I started this track using Reason 4.0 in "Studio B" about a year ago. After laying out the initial parts and the haunting piano melody, I thought it had a striking resemblance to something that Patrick O'Hearn might have been doing in about 1989. So my working title was "O'Hurt Me". Often my working titles make no sense at all to anyone but me.
Recently the final version of Propellerhead's Record 1.0 software, which I raved about in an earlier post, arrived in my mailbox and so the last few weeks I've been having a bit of a "battle of the DAW's" here in Hybernation Studio. I seem to be rotating projects between Pro Tools, Cubase and Record! This track I finished in Record, since importing the Reason 4.0 file and converting to Record's format is so easy. In fact "easy" is the one word that perfectly describes Propellerhead's new product. Anything I want to do, for the most part, I can figure out within a couple of minutes without ever looking at the manual. With Pro Tools and Cubase, I am continually referencing the copious documentation (granted they are both deeper programs than Record). But with Record, they really went out of their way to make the software incredibly easy to use and intuitive. And it still manages to be a very powerful and professional tool.
So, this is officially the first track that I have completed using Record. This is also another first....the first track I have ever actually PLAYED all of the drums on...on my Roland V-Drum kit, triggering drums sounds from the Reason Drum Kit Refill 2.0. I'm not talking about the many percussion tracks, just the "rock drums" that come in the "B section" and again at the end of the song. Ok, so it's primarily just the kick and snare, and some cymbals, but it really is "all me" playing them. Alright, I admit I did quantize the part later to clean up the timing, and I edited a few mistakes, but other than that...
Alright granted, Alan White and Bill Bruford don't have anything to worry about. Learning to play drums is hard, they say especially so for keyboard players. I've only been at it for about four years. Really makes me miss Alan, trying to pound it out myself.
Record is different from Cubase and Sonar in one large way: everything happens in just three windows. I usually put the "track" window on the left monitor:
And then I put the "rack" and "mixer" windows side by side on the right monitor:
As I explained previously, the "virtual mixer" in Record is quite awesome, it being modeled after the classic Solid State Logic XL 9000 K Series, a piece of kit that will run you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm not really an audiophile with "golden ears" but I can tell you that this mixer sounds very good for what it is. The only thing I can't really come to grips with is the "master buss compression". I just couldn't make it do what I wanted on the final mix. So I ended up exporting out a 24-bit WAV file (uncompressed) of the final mix, importing this into Sonar and using the excellent Voxengo Elephant plugin to "master" the song, adding compression and limiting. This plugin is amazingly transparent, giving you that "loud" sound without colorizing the mix in any way.
I should also mention that this track resembles the one I call "Ancient Violence" in several ways. I believe I actually had that 20 year old composition in mind when I started this one, intentionally going for the same kind of vibe. I guess there is no law against ripping off oneself is there!
Here is "Winter Dream". Enjoy...and stay warm.
here is a direct link to the mp3 for non-shockwave environments
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