Skip to main content

Esteemed musicians & producers,

Hey it's me again. Looking for thoughts on the latest installment of my Animals recording project - "Sheep". Perhaps the most underrated track on the album. What do ya'll think?

[MEDIA=soundcloud]stephan-mathos/sheep4b4[/MEDIA]

Comments

stevie_m Mon, 06/18/2018 - 10:02

DogsoverLava, post: 457725, member: 48175 wrote: Another real fine cover. These have been pretty amazing. Can you share or elaborate more on your process? Are you working with a score at all? Are you beat mapping or tempo mapping the grid at all? HOw are you starting out?

Thanks buddy. I actually worked all the tracks from scratch. My general process is to first approximate the tempos and then, I lay down a basic drum track (EZ Drummer) to develop a reference track on which I record the other instruments (I work with a bassist and various keyboardists). 70% of the guitars were actual mic'd amp recordings using a Boss GT-10 and 30% of them are Amplitube VSTs. After laying down all the instruments, I polish up the drums (adding variation, fills and EQ'ing them to fit the bass track). Dogs and Sheep were a bit tricky with the tempo variations. In Dogs, I used a tempo slowdown trick in post to tweak the midsection. I would then master the tracks in Ozone 5, usually just tweaking a preset. No beat or tempo mapping was done (to my knowledge) - what exactly are those things?

DogsoverLava Sat, 06/23/2018 - 20:50

Beat mapping is essentially setting up your time grid by mapping out the beat (the 1) from the song you are recording. You can do this manually or using a script and you usually have to adjust it to match up to the transients a wee bit. You can capture the performance or more free time feel of a live drummer but still work and record to a grid this way. Your DAW will calculate the time for each measure.