Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Nine Years Later: A | B COMPARISON

 
Nine years ago I mixed my first piece in Sonar (5.x) using the new Garritan JABB library. Mixing music in a DAW using samples was a new area for me and I had (and still do) much to learn. On Deviant art (http://www.deviantart.com/) artist will often post an older piece that they did years earlier with a new rendition they have recently done of the same piece to show how they have improved and changed their interpretation of the subject.


So here I have done basically the same thing. I opened my old Sonar project for my piece “What Ever” into the newest version of Sonar and started redoing the piece. I had to pull out the old version of JABB that used the Kontakt player and replaced it with the newest JABB that uses the Aria player. I redid the routing of the instruments so that each now has its own bus. I pulled out the old reverb I was using for all the tracks and instead use separate(and different) reverbs on each instrument. I also changed the panning of the various instruments and I had to replace the Guitar Rig 3 that the bass was using the the current Guitar Rig 5. I ended up adding some EQ, compression and transient mastering that I did not do on my first version.


For your consideration an A B comparison:


https://soundcloud.com/ed-w-sharpe/what-ever-2006-version
   
https://soundcloud.com/ed-w-sharpe/whatever-2015-version





Ursus Demens  
       

Friday, May 08, 2015

Other People's Squirrels

    
 Well after my last update I started to veer off the path. At first it was only to down load updates and patches to my existing software. That then morph is a short bit of time searching for Freeware VSTs, and that was not too bad as I was continuing to sketch out ideas for the fourth movement. But on Friday I decided to open up the first project I ever did in Sonar 5 way back in 2005 [What Ever]. That is when the first squirrels arrived. I decided to redo the entire piece in the newest version of Sonar Platinum and the updated Garritan JABB libraries. That initially went well, but then Saturday arrived.

   Saturday was the day my Mother and Sister was holding their big annual charity Tea Party and the last couple of years my Wife and Daughter have gotten into helping  with it. Additionally I was on call for work. Saturday the the other people's squirrels arrived. 

 First I need to run last minute errands with my wife to get flowers for the tea party. No big deal you think? Well you do not understand the enormous amount of time it takes my wife to pick out flowers (and I do love her very dearly). Once that was done and the flowers dropped off at my Mother's place I need to shuttle my wife back home and the plan was to then have me shuttle the Daughter back to my Mother's place and that would have worked, except it takes her like 15 minutes to get out of the house. Still not a real problem except I get the page (text message technically) from work.

 So I have the leave the wife a daughter to their own designs and go into my room to fire up the computer to see what the issue. As I was doing that the Wife and Daughter take off to my Mother's house and leave the Granddaughter in the house with me. Soon the Granddaughter is yelling at me because the dog is going crazy and I have to deal with it instead, luckly just then the Wife was back and I could get back to work. But I consider everything a packed up my stuff and drive into the office.

 A couple hours later I had everything resolved and left the office. The Tea party was in full swing, buy because of the hot weather I need to pickup extra bottle water on my way there. To cut to the chase. The rest of the day was spent bouncing between the tea party and the office (I got another shorter call later) and just simply waiting on my family. I think I was finally able to roll into bed at one AM.


  Since then I spent most of the week working on the new mix of “What Ever” and it is almost finished. I made what I call a raw recording of the piece to listen to for a while before finalizing it. The good news is I am back working of the second movement of my new piece. But as for the fourth movement I have decided to step back from it for a few days as I am not longer happy with the initial ideas I had and I might end up taking it in a completely new direction. So unless the evil squirrels rear their heads I am focused on finishing the second movement and getting back to working of the first movement.


   May your days be squirrel free.


Ursus Demens