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Anatomy of a Punchfest
I don’t have a lot of time for blogging today, as there’s a Punchfest starting up at noon and of course I’m participating. So, I figured I’d blog about the process! This will also give you an idea about how I go about putting a song together.
MIDI First
When doing a VG cover, I like to find a MIDI file of the song in question and plug it into Reason so I can take a look at the notes. I can learn a song by ear given time, but it’s a lot faster for me to look at all the notes and use that as a reference point.
Fire Up the Gear
Nothing too exciting here – gotta make sure everything’s got power that needs it! I run everything these days out of my bass amp, which makes recording a bunch of different things easier. It has pretty good high end and I love the low end that the 15-inch speaker gives. I’d love to get an amp with a larger speaker cone at some point, but I don’t have the space currently.
Get Chatting
Then, I head to IRC and start chatting with my fellow Punchfest participants! Gathering a beverage at this point is generally a good call, though it being only noon, I’m going with a diet soda or perhaps some water. The beer will flow once the songs have all been collected and the listening party starts in earnest.
Start!
When noon arrives, I figure out the tempo of the song by looking at a wave file of the MIDI that I rip, then dividing the time figure by 240. That’ll give me a rough idea of the tempo. Then I find the proper drum loop for the occasion and modify it to the proper length to work with the song. This one I’m working on is at either 64 or 128, so it’s time to gather my loop.
Bass! How Low Can You Go?
I double track my bass, so I have one synthesized loop made in Reason (which I can usually copy over from the MIDI) and one live loop on my actual bass. I put the live bass much higher in the mix, but the synthesized bass adds some more texture to the low-end and makes things nice and bassy.
Mr. Guitar, Make Me a Star
I usually like to double track my guitars with synths as well, but since I’m recording on the fly today, I’m only going with the guitar tracks and hoping for the best. I do have lots of layers of guitar going into the song, so that should help with the texturing somewhat.
Finishing Up
Final mixdown’s pretty simple – I make sure I’ve got all the volumes in appropriate places, then I mix everything to 3.0 dB. It’s loud, but not so loud that it distorts (usually). If it does, I go back and fix what’s causing said distortion.
After that, I cut the peaks some and boost the volume again. I’m well versed on the Loudness War, but I’m trying to blend the best aspects of the two schools of thought together as best I can.
Listening Party
This is where we listen and continue to be silly, as we have done throughout the entire process. A common topic of the night has been Dragon Quest IX, which is no surprise.
Time for Another Song
Got another one to finish up now. I know this hasn’t been especially thorough, but time has been short. Ciao for now!
Discuss this post at the For the Love of Creativity Forum!
Posted on July 31st, 2010.
External Links
• Dragon Quest IX – Dragon Quest 9 for the Nintendo DS – Nintendo DS Games
• Punchfest – Punchfest – Bossies
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