who else here modifies their music?

Post Reply New Topic

for the last decade or so, i have taken some of my voluminous collection of pipe organ recordings and have added chromatic and rhythmic percussions to them. i also have been known to modify tempi and pitch and phrasing as well, on recordings which i feel are deficiently groovy in those respects. i am interested in finding others here on the Wrong Planet who do a similar thing with their own recordings of whatever kind of music, and learning your specific techniques. i also am interested in WP people who perform Digitally Constructed [or Recreated] Stereo conversions of their older monophonic recordings, and also how they do this. thank you in advance!

I don't know much about the other stuff, however I dig the part about how you add the rhythmic percussions. "Groove" is a very important aspect to me with music.

It can change the whole mood of a song. It does this in a particular way in metal, especially. It makes Slipknot sound as pissed of as they are, in my opinion. You could almost dance to their self titled album, so much rhythm going on.

groove is elusive, even in so-called "hit records." if you find you are moving body parts without thinking about it, in response to the music, then there is a groove going on.
off on a bit of a tangent, the term "grooving" also is old jazz-age slang for conjugal relations. it only takes a little imagination to see the linkage between a groove and grooving.

I might use EQ and compression on badly recorded source material, but I would NEVER attempt to convert a Mono recording to Stereo. The reason for this is that when you convert a mono recording of multiple sources is that you will induce quite a bit of comb filtering/phase cancellation in the recording process.

I have the monophonic remasters of The Beatles 'Revolver' as well as The 13th Floor Elevators "Easter Everywhere', (Which were originally monophonic recordings) and I think that they sound much cleaner and more direct that the Stereo conversions, which have phase cancellation issues to the point where they sound as if they were recorded in a tin can.

there are more "natural" sounding or less blatantly artificial-sounding stereo synthesis algorithms, which i use. there is some art to it.



it seems to me that you were exposed to badly done stereo synthesis, but there have been other decorrelation jobs which are remarkably spacious and "natural" in their ambience. i never cared for mono, because with my magnapan speakers, they play as a narrow vertical ribbon of sound equidistant between the speakers which i find unpleasant, as it forces me to keep my head within a small "sweet spot" or else the sound precipitously collapses into the nearest speaker, either left or right as i sway to the music, and i hate that. when listening to mono on cans, the sound seems to be an obnoxious little ball centered in the middle of my skull, and i find that uncomfortable as well. so in my monophonic old records, after denoising i will do what i can to decorrelate them into something more broad and less critical of head position. but that is just me. to each his own.

another thing i like to do, is to undo fadeouts- i HATE fadeouts! they are a cop-out of dubious musical taste. an interesting example of the wonders of undoing fadeouts was when i took a track off of the beatles white album, "good night" [last cut] sung by ringo starr, and at the end of the fadeout i raised the volume [using a .wav editor] by roughly 50 db, and lo and behold i could hear a beatle [maybe ringo himself] muttering "f-it." what a revelation! lots of interesting studio insider stuff is hidden or buried under the fadeout. WPers, find a favorite track with a fadeout and try this today!

Oh yes, there's plenty of that.

But yeah, I can't really explain it other than how I did. I guess it adds more aggressiveness.

(And "groove" is just another one of those words that is commonly used in an incorrect way, such as it being used in the same way as "rhythm." I don't blame you if I threw you off.)



Haha, I'll bet that's when Ringo decided to quit!! If it was, I don't think he quite wanted to do that song.
Also, (although not a fadeout) you can hear a sneeze at the beginning of "I Feel Fine."

the sound quality of the beatles recordings was generally a cut above most other artists of that era, in no small part due to george martin's skills and acute ear. but there is some engineering and musical sloppiness in other aspects of the recordings, in terms of mediocre edits, as well as mistakes and bloopers left in.

i also like reversing recordings to find [or try to find] hidden messages recorded backwards in them. here are a few-

LED ZEPPELIN- "STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN"- BACKWARDS LYRICS
"Oh here's to my sweet satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is satan. He'll give those with him 666, there was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad satan."

forwards - [If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, it's just a springclean for the May Queen. Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on.]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

THE BEATLES- "I'M SO TIRED"- BACKWARDS LYRIC
"Paul is a dead man. Miss him, miss him, miss him."

forwards -[indistinguishable gibberish]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

YOKO ONO- "KISS KISS KISS"- BACKWARDS LYRIC
"I shot john lennon."

forwards - [Anata daiteyo- translates as "Darling, hug me"]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

PINK FLOYD- "EMPTY SPACES"- BACKWARDS LYRIC
"Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to old pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont."

forwards- [indistinguishable gibberish]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

BRITNEY SPEARS, "BABY ONE MORE TIME"- BACKWARDS LYRIC
"Sleep with me, I'm not too young."

forwards - [With you I lose my mind give me a sign"
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

WEIRD AL, "NATURE TRAIL TO HELL"- BACKWARDS LYRIC
"Satan eats Cheese Whiz."

forwards - [indistinguishable gibberish]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

QUEEN- "ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST" - BACKWARDS LYRIC
"It's fun to smoke marijuana."

forwards - ["Another one bites the dust"]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

EAGLES - "HOTEL CALIFORNIA" - BACKWARDS LYRIC
["Satan he hears this. He had me believe."]

forwards - "...in the middle of the night, just to hear them say..."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

THE BEATLES- "REVOLUTION #9" - BACKWARDS LYRIC
"Turn me on deadman, turn me on deadman, turn me on deadman..."

forwards - ["Number nine, number nine, number nine..."]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

ELO- "FIRE ON HIGH" - BACKWARDS LYRIC
"The music is reversible but time is not. Turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back..."

forwards - [indistinguishable gibberish]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

THE DOORS- "BREAK ON THROUGH" - BACKWARDS LYRIC
"I am satan."

forwards - ["...treasures there..."]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

I had a lot of those albums, read about most of these, and tried to hear them myself.

IMHO: Most of the claims are bogus as there is nothing more than a sight hint of the phrases that supposedly are there.

There are only a few clear examples, ELO being an obvious example. Play that one backwards, and it's in plain English. The Pink Floyd one is real, and was admitted by the band. It's a tribute to Syd Barrett. There are a few others that are real as well.

Most of the others only sound to me like a record turning backwards. Garbled backward singing that could be interpreted any number of ways.

Also, (in my humble opinion, of course), a lot of the hype over back masking was fanned by paranoid parents looking for scape goats for their own children's rebellious behavior. Rock was just an easy target.

I here voices in the wind when I want to.

Still, it's kind of fun to look for them anyway, and you can "almost" hear a lot of them, but for me it takes quite a bit of stretching the imagination.

The only thing I've ever done like this is remove the vocals from David Sylvian's album Manafon. This improved it greatly for me.

Now that's the kind of stuff I love to do! Just wish I had more time for it.

I leave artifacts in some of my own recordings. Not that anyone will ever care, but even I get a laugh out of them when I haven't heard them for a long time. Some are pretty darned enlightening in a kind of "getting to know yourself" way. Some from like twenty or so years ago are like listening to someone much younger, but not me. Someone I don't really know, but understand. Makes me wish I could talk back to him through some sort of time warp.

what sorts of artifacts do you insert into the mix? enquiring minds want to know

Last edited by auntblabby on 30 May 2010, 12:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

They aren't intentional "insertions," per se. In the past, more so than the present, I tended to go on about what the track was, and make sometimes rambling, and sometimes stupid comments about what I was about to play. There is an occasional, "Well, didn't that just SUCK!" at the end of some tracks, revealing the low level of confidence I had in my own musicianship at the time. Though listening to some of those same tracks now, they don't sound half bad today (as long as one doesn't take the actual sound quality into account).

On topic with these forums in general, there's a lot of evidence in them that Asperger's Syndrome was at play even then, though it's only now that I recognize it.

Wish I could give some specific examples, but can't think of any at the moment.

The funniest ones are when I actually DID screw up, especially the ones where I screw up multiple times, and either start swearing or acting just plain GOOFY. There's some pretty funny bloopers in some of them. Some I probably shouldn't let get out there until my kids are quite a lot older.

I just recently finished digitally archiving all the tracks done with two cassette decks, and with four tracks, and found myself busting a gut several times over some of the bloopers on those.

Would that I could go back in time and talk some sense into that naive little jerk sometime. Nobody should be that hard on themselves. The most ironic thing has nothing to do with the bloopers, but the songs themselves. One recurring theme I didn't realize was there while writing them all was of an older man who in fact is me, but later in life, talking to the younger me, who was actually writing the songs. (That hurt my brain!) Now I AM that older guy, listening to that younger man, who no longer fully exists, yet who is somehow partly made of him. (Ow!! I've got to stop doing that!) Turns out I would today say all the same things I thought I would say when I got older.

What a weird perspective! Too bad it took so long to start listening!

I used to go around telling people I was looking for myself, and that if they saw me; would they please let me know I'm looking for me? More true than even I realized then, and now that I'm doing this stuff with my old recordings, I think I may have just...

FOUND MYSELF!

Holy... ! !

Sorry for straying. I'm an Aspie, but I can adapt. If I want to. But I don't want to. Or maybe I can't. Who knows?

so the nostalgia trip was therapeutic for you then. a plus.

Not so much therapeutic, but "enlightening self realization."

But I supposed that's just semantic perspective.