ear. At least more pleasurable than before Don’t forget, though, this is still a roughmix version.

Don’t sue me.
At least not that hard, ok?
Helge

Latency

helge — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:55:50 +0000

No, latency is not what you put into your coffee to make it white. Latency is a kind of delay that happens when digitally recording music. Everyone is recording digitally these days, and usually, the recording software is aware of latency and will compensate. Sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, compensation won’t happen. With song #2, “Lizards”, we had severe latency in the guitar tracks Sven recorded; the tracks felt untight to the point of being useless. To make a bad thing worse, the latency was different for each recorded take. And we’re talking about a hundred or so takes here…
It’s incredibly difficult to figure out the exact amount of latency. You can tell that a recording is slightly off the beat. But is it running away or lagging behind? Sven and I went into every take and fixed it manually, and now it should be alright. But it took us quite a couple of hours.

Once this was done, I continued in preparing the audio-only project. Listening closely to everything a couple of more times revealed, that bass and keys didn’t match the chords in some places, so I had to fix that, too. Now, I’ve only got a vague idea of music theory, even though my songs are sometimes quite sophisticated. So, this again took me a few more days. I forgot to record the cutoff/filter movement in one of the synth lines, and had to re-do again what I redid before. Wah!

So you get the idea. Lots of excuses here why were not where we promised to be However, the final audio roughmix of song #2 “Lizards” has now been put on its tracks and should really be done by… well… let’s just say Real Soon Now

Okay, what’s more?
- Sven and I are going to work on a few songs next week
- Laura has written very nice vocal harmonies for Unto The stars
- Something is happening with song #3 “Wheel in Space”…
- The audio-only version of song #4 “Split Seconds” is up soon
- Two more musicans — vocalists — on the horizon.
- Looking for a clean male voice to complete the crew. Who’s taking?

By for now
Yours truly, 2095
Helge

Are we done yet?

helge — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:46:23 +0000

No! How dare you ask? Well, but if you’d just levitate over to the Download Area you’ll find a new track that wasn’t there before. See? It’s song two! Yeah! It’s still missing a few backing vocals, but since I’m not going to tell you that, you won’t notice. As usual, naturally, just a roughmix to be recorded “for real” a little later this century. I hope you’ll like it. And don’t forget — I’m

Yours truly,
don’t sue me,
Helge

Not Dead Yet!

helge — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:46:49 +0000

In fact, alive and kicking. Well, kicking, at least

I’ve thrown out what was meant to be song #2 about a month ago, because it was too wishy-washy for the dramatic events covered in this song. After all, the story gets going for good here! Dramatic were also my enduring attempts at producing a song better fitting this place. Dramatic, albeit puny at first. I struggled with ideas, measures, tempi, melody lines and whatnot hours and hours every day for nearly a month. I would create a variation at night, and hate it the next morning. I deleted, removed and arranged frantically, and probably lost about half my scalp over this.

Until I finally came up with what you’ll find here. It is, however, not yet finished (I know, I’m repeating myself all over the place), and it’s still missing the guitars. But I have a very clear idea of where it’s going from here, some rough ideas about the vocal parts, and I’ve already started the lyrics. Have fun!

Yours truly,
don’t sue me,
Helge