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1986 (Instrumental synth pop)
Synopsis
The arrival of a fair was a big event for a small town in the 1980s, and I always enjoyed both the rides and the arcades, with arcade machines boasting graphics, sounds, and thrills unmatched by home computers of the time.
Like many teenagers, I loved one arcade game in particular.
You could sit down to play it, the gameplay and graphics were great, and best of all you could pick the music!
Any attempt of mine to replicate the musical style or tone of the original would feel inadequate, so I instead went for a more general mid-80s vibe with my tribute, and this piece is absolutely bursting with the kind of youthful exuberance I had back then.
So, buckle up, get ready, and join me as we race along in a Ferrari Testarossa Spider at 293 km/h once again :-)
Creative notes
Structurally it's a pop song, and I wanted to include lots of 80s elements.
- 80s style synths and sounds. TAL-U-NO-LX, Dexed, OB-XD, Micrologue, Linn Drums, Simmons toms, etc...
- Cowbell. You want more, I know...
- Saxophones. Three of them. And with a pentatonic solo too.
- Step up modulation for final chorus.
- Fade outs. Not once but twice.
After the dramatic start, I built tension through the verse's minor key, shifted down for the pre-chorus, then threw some strong major chords together for the chorus.
Rather than noodle around again over the minor chords for the second verse, I went for brass instead, because pop brass conveys enthusiasm to me, and I was enthusiastic to get back to the chorus!
I knew I wanted to modulate up for the final chorus, but I also wanted to disguise it a little.
I watched theory videos, I experimented, and I got frustrated. So I engineered a car crash and restarted from a place I could easily modulate to the semitone up I wanted. It's not an orthodox way to get there, but I think it worked.
The coda is my valentine to OutRun incorporating musical ideas from two of my favourite pieces from the original arcade game, in this case using the famous EPiano1 from Yamaha's DX7 (via Dexed).
Finally, the foley. Engine noises, the speech elements, the radio noise, and the waves in the coda all come from OutRun arcade via Youtube. There's only one foley sound that doesn't come from the game, and that's a scuffed up engine start sound from a real Ferrari Testarossa (sadly not belonging to me).
Technical notes
There's a lot of things happening, around 70 tracks in Cubasis, including a bunch of frozen and group tracks.
Cubasis handled it like a champ, only running low on memory (never dsp or cpu) when I added 6 Swam brass tracks (tenor sax and trumpet), and I solved this by freezing some synth tracks as they went silent or did weird things.
In this project I had issues with hanging notes while stopping and scrubbing the transport.
To prevent hanging I wrote a Mozaic script which sends a slightly delayed set of the same messages that Cubasis sends when hitting 'Stop' or 'MIDI Panic'. This fixed the issue, but the Mozaic script needs to be applied to each track that has the problem.
https://patchstorage.com/midi-panic-broadcaster/
I recorded the coda separately at a much slower BPM, then imported audio into the main project, using Wavebox to apply a non-linear fade out.
While I feel embarrassed to describe my attempts to finalise the track as 'Mixing and Mastering', I tried to make it sound better in Cubasis using the built in Mastering Strip.
I then used Blue Mangoo's Stereo Width tool to try to isolate some of the causes of mud and eliminate them through filters. This is still a very hit and miss process for me.
I finished by putting Youlean LM Lite post master fader to keep an eye on Lufs and peak Db.
Comments
Excellent! You clearly put a lot of thought and time into this. I like the variety. Something new every few seconds. Great production! I especially liked the first fade out. It really works well. 70 tracks is quite a handful. This really has the 80s vibe, a bit like Aha. Good stuff, my friend!
Nice uplifting track - full of 80s goodness. It would indeed make a good driving track too!
Well, that song was a ton of fun! Nicely done.
This is absolutely awesome. Good work!
Love the vibe you created.
I am truly having fun in this musical journey with you!
Lots of fun, indeed!
70 tracks! Wowzer. Very well done. Would love to see your Cubasis project for this.
Thanks to all for the feedback. Glad you enjoyed it.
I'm particularly glad my production was passable, its an area where I struggle (and spend far too much time), and I made life difficult for myself with everything going on.
There really were around 70 tracks, 69 to be precise in the final version.
I used group tracks for lead, brass, pad, bass, kick, percussion, noise, and coda.
These made managing fade outs easier as well as filters.
By soloing group tracks I could also tell if a group of instruments was marauding outside of its preferred frequency range.
I did this by putting 'Stereo Width' auv3 on the master track, and then soloing different groups then frequency bands.
The example below is with the pad group soloed and then the low frequencies soloed within that group telling me just how much it was interfering with bass and kick.
I'm only just getting started with this technique. Take too much away and it thins it out too much, but I was able to make some audible improvements through things I found.
Freezing tracks helped with Dsp, but I only had to do that after adding the flock of Swams for brass.
Some other things were duplicated just to thicken the sound, or to make the sound work on different devices. My headphones aren't great with bass, my bose soundlink revolve is very bassy, my car is kinda good at everything, and listening through a phone or iPad really told me which sounds to layer. Its remarkable how different claps, snares, and kicks get emphasised so layering them helps so at least something work on different devices.
I'm still new to all of this though and marvel at folks who can do this 10* better!
This is great!. 100% captures the feeling of an 80s VHS movie.
I like the idea of the stereo width plugin to analyze colliding frequencies. If you haven’t tried it Pro-Q3 is great for checking conflicting frequencies. Say you have an instance on the kick and another on the bass, you can see the “other track” spectrum and it’ll even signal in red the frequencies where the 2 tracks overlap. You can then apply sidechain eq to the other track…
This is so true!. Specially if you’re binge-watching YT videos of missing and stuff… take away mud here, cut boominess there…. For a while I took it as a mantra and things end up sounding like hollow heavy metal 🤘. If there’s frequencies where a lot of instruments overlap it’s because they do, it’s inherent to the sound. Nowadays I’d rather have some mud than overdoing it and take the life and natural sound out of a track. Although obviously it’s more evident with guitars, vocals, etc, that inherently resonate naturally at such frequencies.
Again, Well done!. 🙌
Love those screenshots. Looks like fun!
Impressive stuff, especially enjoyed the brass and the transition to slower section at the end.
The screen shots might as well be an undeciphered language from outer space… don’t mean anything to me but I can tell they convey a lot of meaning to people that understand them 😊
I have to comment again! You really know what you’re doing, bro. I like to listen to my mixes on my Toyota car speakers. If it sounds good there, it will sound good for most listeners. Years ago, we had some really good gear, and our engineer Mitch became the new product manager for Shure, Inc. He recommended checking out the final mix on some tiny little Auratone speakers. We ultimately mixed for that. Nice work!
@GeoTony. The screenshots were really a commentary on the layering required for the mix to sound good on different devices. Glad you enjoyed it.
@Paulieworld. Thanks again :-)
Nowadays I listen on my headphones (no bass to speak of), a Bose Soundlink revolve (ridiculously bassy), and my car speakers. Drums in particular 'hit different' and require the layers to make them work. The Stereo Width plug in helped, and if there's ever a sale on I'll get the Pro-Q3 too.
Another 'trick' I used was to send a few different mixes to my phone, and use the A/B sound app to compare them.
Not a 'professional tip' by any means but good for casual 'sofa producers' like me :-)
Sofa producers.. I’m one of them, too… and proud of it. I’m on my sofa right now, even as we speak. It’s nice. I’m off to bed in a few. Don’t fret the details. Peace bro.