Kevin Atwood - Composer

I Hate it When a Plan Doesn’t Come Together

keviniod — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:35:36 +0000

I’ve been working on honing and fine tuning the mix for “See You in Cydonia” and at one point I decided to freeze a bunch of tracks because there are over 55 instrument tracks with this tune.

I’m not sure what happened but a bunch of tracks got thrown in the wrong place in time, there were global parameters out of kilter and a bunch of software instruments lost their sounds or settings.

Most of the damage occurred in the last half of the tune and since I was concentrating on the front end at the time, I didn’t discover what happened to last half until I played the tune through to see how my front end changes flowed through the tune. Man what a mess. There is nothing I hate more than repeating the effort of a previously executed creative process. It’s a big waste of time. And since I was unknowingly saving the messed up back end of everything as I was saving the good changes of the front end, I’ve corrupted the backup copies of the last days work (the creative “timeline”).

I decided that it was better to try and salvage the backend rather than try to re-create the front end. Anyway a day of work later and I’m almost back on track and the mix is totally screwed up from troubleshooting the living daylights out of the software so here we go again.

Caulk it up to a lessons learned experience.

Not my favorite way of learning.

Alien Metals Update

keviniod — Sat, 28 May 2011 21:58:23 +0000

Well things are moving along quite well. I spent all morning recording various guitar tracks on a few different tunes. The learning curve is getting much more level and I can get a lot accomplished in a reasonable small time.

I think one of the really great things that are happening lately is that my composing technique is evolving and I’m finally letting go of some old crap the was holding me back and gaining a huge creative freedom for the technologies that I’m using and seeing things in a whole new way. It’s very cool.

I think I’m going to stop at 10 songs for this album. I’m almost finished 7 so far.

I can’t wait for the next album.

As far as my classical guitar is concerned, it’s screwed. The pickup is done for in spite of all my efforts to solder it. It still sounds good with a microphone!

New Gear – Lexicon Rev Plug-in

keviniod — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:31:28 +0000

The latest gear acquisition for my studio has been a Lexicon Native Reverb plug-in bundle. I was a little skeptical at first until I downloaded the demo. And wow, man that rev sounds good! The sound is very musical and adds a whole new dimension to sound of the mix. I’m glad that I’ve decided to hold off on mixing down all the tunes so I could slip the new software into the rig. And by the way, not to knock the reverbs that come with LOGIC, but Lexicon has been making reverbs since the 70′s and they really have a world class product (in my opinion).

(see http://www.lexiconpro.com/product.php?id=167) to see what I’m taking about.

Speaking of “holding off”, I was going to hold off mixing down the tunes until after all th tracks were completed. For the sake of expedience and the feeling of having something accomplished something, I’ve decided to nix that idea and start mixing down stuff now. Now that the groovy reverberation is reverberating, I want to go forward with the mixing stage of the album (or at least start moving in that direction).

Almost Finished “Black Triangles in the Sky”

keviniod — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:10:27 +0000

Went through all the tracks and got rid of the empty ones. Fixed the section labeling and made sure the track names were right and changed all the track icons. I might change the track colors in order to organize the song layout a bit better.

I think the only thing left to do before mix down is do the trade-off instrumental features for the last chorus. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be using a combination of comping and single note inputing to make it all happen the way I’m thinking and get to sound as cosmic as it has to be in order to work in context.

Trade-off Solos for the Extro of “Black Triangles in the Sky”

keviniod — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:09:42 +0000

Last night (actually early this morning) I worked on a proof-of-concept flaming solo trade offs between guitar and synthesizer superimposed over the last chorus of ”Black Triangles in the Sky”. It may be too much hitting the listener at once. I inputed the synth. lines using the one-note-at-time method working with primarily sixteenth notes. It’s a little over-the-top and frantic for the tempo but I may be able to get it to work if I phrase and seat it properly in context. As usual I will be pushing my own envelope with the guitar stuff.

I’m still not sold 100% on the effectiveness of this whole idea. I guess I’ll have to see if it works after I get it in place.

More tracks for “Black Triangles in the Sky – Almost Done

keviniod — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:07:55 +0000

Today I recorded 5 different guitar tracks and a bass track on “Black Triangles in the Sky”. I’ve been writing and rehearsing off-and-on all week so it all flew together pretty fast. It was real luxury to have the energy to lay down these tracks and get such great results. The energy of the tune is getting better than I had planed and I think the only thing I going to do is add a synth/guitar trade-off kind of burn out break in the last chorus to finish it off.

So Begins the Mixdowns

keviniod — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 02:53:01 +0000

I’ve started to work on the mix down of “Crowded Moon”. There is a ton of tracks and there’s going to be a ton of mixing automation involved as well. It’s one of the first songs I did after getting my new studio and there a few things that I would have differently but I don’t want to touch now either. I may accidentally screw up the original core energy of the song and I don’t want to do that. No matter how you look at it, it’s going to take some time finish off.

I don’t know why but I had a real tuff time getting the bass sound and feel right for this song. It was probably because at that time I hadn’t played bass much, I was pretty much into playing my new guitar (all the time) which feels and sounds great.

Anyway it will all work in the mix/end. All the performances are pretty solid and the sounds are pretty good as well. I just need to put it all into a good mix. It will be like mixing 4 different songs in one song. I got to say that I pulled off the pseudo-honky-tonk guitar feature surprisingly well considering I’m as non-honkey-tonk as it comes. LOGIC’s preset guitar sounds helped a lot with that, (plus I pretended that I was wearing a cowboy hat when I recorded it didn’t hurt either).

So in one song you got a sort of progressive Electronica that modulates to a Pop Classical that modulates to a New Age/Classical bit that flies into a sort of short Country thing and then back into the main Electronica theme/ chorus. I don’t know if that will help or hinder it’s popularity.

Will see.

Song Number 7 is Born

keviniod — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:09:29 +0000

This CD has been a mixed bag of new experiences and learning curves and a renewed kindling of passion for writing music.

The new studio setup has totally changed the way I approach composing and has saved me weeks of work and allowed me to get amazing results from my efforts. I am eternally grateful for the privilege of having such great tools to work with. It’s very satisfying to be able to transcribe a piece music from inside my head into sonic reality with a reasonably small amount of effort.

Last Sunday morning as I woke up, it was like I was coming up through various levels of conscientiousness (like an fast elevator ride) and one of these “levels” had music playing (my music – that hadn’t been written yet). I only got about a 10 second sample of the tune (chorus) but it was enough to get a handle on the spirit and scope of the concept. The moment I became awake enough to move I grabbed a guitar and booted up my Mac. Even though I could hardly move my fingers (at first), I managed to get about 8 tracks recorded of the chunk of music I heard in my transitory dream state.

This is the second song that has come into existence via my semi-conscientious noggin. Considering how well “Alien Metals” has been coming together in it’s own weird and wonderful little way, getting an idea through this methodology isn’t really usual. In fact, the creation of the “Alien Metals” been as weird as the things that has inspired it! (if you go to http://www.projectcamelotportal.com/ you’ll see what I mean) – Thanks God.

“Black Triangles in the Sky” is well on the way

keviniod — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:22:31 +0000

Currently I’m working on the latest track on my “Alien Metals” called “Black Triangles in the Sky”. This tune was inspired by the Phoenix Lights incidence and various videos that have popped up on You Tube of delta (triangle) shaped ships flying around.

It’s funny how songs evolve as you create them. I usually (these days) start out with a basic outline that map out on paper. It’s kind of like plotting out the logistics of a play. I seem to work from energy flow more than notes and cords. With LOGIC, it’s very easy to build out song ideas fast. This CD is coming together faster than any other CD I’ve done in the past, plus the production value and overall quality of the sound samples quality will far surpass anything I’ve ever worked on. I would have never even dreamed back when I stated this project in the late seventies (God that was a long time ago), that it would be possible to achieve the quality recording and without buy or renting a professional recording studio. Back then a multi-track recorder was at lest $100,000, my day gig was paying about $4.00 an hour. 100,000.00 divided by 4.00 equals 25000 hours which equals a little over 10 years of work at $4.00 an hour. Never mind the cost of food and a place to live. Never mind the cost of a quality, professional mixer and outboard effects.

Another Song – “Fifth Density” In the Works

keviniod — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:28:34 +0000

The other day I started messing around with an Arturia Moog Modular patch and some how a whole song grew out of it. I haven’t put any guitar tracks in it yet and I’m not sure if I going to need to (we’ll see). In any case the tune feels like the arrangement is basically done. As usual there will some cutting of “fat” and anything that is not required or getting in the way of the “soul” of the song. I’ve used samples of a Hungarian singer which sound quite beautiful. And ((AS USUAL) about a million other instrument tracks.