As this trimester comes to a close, it's always good to reflect on the successes and failures of the journey. This Tri has been one of the most challenging and most rewarding of my time at SAE. It offered me the opportunity to push myself as an Audio Engineer but as a music producer. So, let’s look back on my major project, the seminal cover of Suicide is Painless. Note I’ll be detailing how I did the full song, as I covered film clip creation in a prior blog.
Process
Finding direction and shortcuts
This task was daunting to say the least. Where do I start? What key is the music, chords, timing, structure etc. The list went on. First thing I did was go to ultimate guitar to get chord progressions for the song (to practice acoustically as I had initially planned to sing it). I found a nice full version on YouTube, as I wanted to expand past the original intro.
(JohnnyMandelVEVO, 2015 )
I then went on the net to look up some sheet music, also going to YouTube to learn how to play it on piano.
(pianoandkeys, 2014)
I battled for around an hour only making it past the first couple of bars of the intro. This was extremely depressing. At this rate it will take me many hours to finish my project. So, I did what any reasonable producer would do, and I looked for the midi. I stumbled upon the website muso score that had the tv theme all prepared. I signed up for their free trial, downloaded and then dragged it into Ableton. It was a bit off a mess as the melody, chords and bass were all in the one midi section. I started separating them into different channels, deleting them as needed. Soon I had all the separate channels I needed.
Synthwave sounds.
I needed to make synthwave sounds. This proved challenging as my synth skills are still “under construction”. Whilst my initial goal was to get better at synthesis, I had to keep my eye on the prize, the 80’s cover version of my dreams. Whilst I do feel some guilt about this, I also realize that plenty of producers use plug ins, I kept reminding myself that for guitar it’s not like I build my own amps, create my own pedals or program my own digital software, so why should this be any different?
Enter Synthwave by Ableton. Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed. I’ve included a link so you can get a trial version like I did.
I then allocated my midi to leads, chords and pads, panning, eking and tweaking where necessary. I created a guide drum track, however this sucked hard. Luckily, I have a classmate Jordan who loves hip, loves to hop and maybe even a combination of both. Jordan was kind enough to edit the drums for me.
Next up I recorded the saxophone. I went into detail in my last blog, so instead of trying to recreate genius, have a click on the link.
I showed my mix to boss man Steph-an (maybe I like the hip hop too, spitting hot fire). He raised some good points. Firstly, that the pads were too loud, secondly that there was no groove, it needed a bass line. I had been battling with the pads before, so I turned them right down, I also removed some of the original bass, pulled up an Ableton preset and went to work on something funky. Happy with the result and it gave the chorus the killer groove it needed.
Finally, I recorded what must have been a million guitar solos. This was the most difficult as whilst I’m an experienced guitar player (16 years), I’m more on the sloppy side, think Dave Navarro or Jimi Hendrix. 80’s lead guitar is clean and especially if you are soloing over synths, there's no dirty guitar to hide in. I worked harder on that solo than anything I’ve done before or since. I even removed my original solo because it’s too dirty. I grouped the solos I did and duplicated them, pitching the second version down 5 semitones. This gave that cool 80’s dual lead guitar.
After that I gave it one last mix and bounced it.
What went well
Recording of saxophone
Thanks to Tristan’s help and have a great sax player, this process was really easy. I just let him go free with it and I’m very happy with the result.
Successful cover of track put in an 80’s style
I think I captured the 80’s aesthetic perfectly and created an entirely new song. Adding in two sax solos, a break down, taking out verses/choruses and putting in a guitar solo took this track somewhere else. I’m tempted to delete the main melody and write something new, as it’s so different from the original.
What went wrong
Recording of vocals
I attempted this after the sax solo had been recorded. This was one of my stretch goals. Whilst at the time I thought they were good and I’m the next Axl Rose, this turned out not to be the case. I tried processing them and sitting them in the mix, but they just weren’t good enough. It would let the whole song down.
Guitar solo
I’m still not happy with it, however, I think I need to let go. It’s getting to the stage of overthinking it and whatever I come up with is getting worse. It’s still too dirty for me and the lead sound isn’t great.
How self-directed learning helped me
I’d like to focus on a couple of things drew inspiration from in order to help me achieve my goals.
The first was researching how to record a Saxophone. As mentioned in my previous blog, I used LinkedIn learning to learn about microphone types, microphone placement and issues that may occur (clicking of keys, poor blend). Even though I did not use their advice, having that available before allowed me to prepare and be confident with what I was doing in the studio. It reduced my anxiety about recording an instrument for the first time and it was something I had on the screen that I can reference back to.
(Kolonics, 2018)
Once I got rid of the vocals, I had to seek inspiration on what instrumental neon synthwave sounds like. I sought out the instrumental version of one of my favorite albums “Nocturnal” by The Midnight. Listening closely to their music I could hear how they would automate a low pass filter down during the verses, to make room for new instruments whilst still retaining the original chord progressions. I also could hear how they layered the music and where everything sat. This was so much clearer having vocals removed (and also made me aware of how simple it can be as well).
I’m very happy with how it turned out and I hope you are too. See below for links
Artwork
Filmclip
(Campbell, 2019)
Bibliography
Campbell, R. (2019, November 14 ). 80's Mash Up for SAE AUS 220 Major Project. Retrieved from YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWtHK1DNjD4
Pianoandkeys. (2014, August 4 ). MASH - Theme - Suicide Is Painless - Piano Tutorial - Synthesia. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-HNQRb7als
JohnnyMandelVEVO. (2015 , October 30 ). Johnny Mandel - Suicide Is Painless (Audio). Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODV6mxVVRZk
Kolonics, Á. (2018, January 2 ). The Midnight - Nocturnal (Instrumental Full Album) 2017. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e4jB7Su9OI
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