Friday, September 29, 2006

Progressive Rock from Studio A

click the play button below to listen:














Well, the new release of Sonar (version 6) just arrived, so I've been spending some time in Studio A with all the "big toys". Here is a piece that I have been working on for a long time. I wrote the song in the early 90's, recovered the old cakewalk MIDI file into Sonar a few months ago and started re-doing parts. Tonight I finally mixed it down. I'm not sure what to call it. Once upon a time I called it Progress Attack Part Two...I reckon that name will do as well as any.

This has a real "retro vibe" to it. The percussion is supposed to sound like it's coming from an old Roland drum machine (TR-626 maybe). The main keyboard part that plays throughout is a combination of two vintage-emulating VSTs, the Korg Wavestation and the NI FM7. The bass is a layer of more FM7 combined with a Minimoog type sound from Antti's ASynth and a deep boom from his Taurus (both extremely excellent and free/donationware, by the way).

The guitar sound is the same one used in "Dark and Pink" from Manyguitar. Tim Conrardy is a genuis, by the way (he programmed that sound), and I just can't get enough of it.

I mastered this one with the excellent VC64 Vintage Channel audio processor that comes with Sonar 6 and I must tell you this is one very fine tool. Sonar 6 is really amazing...check out the screen shots below of how this song looked in mixdown mode!