I’ve been spending some time mixing having had the Mac repaired pronto.
I’m confident with the majority of my songs but there’s one that troubles me a little.
It’s built around a sample from the song ‘Tabletalk’ by Adam and the Ants, from their first album ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ (1979).
The loop I’ve been using is the opening guitar, so it’s pretty obvious where it’s from if you know the song.
I really like the song but I’m going to need to clear the sample before I can use it. It’s probably OK to be used for college purposes, but I’d like to feel assured that it’s not going to cause problems further down the line.
It was originally released by ‘Do-it Records’ but it would appear that CBS acquired the rights to it at some point in the 1980s. After that I’m not sure, so it’s going to take some time to track it down. In the meantime I have requested a licence to use the sample from CBS and am hoping that it gets the all clear…
Samples are one thing that songs can be built around as a starting point but another is a particular sound
The other song that I’m 100% sure will be on the final project is Acedia (which will feature my daughter Lily singing), and that started because I was trying out a plug-in and came across a sound that seemed to have no useful purpose at first.
The sound was on a plug in for Reaktor, called Mikro prism, and is a preset called Marseilles.
To be honest I only looked at it because I couldn’t imagine what Marseille sounded like, but this is what I heard.
I liked it because it had its own rhythm and it was not what I was expecting. I played around with Mikro Prism a bit more and found some other sounds that went quite well
What I liked about these were how atmospheric they were and they immediately suggested a mood to me that I could work with. There was also a strangeness and artificiality to them that encouraged me to explore a more overtly electronic style with the rest of the song.
One thing that was really suggesting itself to me was the song ‘Only You’ by Yazoo, from the album ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’ (1982), and in particular a kind of plucking synth sound, which I managed to recreate using Mikro Prism.
I haven’t checked it against the original, but it’s definitely the sound I was going for!
This was the perfect example of a song that almost mixes itself. I added a bit of EQ and compression but had already adjusted relative levels as I went along so with a little more tweaking it was ready to go.
It will need a bit of tidying up and some mastering once the vocals are on but I’m really pleased with this.
Phil Wakely Audio 