Sources of Light
I recorded an album called Sources of Light, released in November 2024. I started recording it and finished . Here are some probably fairly boring details about the recording process, gear and music. This is all documented purely for my own amusement, and for me to revisit the next time I record something after I've forgotten how to do everything.
Gear
- Electric guitars: Kiesel DC6
- Acoustic guitars: Martin D-18
- Keyboards: Yamaha Motif 8 that I've had since 2003
-
Interface:
Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd gen)
- One caveat was that since I was also using a laptop the USB interface would not work properly without a powered USB hub.
- Effects & amp modeling: Line 6 POD Go
- Bass: Fender Precision w/ broken bridge, can't be bothered
- Microphone (for vocals and acoustic guitar): Audio-Technica AT2035
Gratuitous images
Software
- Operating system: Ubuntu Studio 22.04
- DAW: Ardour v6
- Effects: Calf Studio Gear (mostly)
- Sound and audio management: QjackCtl and Jack
- Drum programming: Hydrogen v1.1.1
Of note: I did not use Line 6's software to load any IRs, but not for lack of trying. Line 6 does not support Linux and I absolutely could not get the USB interface to do the right things through my trusty Windows 7 VM.
All of this stuff ran on a System76 Gazelle Pro laptop.
Gratuitous images
Recording process
For all recordings, I used Ardour v6 on Ubuntu Studio. Almost all of the production effects were from Calf Studio Gear plugins.
Since I'm on Linux, I used QjackCtl to manage audio connections. It mostly worked without a hitch. Since I basically left Ardour open for a year straight, it would seem to crash occasionally, and then Jack would get all weird and I couldn't open connections to it. A reboot fixed all problems, like always. Restarting jackd was just not happening, I assume some issue with the sound card was the problem, but I ain't here to debug Linux nonsense, I'm here to rock out.
All guitar effects, pre-amps and modeling was from a Line 6 Go stomp box. I recorded directly into a Scarlett USB audio interface (no external cab). For acoustic guitars and vocals, I plugged the microphone directly into the interface's XLR input.
Minimal automated effects were used, except delay/reverb for vocal tracks, and a few weird things like the ring modulator at the end of The Haunted House, or the very first synth chord in Calling Out a Name. Fader automation was used extensively.
All rhythym/clean guitars were doubled, one panned hard left (90/10) and the other hard right (10/90). Lead vocals were also doubled in the same way. Acoustic guitars were also doubled and panned12. This hardcore doubling was a bit of an experiment. I think I liked it, even though it made recording take quite a bit longer. It certainly made me play much more precisely, which was a probably an unintended positive side effect.
To handle all the track doubling during the mixing phase, I created audio buses in Ardour and redirected the outputs of the doubled tracks to the bus, and then redirected the bus output to the master track. All automation was then only done on the buses; the doubled tracks were not touched except to set the panning. So there were a lot more tracks/buses to handle in Ardour than otherwise. Basically every instrument that I doubled would actually have three "tracks" in the DAW interface instead of just one. Which was obnoxious but I think it made a difference in the resultant mix. At least to me.
Drums were programmed using Hydrogen v1.1.1 with the FLAC GSCW-1 drumkit. I did very little to the drums except increasing the gain of the kick, snare and hi-hat. Otherwise I did absolutely nothing to them production-wise. Largely out of pure laziness. And also because over-produced drums annoy me. But mostly laziness.
In (almost) all cases I recorded all instruments, one at a time, from start to finish. Then the vocals, then I would do a rough mix, then program the drums, then finish mixing and any other post-production effects (that was pretty rare, though).
Tracks
Calling Out a Name
This has no specific inspiration, except maybe some kind of Metallica, or other semi-thrash metal type of thing. I just wanted something "heavier" and faster as an opener.
The solo was inspired by that one rad part in Reb Beach's solo in Seventeen. Everybody likes Winger, right? Maybe I still had some Winger stuck in my brain from my cover of the solo from Easy Come Easy Go a few years back during my 2022 music projects.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Keyboards | ||
| Bass | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Drums/mixing |
DAW stats
There were 19 tracks total:
- 3 vocal (one doubled)
- 3 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 3 lead guitar
- 1 clean guitar (doubled)
- 2 keyboard
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
Waiting for the Stars to Fall
This song is basically half overly-gratuitous instrumental sections. But I think they sound cool, so I guess it's okay. There are two separate piano solos, and the first third and the last third of the song are separated by a four minute instrumental. And it ends with a one-minute piano solo. A bit eccentric, perhaps.
This was inspired by twice over by David Maxim Micic. He at one point was in a band (horribly) named Destiny Potato with Aleksandra Radosavljevic (although she later left and did not perform on the album), who later formed a duo with Roman Arsafes called Above the Earth. They wrote a song called Trapeze that was pretty neat, and the intro rhythm (begins at 0:27) was just something that was stuck in my head and I ripped it off for Waiting for the Stars to Fall.
David Maxim Micic has a solo album called BILO III which has a track called Daydreamers which has the lyric (also sung by the aforementioned Aleksandra Radosavljevic):
Looking at stars,
Waiting for them to fall
Which I thought was pretty cool, so I wrote a song entirely around that line.
Some other random notes/trivia:
-
I accidentally ripped off the last bar from the last bar of Guns 'N Roses'
Think
About You from Appetite for Destruction. I say accidentally because I
didn't realize that little arpeggio was from something else until I randomly
listened to that album again and then the recognition hit.
But by then it was too late. Alas.Actually, it wasn't. I re-recorded a different ending 9 months after accidentally ripping off GNR. - I got sick recording the vocals which is why it took so long to record them. I basically spent two weeks not recording. Eventually I got fed up with waiting and just went ahead even though my voice was still a bit scratchy. If you listen closely you can tell where that happened.
- The guitar interlude which starts at 6:30 required me spending about five days honing my technique since I couldn't really play the riffs I had written. Eventually I got barely good enough to play them up to tempo.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Keyboards | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 21 tracks total:
- 4 vocal (1 doubled)
- 2 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 2 lead guitar
- 2 clean guitar (doubled)
- 6 keyboard
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
Shine
Inspired (in mood and tempo) by Dance With Me! by Nospūn. I was listening to a great deal of their debut album Opus at the time and I wanted to write something more uptempo. Certainly Dance With Me!'s little piano riff at the beginning is analagous to the clean guitar riff in Shine.
I recorded this after Without You which ended up being 16 minutes long and took like 2½ months to record. So this was a nice ending to the album's recording session since it only took like a week start to finish.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Keyboards | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 17 tracks total:
- 3 vocal (1 doubled)
- 4 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 1 clean guitar (doubled)
- 2 keyboard
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
Castles in the Sky
I look up to the Heavens
to see the stars live and die
while sitting on lonely thrones
in their castles in the sky
This was inspired by Jason Kui's song The Creator/The Destroyer, specifically the part at 3:12. I thought that riff was totally rad and I liked the i-V progression.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Keyboards | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 29 tracks total:
- 2 clean guitar (all doubled)
- 4 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 6 lead guitar
- 1 acoustic guitar (doubled)
- 1 bass
- 6 keyboard
- 1 drums
- 1 "wind"
The Haunted House
I wanted a song with less riffs and more "strumming". I partially succeeded.
Just like Waiting for the Stars to Fall, this was inspired by a single line from another song. Specifically, Audioslave's Gasoline. The very first lines are:
House is haunted
I just want to go for a ride
The first three words are where the similarities end, though.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 20 tracks total:
- 4 vocal (one doubled)
- 3 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 3 lead guitar
- 1 clean guitar (doubled)
- 1 acoustic guitar (doubled)
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
Fair-weather Friend
Nothing interesting about this one. It's just more laid-back and acoustic-driven. It's in 5/4 though which is always a good time.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Acoustic guitars | ||
| Electric guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 20 tracks total:
- 5 vocal (one doubled)
- 2 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 3 lead guitar
- 2 acoustic guitar (1 doubled)
- 1 bass
- 2 keyboard
- 1 drums
Still Alive
Every album needs a ballad, and I'm not particularly fond of ballads, so this is as ballad-ish as this album gets. It's slow, in a minor key and in 3. Therefore it's a ballad.
The structure of this song was loosely inspired by Breaking Benjamin's Forget It from We Are Not Alone. Which is kind of a forgettable song (how very titular), but it has a structure which I thought was kind of neat. Each verse is in a different key, a half-step higher than the previous. Still Alive does a similar thing, the verses are in F♯m, F♯m, G♯m, B♭m, Bm, Em, F♯m. Not quite as monotonically increasing as Forget It, but it kind of starts that way.
I'm particularly proud of the pinch harmonic in the early part of the solo. I worked hard on that. And that's not even a joke. A couple takes were ruined because I didn't pinch good enough.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Guitars/Keyboard/Bass | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 21 tracks total:
- 5 vocal (1 doubled)
- 2 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 4 lead guitar
- 1 acoustic guitar (doubled)
- 3 keyboard
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
Without You
This evolved out of a keyboard riff I wrote in 2018. The first 16 bars of this song. Originally it was a little slower (around 120 BPM) but the notes were sixteenths instead of eighths. But I couldn't play it that fast on the guitar, and I couldn't come up with anything else besides that riff anyway, so I left it alone for six years or so. Eventually it turned into this.
Originally it was just called "A♭ thing". I don't have the original version from before I rewrote it in its enharmonic equivalent, though, so we'll just have to deal with all the ♯'s. And not many songs are written in G♯ Mixolydian, so there's a feather in my cap, I suppose. Maybe I just want to be like Scriabin, you know?
The guitar solo is actually doubled by the keyboards. This song was weird because it originally came from an idea on keyboard, and then it was all completely guitar-driven, and then I decided to take a mildly awkward guitar solo and play it on the keyboard, which was even more awkward to play.
I decided to do an acoustic guitar "trio" near the end, that revisited verse 1's vocal melody (verse 4's, too, I guess). I think it ended up sounding pretty neat. Here it is isolated. Three guitars, with the main melody doubled and panned L+R.
The ending of the song was initially a TBD situation. The piano arpeggios were always meant to be there, but I worried it was just a little too gratuitious. And I was not wrong about that, but I chose to ignore my own trepidation.
Here's the original transcription of the ending. If this were a musical or a Big Band arrangement, it would've just said vamp.
Timing
| Instrument | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| Electric guitars | ||
| Acoustic guitars | ||
| Bass | ||
| Keyboards | ||
| Vocals | ||
| Mixing | ||
| Drums |
DAW stats
There were 31 tracks total:
- 5 vocal (1 doubled)
- 4 rhythm guitar (all doubled)
- 2 lead guitar
- 3 acoustic guitar (1 doubled)
- 2 clean guitar (all doubled)
- 5 keyboard
- 1 bass
- 1 drums
