Posts filed under 'Miscellaneous'
Konichiwa everyone!
Please welcome with me our two latest crew members, Laura and Cheryl-Renée!
Laura has already appeared on “Ship of the Moon” and will lend her beautiful and mystic voice to a couple of more songs shortly. Cheryl has just recorded vocals for “Wheel in Space”, and we’re going to show you a bit of that later this spring; Cheryl’s range of voicings also includes an amazing operatic style. Go to the “Musicians” area to find Laura’s and Cheryl’s mini-bio.
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| Laura |
Cheryl-Renée |
It is safe to assume that the female vocalist section for voXager is now complete with Henny, Laura & Cheryl. There will be another addition to the crew on the male vocalist front shortly — more about that later this millennium 
Nobody’s gonna be sued today, right?
Alrighty then, off you go!
Helge
March 18th, 2008
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
February 26th, 2008
People, this whole fucking first month of ’08 sucked balls. I know you’re not used to voXager using swear words, but that’s just the way it is. Not gonna happen again, though
But. January’s gone, and february seems much friendlier. Back from the dumps and returning to business, we’re working on the final audio version of Song 2 (Lizards) right now. Originally, this should have been finished sometime in november or december, but, you see, sometimes things just don’t work out as planned. Expect something audible coming your way next week or so.
More importantly, there might be another addition to the voXager crew shortly. Stay tuned for more information while we sort things out.
Oh, and a word of advice on an altogether different topic to all you youngsters out there: Don’t go too easy on your alien space babe – she’ll appreciate it
That’s it for now, stay calm, stay tuned, as always
yours truly
Helge
Oh, and don’t sue me, right?
February 1st, 2008
Friends and foes! Now that the summer slump is finally over, we’re ready to pick up the pieces and continue with voXager from where we left off a while ago. Right? Right!
Lately, I’ve been busy turning my study into a little project studio. I optimized one corner of the room for vocal recordings by gluing pyramid foam to walls and ceiling, and also put long Ikea curtains up the remaining walls to dampen reflections. Of course, the acoustics are still not holding up to professional standards, especially since the recording computer is not separated from the microphone (although the iMac is very silent compared to most other machines). Tentative results of vocal recordings are, however, very encouraging.
Following, I’d like to show you a few pictures of how it looks inside the, well, I’d like to call it the voXager study. “Study” as opposed to “studio” — I know I’m insane, but my insanity does not include delusions of grandeur… yet
Okay, here goes. Click to enlarge:
What’s more? Well, right now, I’m doing my best to prepare very clean and accurate audio projects of voXager’s first eight songs. Sven has re-recorded guitars for the first five songs already, and sometime early next year we’re going to re-do the vocals here at the voXager study in a better quality. I hope we’ve got something to show for by february.
Meanwhile, I’ll remain
yours truly
don’t sue me
Helge
November 29th, 2007
We had a ship full of faulty equipment. We had a ship full of lizards. Now we have a shipful of new musicians. And they’re on their way to the stars! Head over to the download area to listen to the roughmix of “Ship Of The Moon”, the first song to feature John at the drums and Laura at the microphone. Enjoy!
Yours truly
just don’t boo me
Helge
September 11th, 2007
Everybody stop what you were doing for a second to welcome John Wooten, the man at the drumkit!
John is tracking drums for voXager for quite a while already, albeit up to now, somewhat behind the scenes. In a couple of days, however, the first songs with his excellent drumwork will be uploaded into the download section of this site, so today is the perfect time for this introduction. So everybody rise to your feet and say hi
Anything else? Yes. We’ve now got all the guitars for the first five songs tracked via (and to be re-amped with) a PodXt Pro, and man, do they sound fat now! Sven and I were quite pedantic with respect to timing and audio quality, so be prepared for an indian summer blast…
Apart from that, there may be upcoming news at the vocalist front soon, but you’ll have to wait just a few days longer, dear Ms. Void (I mean, c’mon, is anybody unrelated to voXager or the musicians reading this blog at all?), until this bit of info will be unveiled.
Oh, and btw, the introductory quotes preceding many of the songs have now been recorded by a professional native american voice talent. I’ll post a sample RSN (real soon now).
Yours truly,
yadda-yadda (you know the routine),
Helge
PS: After this blog entry, I’m obviously running low on (brackets). Anybody willing to send me a pack of alphabet soup without the alphabet? Thx in advance…
September 4th, 2007
Has the Gordian knot been cut?
Who knows but some razor-sharp guitars have been re-recorded for our second song “Lizards” just some hours ago. Due to some tricky time changes in that song our (so far anonymous) drummer has to do some rehearsals before he will record the drum tracks. Meanwhile the guitar recording sessions for song four “Split Seconds” are just two days ahead.
Healthy margin for the string section, gonna have to wake up the vocalists…
That’s it for today and to quote a famous author:
So long and thanks for all the fish 
September 2nd, 2007
For those of you who doubt that voXager will ever create something new to listen to, here are the news (sorry for the stenographic style, but time is a precious gift these days):
- guitars for “unto the stars” have been re-recorded and drums have been played by a real drummer (nevertheless the song must be remixed before you can get a glimpse of our current status)
- guitars for “ship of lizards” will be re-recorded in a short time (this time short means really short )
- guitars for our third song “wheel in space” are recorded (and don’t need a re-recording ), drums are nearly perfect.
- vocals for our fifth song “ship of the moon” will be delivered in a short time (hopefully and if I would be in a position to predict – they will be great), guitars need some makeup and drums are ready.
Most of all 16 songs have been composed (at least we have a draft version of each and every song), so there is enough work for us to do in the next weeks.
But the attentive listener (or reader) may have recognized that we don’t got a real bass so far on any of our samples – if you like our music and can play: feel free to join
August 29th, 2007
This weekend I’ve just had my fits of the mixing woes. For the first time, I’ve played Unto The Stars on the stereo in my living room. While it sounds quite alright on the studio monitors, headphones, in the car, generally on smaller speakers, and even in mono, on my stereo, it sounded like a catastrophe of epic proportions. Well, perhaps not all epic, but at least like a sonic landslide that takes about a million people into the abyss.
The bass frequencies and lower mids were drowning everything in mud. Kick drum and bass were fighting bloodily like their lives depended on it, the snare hid anxiously behind the mid mud of the other instruments, and the overall high frequencies sounded like… just like most of them were on vacation in the bermuda triangle.
I realize that this must be a result of the linear frequency response on my studio monitors, and the lack thereof on my stereo. Plus a lack of experience on my part. I know for a fact, that most low to mid price stereoes are like that. They have an S-curve built into their frequency response in order to make hip-hop sound as if it were real music. So there… I could have expected that, had I just used the grey matter between my ears a little more right from the start (noticed how I call myself stupido?) Anyway.
Easy fixing, you say, right? I thought so, too. So I fired up Logic Audio and pulled some bass from the drumset, and saw to it that bass guitar and kick drums are not in each others way, frequency wise. I gave the vocals some more highs and even made them a little louder. I worked on the sound of the guitars, made them wider, and pulled the stereo master up against the limiter a little more. In short: I did two dozen things at once. Then I listened to the result on my stereo again.
Geezus frakking ghost! I almost puked. Yes, kick drum and bass weren’t fighting that much anymore, and some of the high frequencies were back from the bermudas. But everything sounded so disjoint, dull and very non-pro. Not even semi-pro anymore like it did before. So I went back to Logic Audio, and jumbled the knobs a little more. Then went back to the living room. It sounded even worse. The highs got nicer, the mids badder. I mean, worse.
I did that for three hours straight, bouncing about 20 versions from Logic Audio, listening, frowning, hissing, cursing, hoping my neighbours were not forming a lynch mob just yet, and doing it over again. And it would get worse all the time. Later that night, I’d eventually give up. I realised that, in order to get a mix that would play o.k. on my (and everyone elses) stereo, I’d have to start the mixdown procedure all over. Not just tweak here and there, but pull all faders and knobs to zero, erase the automation, and redo from start. Or else, just leave it to some pro mixing engineer in the distant future of humanity.
Then I poured myself a bourbon.
And that’s the morale of today’s story, dear boys, girls and aliens from outer space: No better sounding version of Unto The Stars for you and me just yet. Now sue me!
February 26th, 2007
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