Sargeburt
Fighter
anoldsadghost.bandcamp.com
Posts: 109
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Post by Sargeburt on Jan 7, 2019 16:23:10 GMT -5
Ave, after listening to the 2018 interview from Lamentation, which was included at the “Grabens Symphonie“ Box, mentioned that they played and recorded live with a tape recorder to capture the magic of the moment i was a thinking a lot about this topic. Since a few months i also practice, play and record in this way and try my best to create a specific moment and put this feeling into my music. I know a lot back from the old good days, but also many of the “newer“ artists (well known or not) follow this way and do their best to let us be a part of this live performed rituals without midi, vst or the use of a daw... so my question to you all is:
*1 Do you have a live recorded project/album you want to show us? *2 How do you record your music or what analog device would you suggest? (Tape recorder, 4-track, loop station, rythm machine, pedals, etc.) *3 What do you think about the advantage and the disadvantage of live recorded DS? *4 Is it a path we miss in this digital age while we can use all this programs, controllers, effects and laptops/backing tracks to manipulate our style and sound? *5 Do you feel a magic in live recorded music with all the failure what can happen?
This thoughts going around my mind since the last year and i am really looking forward to your opinions, thoughts and suggestions/recommendations about this topic...
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Alder
Magic User
Murky dungeon sounds: alderen.bandcamp.com
Posts: 228
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Post by Alder on Jan 7, 2019 18:13:09 GMT -5
The three Alder Deep chapters were recorded live, but in my own home. I actually started the project as a test of whether dungeon synth could be played fully live with one person & a relatively simple setup (two keyboards & an analog filter), or if the genre was "too complicated" of a music for that. Chapter 1 is a single, un-edited take (I was actually just doing a sound test & got carried away), recorded directly to tape with a 4-track. The other two released chapters are 3 or 4 live recordings pasted together/faded into each-other & were recorded from the output of a cheap 8-channel mixer passed into Audacity. This change was due to my 4-track's internal power-something dying. Modern tapes & recorders are such high quality that I don't think recording directly onto tape really had much of a different sound that "digital taping" of live sounds. If you got older/crappier taping gear, then maybe you'll introduce some aleatoric crackling, etc. As for costs/benefits, I think they're pretty clear in my chapters - there are obvious mistakes and weird transitions, but my biggest difficulties with chp 2 & 3 were in unbalanced volumes, both overall and between instruments/channels. Overall issues could be corrected with simple post-production EQing, which I think is recommendable even for recordings of live shows, but if one voice is out-of-place, that's pretty un-correctable. The benefits I think only apply to musicians who are keen on improvisation & flow-of-thought style music (like myself) - and I think this can be heard in my released stuff in the sort of "storytelling arcs" the music has, as opposed to individual tracks with pre-planned melodies and bangin' beats. Overall, I think live DS can work great for the right kind of project/artist - and I don't usually like live recordings, but that's mainly because it's annoying when a track includes like 3 minutes of applause and whistling at either end. At dungeon synth shows, maybe the audience show all bring chains and swords to rattle and clang to show their appreciation? Just a thought.
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Post by stormcrow on Jan 7, 2019 18:45:08 GMT -5
Lupus in fabula! I tell you this because the album I've just released as Il Generale Inverno could easily answer all those points for me. As a matter of fact, "Ambient One" is actually a live-in-studio album: direct recording with two simultaneous synths (Korg M1 VST and a modified cheap Bontempi) into 2 armed tracks, 100% improvised without any metronome, transcription or previously crafted riffs. Of course there are timing mistakes, but it's part of the ambience and feel. Each note has been chosen and played right when MY HEART decided, not the metronome or the score. There, what I did with the DAW's sequencer was just clicking the red button
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Post by AndruJorj on Jan 7, 2019 22:55:47 GMT -5
The entire album was improvised in two sessions (over 2 days) using a single microphone to capture the audio coming from two synthesizers; a Roland SH-1000, and a Yamaha DX9. Each synth was connected to a separate 15-watt combo amplifier, and the microphone was placed an equal distance between them. The microphone was then plugged into an old cassette deck, and the audio was captured onto a TDK B60 Type-1 cassette tape. That audio was then transferred to a GNU/Linux digital workstation and mastered using Audacity. That's just one of several ways that I record live DS music.
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Post by ranseur on Jan 8, 2019 3:31:33 GMT -5
For ranseur all the albums have live synths, although i overdub the noise part and that doesn't change much for me because my main reason for doing it this way has to do with hearing all the melodies in real time. I'm not against taking my time with the production and doing multple takes though, for me it's more about taking that approach to playing, improvising and writing and not so much the idea of capturing spur of the moment stuff. Because I'm doing this kind of modal improvisation around a written theme thing usually.
The synth parts on gnome songs for ritual cleansing were all done in one take but I also rehearsed them for like two months. But that record has noise drumming and i still overdubbed that, takes two hands to do that and I don't really like using loop pedals.
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Post by nahadoth on Jan 13, 2019 10:16:58 GMT -5
The Herbalists was my only project recorded truly live, as in with no overdubs at all. For the first recording, I didn’t understand the 4-track I was using, so each track had both signals, so it was truly representative of what I played. For “Island” and “Mountain” I got a better understanding of the machine and was able to isolate everything to separate tracks, so at least if there was a mistake on one track I could scoop it out when I mixed down. But while not fully live, a GREAT majority of Nahadoth and other recordings have started out as a single improvisation, which helps to dictate the structure and feeling, but then I will go and add more layers after the fact. Erszébet and Dispell both relied heavily on live improvisations that were built around simple loops. I love doing this with four track as, besides the tape counter, I have often gotten ‘lost’ in the music, not knowing how long it is until after I listen later, so it feels very ‘present tense’ for me, it unfolds and can change based on my whim.
For me, I think the ‘magic’ feeling happens more when recording without computer, whether or not it is live. But to begin with a live take, and see where it goes, is the most magical - since I will make choices in the moment that I wouldn’t usually do when planning.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2019 10:31:20 GMT -5
My friend Xavier and I are re-discovering the pleasure of playing live, improvising and not knowing where we're going. After so many years on Cubase, Fruity loops and so on... That's where the magic is.
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Post by nahadoth on Jun 21, 2019 9:02:21 GMT -5
A new project, recorded all live. Two keyboards, a loop and reverb pedal, using some of the built in features of one of the keyboards to expand the sound a bit. Black Epheria - Demo blackepheria.bandcamp.com/releases
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Post by stormcrow on Jun 21, 2019 9:20:01 GMT -5
A new project, recorded all live. Two keyboards, a loop and reverb pedal, using some of the built in features of one of the keyboards to expand the sound a bit. Black Epheria - Demo blackepheria.bandcamp.com/releaseslistening now... spzw-ctqh redeemed, thanks!
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Post by nahadoth on Aug 6, 2019 8:12:52 GMT -5
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