Sequencing "Lost" / 2

I had some spare time recently so I thought that I would try to record some vocals for my version of Peter Hammill's epic song "Lost". We had three power cuts on the first evening when I tried recording (there was a ferocious storm raging outside) and most of what I recorded was not worth keeping. After an hour of frustration, I realised that fate was against me and so abandoned any further attempts.

I had another go at recording the vocals last Saturday, in a break from revising about negotiation. The only conclusion which I had made from my previous abortive session was that the song was too slow; I increased the speed from 80bpm to 84bpm, which may not seem much but made it much easier to sing.

I then proceeded to record an almost complete take, only to stumble over the words in the final verse. So I recorded the final verse again, mixed the two together, deleted the original .... and discovered that I had muted the almost complete take, resulting in a composite vocal of the last verse only. Gnashing of teeth. This first take, however, served to warm up my throat, and and I recorded a complete second take shortly after, complete with minor sound effects such as the dog barking, my stomach growling and what sounds like the door to the balcony being opened. I was able to silence most of the dog's barking and my stomach; the aural artifacts that remain can only be heard when the vocal is soloed in the mix.

I have begun using pitch correction software - I have a tendency to sing about half a semitone flat - and it seems that this program can't handle lengthy files (the take lasted about 10 minutes, which means that it was about 50 MB in length - recorded in mono). At first I wasn't sure what to do, but later I had the idea of copying the original vocal file into several sections (carefully noting the offset of each section from the file's beginning), correcting each section  and then stitching the five resulting files back together. This plan worked admirably, although every file started playing a few milliseconds too soon; moving them in time was easily achieved.

Once I had all the pitch corrected files playing at the right time, it was only a small matter to create a composite file (without deleting the originals!) which became my master vocal take for compression, eq and reverb. As usual, it was very difficult to find the right eq settings; I have been using a new microphone which supplies completely different tonal qualities to my previous one and I have yet to settle on standard equalisation settings. Eventually I decided to add a strong treble boost which provides a nice sound - it doesn't sound very much like me, but that's not too important. I always find mixing vocals and music very hard; I work on it for an hour, create a finished mix, do something else for an hour and then return to the mix.

I finally settled on a mix which satisfied several rounds of listening (each time lowering the level of the vocal); I uploaded this to a file server and notified the PH mailing group. So far, the response has been encouraging; those that have commented have noted that my arrangement is different but interesting (including the vocals).

This version can be found here.

Of course, after having uploaded what was supposed to be the final version, I had some more ideas which I have yet to check. One of them involves playing the tune to a later Peter Hammill song, 'Masks'. There's an instrumental lick played at one point which reminded me later of 'Masks' and changing the lick to the 'Masks' melody should be simple - although it will involve a slight harmonic change. Another idea involves inserting a few more bars into an instrumental break in order to enhance the dynamics - I don't know how this is going to work yet. It will also involve adding some silence into the vocal file. Normally I don't care for the 'digital razor blade' but adding four bars of silence (at 84bpm, 16 beats should last 11.429 seconds) shouldn't be too difficult.