Week 23, The Creature

The 23rd track out of the gate is called The CreatureYouTube link for iPhone

This is easily the biggest arrangement of the bunch so far. There are 22 total tracks, though 10 of them are devoted to the “toy orchestra”. The orchestra and vocals mark the return of the Blue Mikey, which shines when recording acoustic instruments. The orchestra consisted of a number of takes using the melodica, a recorder, a tamborine, a xylophone, and some sort of synthetic wooden xylophone thing. Everything except the melodica (and perhaps the recorder) is a kids toy.

I’m not going to spend too much time on the recording of this one. The song was written on the baritone guitar in a standard baritone tuning (A-D-G-C-E-A), which is a perfect fifth lower than a standard guitar tuning. I added two guitar tracks with a bit of delay and a bass track. This song sounds really full to me, almost to the point of over-saturation. I think it works really well in some parts (the break), but it may be too much over the verses. As usual, everything except drums was recorded using the MultiTrack app on my iPhone. The drums were recorded into Reaper with the same five-mic setup that I’ve used the last few weeks.

I really wanted the second half of the break to sound huge. But after ripping the house apart looking, it appears that I don’t have a symphony orchestra hiding in any of the bedroom closets. I could easily have created the orchestral sound using Reason, and it would’ve sounded great, but I feel like sample-based instrumentation is really counter to the spirit of this project, so instead I grabbed my phone and whatever toy note makers I could find and got busy. I really like how it came out.

This is definitely one of those songs that I would love to have another month or two to work on, but you know the drill by now, and so do I. I hope the song itself comes through loud and clear, and that it’s to your liking.

I want to give a big thanks to all of the regulars who’ve been stopping in weekly to see what I’ll come up with next.

I’m still looking for better ways to get the word out about Project 52. If you feel inclined to write about the site on you blog, or post about it somewhere new, hell even tell your Facebook friends about it, let me know. I’ll send you some download codes from my Bandcamp site so that you can grab some tracks as high-quality mp3’s or even FLAC or some other pristine quality.

1 Comment to Week 23, The Creature

Sayf
March 1, 2010

Just listened to this one again. I think this one might actually be my favorite, particularly when the toy orchestra comes in.

Yes yes, I know I know. I’m preferential to toy orchestras. But seriously it’s more than that. I dunno. It has the most “layers” and I like that. It’s not just some simple song, it’s got more and it’s got some instruemntal parts.

I like that. It feels more complete than the rest and somewhat subtly epic.

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