21 replies to this topic

[Kirk Lorange]

OK, back to work. I had to get this tune out of my system. It's the magnificent 'Icarus' by Ralph Towner. I did a version of this twenty or so year ago for the ABC Radio in Oz with a full band and orchestra. I've been toying around with it for the last month or so. I though I'd quickly thrown something together but ... three days later. It's hard enough getting one track right in one uninterrupted take, let alone five, so it took a while to piece it all together, but I thought it would be an interesting project.

Played to a drum feel done in GuitarPro on my Palm acoustic, my nylon string Gibson, my old Strat and my Schecter bass. Recorded in Adobe Audition, edited in Adobe Premiere.

[X4StringDrive]

Wow, what a great tune and wonderful production...way cool

[knight46]

Magnificent indeed.

[johnnydoxx]

That's definitely world-class, Universe-class. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share it with us.

[Doug]

That was beautiful, Kirk. I'd be really interested in how you put that all together. Sort of a step by step...

[Kirk Lorange]

Doug said:

That was beautiful, Kirk. I'd be really interested in how you put that all together. Sort of a step by step...

Gladly, Doug.

It came about because I was playing with different drum feels in GuitarPro. I've been fiddling around with Icarus for a little while and when I tried it to the drum feel, I like the lilt it gave the melody line. I've been meaning to do a several-guitar movie for a while, so I thought I'd do this one.

I first turned the midi from GuitarPro into WAV and laid down a track of it in Audition. I imported just one measure but "Clip Duplicated" it for a few hundred bars .... just to be sure.

I then decided I'd do three passes through the progression and end the way I did. It's important to know how you're going to end it.

I recorded and filmed one steel string acoustic doing those simple one-to-bar chordal things, mainly just to map the song out. When I tried doing another, playing the same thing in new inversions, I liked it enough to decide to keep both. I filmed the second as well, of course.

I then overdubbed and filmed the the bass. I'm no bass player so I kept it to just playing roots, mostly locked in with the bass drum. Had to do many passes.

I then overdubbed and filmed the slide, after spending quite a while looking for the paths through the melody line and arranging it all mentally. The hardest thing was trying get one take that was well played, interesting, without buzzes or rattles. It's a 5 minute tune ... I didn't quite get there.

I then added the nylon. I had left the middle bit open for it. I overdubbed and filmed it, but I should have spent a little longer on it.

I then mixed the five guitars and the drums into one WAV file.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I then opened Premiere, the video editing program, imported the WAV and AVIs for each of the five movies. I dragged the five AVIs into five tracks in Premiere, which automatically brings up the audio from the camera mics. I use the audio to sync the video. I look at the wave forms and match them up visually at the highest magnification. The smallest increment is 1/25th of a second (one movie frame) so the most it will be will be 1/50th of a second. I drag each back and forth until they all line up to the closest frame, and when I drag, I'm also dragging the video. I can test it by hitting play and you get all five camera audio going at once. It's easy to hear if it's out.

I then drag in the nice, mixed and polished, audio WAV from audition and line it up with the others on its own track, mute the camera audio and Bob's your uncle.

I then edit the video. I scale down and crop each movie until they fit together nicely, do a title, add the title, fade in fade out, save it and the program renders it as a movie. A series of JPGs, really, with audio. I save it as AVI and then turn it into WMV in Movie Maker so it gets crunched down in file size by a HUGE factor.

That's about it. You really need a crew to this kind of thing, but it's fun. One movie (the nylon) was totally out of focus, but I couldn't face another pass through it, set it all back up.

[skinnybloke]

That was tremendous, love the video panel.

[thodwris]

That was awesome as always!Flawless work,congratulations !
All the best,
Theo

[Doug]

Thanks very much for the great explanation, Kirk. It was very well done - especially leaving room for all the parts so they don't muddle up with each other. The nylon part fit really well with the slide and other parts.
So drums first to get the vibe and anchor everything, then map out the song (I'd have to write that part down) to leave room for everything, put down the rhythm sections, overdub the main solo leaving room for the secondary instrument, then put the secondary instrument into the holes left for it. Quite a project.

[allthumbs]

woohoo. great stuff.

[tomg123]

super job kirk, thanks for the effort

[eddiez152]

Kirk,
That had to be quite a work in process. Super playing and video construction wonderfully put together.
Amazing to watch, amazing to listen too, truly a professional in his craft.
eddie

[Doug]

That's such beautiful melody. I just listened to some versions on Youtube and bought Diary off Itunes. I hadn't heard of Ralph Towner before. I've heard this tune before and I guess I thought it was Pat Metheney - I think Towner must have influenced Metheney.
Thanks again for posting - it's beautiful version.
I'd love to learn to play this.

[astratslinger]

Man. that's some tasty playin', m'friend. Great work on the vid, too, I'm sure I'm not alone in appreciating your effort here.

[Kirk Lorange]

Thanks for the thumbs up, everyone. As always, I had the feeling of 'OK, let me do this whole thing over again and get it right', but I am quite pleased with the end result.

[scotty_b]

Oh yeah I guess you did Ok...keep it up and you will never know where it might take you.
Seriously, that is great Kirk. Ralph Towner played in Sydney and I missed it! I was playing somewhere else that night, which was a shame.
The tone of the strat/slide is wonderful.

[carol m]

That was fascinating to watch - by seeing the different parts all together it makes the listening so much clearer. Being able to see music played adds so much to an appreciation of the music for me, whatever the music is.

How did you mic the nylon part to get such volume cleanly? I always find myself trying to play louder than I normally would when recording my nylon string guitar which makes it harder to keep the flow and tone going - or else the mic is so close to the guitar it cramps the normal way of playing - or, if I crank up the gain electronically I get audio hiss.

I don't have a condenser mic yet, which I assume might help when recording my nylon string guitar.

And it's nice to know you don't always play a piece straight through with no flubs! I find that amazing - and encouraging.

[si16]

Don't think I've ever put that much work into anything in my whole life. Fantastic end result.

[Kirk Lorange]

carol m said:

How did you mic the nylon part to get such volume cleanly? I always find myself trying to play louder than I normally would when recording my nylon string guitar which makes it harder to keep the flow and tone going - or else the mic is so close to the guitar it cramps the normal way of playing - or, if I crank up the gain electronically I get audio hiss.

Recording the nylon wasn't that difficult, Carol. I was wearing headphones so the room was quiet. Mixing it was harder ... I had to add quite a bit of midrange to get it to cut through the other guitars which are all basically in the same register. It sounds a bit cheap and nasty on its own, but mixed in it seems to work OK. Naturally, I'd much prefer to just do the playing and let someone else do all the filming and recording and mixing, but I'm all alone here.

[Jomi]

Beautiful, and great to watch the individual parts being played.