..:: Tarekith ::.. "The Wrong Tree"

**Tarekith** · 06-15-2012, 01:44 PM

New downtempo track!

Details on the production process are on my blog:

http://tarekith.com/the-wrong-tree-new-tarekith-track/

Wav, FLAC, MP3 and Ogg versions available exclusively through Addictech.com:

http://www.addictech.com/p/103294

There’s an ambient version also available too!

http://www.addictech.com/p/103295

**Tarekith** · 06-19-2012, 01:10 PM

Direct link to the 320kbps MP3 now up:

http://tarekith.com/mp3s/Tarekith-TheWrongTree.mp3

With all of the hardware work I’ve been focusing on lately, it’s been awhile since I fired up Live and just let loose with all the tools at my disposal. Figured it was time to write something new, focus on the software side of things for a little bit, and not limit myself in terms of what gear I used.

So, the start was a basic beat I cooked up on the Machinedrum, using the drum samples I have stored in ROM on it. The drums in the song are multi-tracked pretty much straight from the MD’s out into Live. Just so I could do the arranging in Live, all the beat-making was on the MD.

Once that was recorded into Live, I used Omnisphere to record some simple synth pads to give the track some tonality. Just some basic sounds I didn’t even use in the end. With that recorded and playing quietly over the drums, I did some passes with the guitar. Basic signal path was from the Dragonfly to the Pod HD500, then direct into the Fireface400. Or I went straight from the built in pick up on my Ovation acoustic guitar. Recorded a lot of fun guitar sounds in that session, used most through out the track later on.

At this point I had only been working on the song for a couple of hours, and for some strange reason got it into my head I wanted to use some weird trippy vocal in the track. Broke out the mic, then took a break. Scribbled down some crazy words on the way back from the grocery store for lunch.

I recorded a few takes of those into Live, comped together the best bits real quick, and then loaded it up in the Octatrack. I also export a stem of the track playing without the vocals to load into the OT as well. This way I could add my tweaks to the vocal, while listening to the rest of the song at the same time. Worked great, I did some really trippy pitch stuff along with some weird distortions, everything you hear on the vocal is all from the OT.

At this point I had the basic song sketched out, but I did some more passes playing Synplant, and Omnisphere using OmniTR on the iPad to tweak it. Love that combo, such a fluid way of quickly coming up with new sounds. Anyway, with that last pass done, I spent a few days arranging the track in Live and doing a rough mix along the way.

After a few days of adding fills and transitions, as well as fine-tuning the arrangement, I took a couple days away and gave my ears a rest. Came back to it a few days later and started editing and removing parts that now I could tell didn’t add much to the track in those sections. Exported it to Wave Editor where I added just a touch of limiting via Pro-L. Nothing else was done in the mastering stage apart from dithering.