T5.

1 Music Technologist Project

Joe Pearce

Focus
The focus of my three created songs was on
psychedelic music. I chose to focus on this style
of music as it is a style I personally enjoy while
also wan?ng to try and further my knowledge of
being able to construct and record songs in a
par?cular genre.

Musical/Produc?on Characteris?cs
An inner core of the psychedelic style of rock that came to public aFen?on in 1966-67 can be
recognized by characteris?c features such as modal melodies, esoteric lyrics, oMen describing dreams,
visions, or hallucina?ons, and longer songs and lengthy instrumental solos. A major feature of
psychedelic music is its elaborate produc?on, oMen using the latest mul?track tape recorders, and its
heavy reliance on "trippy" electronic eects such as distor?on, reverb, and reversed, delayed, and/or
shiMing phased sounds. Another common dis?nc?on is its beat variance from tradi?onal dance music,
either through an unusual encompassing beat (as heard in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), or by disrup?ng
tradi?onal 4/4 ?ming with interludes (as heard in "See Emily Play").

The advent of psychedelic rock marked the emergence of the "studio as instrument" trend. Studio
produc?on values rose drama?cally, and as musicians, engineers and producers began to explore the
possibili?es of mul?track recording and electronic sound treatment, this had a major impact on the
sound of pop music. Un?l the mid-1960s, pop music was typically recorded quickly and simply. Singles
were oMen cut live to tape in a single "take" and albums were oMen recorded in a maFer of hours. This
rapid development is nowhere beFer exemplied than by The Beatlestheir rst album, Please Please
Me (1963) (aka Introducing...The Beatles in the U.S.), was recorded in a single day, but their 1967
magnum opus Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the result of over 700 hours of studio sessions
over a period of more than six months.

Quote from: hFp://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Psychedelic_rock

How Psychedelic Music is made/Produced

Echo and reverbera?on (reverb) were also used much more prominently than on earlier pop recordings, and many well-known
psychedelic records feature the use of long-delay and mul?ple-repeat echo eects, which at the ?me could only be created using
linked tape recorders.

The eect known as "phase shiMing" (or anging) is one of the most characteris?c produc?on techniques used in psychedelic
rock. The inven?on of this eect, which rst came into use around 1967, is usually credited to Bri?sh recording engineer George
Chkiantz. It features prominently on the 1967 singles "Itchycoo Park" by The Small Faces and "Sky Pilot" by Eric Burdon and The
Animals. The eect was originally created by duplica?ng part or all of a piece of music onto magne?c tape and then playing back
both recordings simultaneously (the same eect could be created using two iden?cal LPs played simultaneously). Engineers
discovered that a frac?onal ?me dierence between the two sources would generate a dis?nc?ve "swooshing" eect which
swept up and down the frequency range, crea?ng an unearthly sound which (like the sitar) quickly became a fad. Although
phasing was originally created with tape recorders, electronic engineers soon devised ways of duplica?ng it electronically and a
wide range of eects units soon came on the market, allowing guitarists and others to easily add a rich phasing eect to their
instruments.

Other produc?on techniques that are oMen used on psychedelic rock records include the ltering of vocals and instruments. Such
examples are the highly compressed, trebly piano sound on The Beatles' song "Hey Bulldog" and the piano sound on the ?tle
track of the Small Faces LP Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968). This features a heavily-compressed piano which is further treated by
pukng the sound through a wah wah pedal. Other common eects include the use of extreme guitar sounds. These trebly, jangly
tones (oMen using 12-string guitars) or highly distorted "fuzztone" sounds were much in vogue during the height of the style.
Many psychedelic recordings also made extensive use of pre-recorded sounds and sound eects, like the animal noises used at
the end of "Good Morning, Good Morning" by The Beatles (sourced from the Abbey Road tape library), or the kaleidoscopic array
of sounds used on "The Real Thing" (1969) by Australian singer Russell Morris, which includes an actual recording of a Hitler Youth
rally in the 1930s and climaxes with an atomic bomb exploding.

Quote from: hFp://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Psychedelic_rock

Instruments Needed
Chilled For this original song the instruments I used were as followed:

Bass Guitar, Bongo Drums, Acous?c Guitar, Piano and a Tambourine.

MIDI Song This song is completely MIDI so I

used no actual recorded instruments but the
sounds I used and modied were: the Bluebird
drum kit, the minimalis?c ultrabeat drums & the
emerald haze pad (Logic Pro X library)

My nal song Wandering Eyes has electric guitar

playing lead throughout the song and another
electric guitar playing chords during the verse.
I used a MIDI drummer to incorporate some
MIDI elements into my cover song, as well some
MIDI Sitar set to an arpeggiator to get diering
notes played.

How I recorded each piece

Chill Original Piece I used the same microphone (Shure

SM57) to record each instrument separately and then mix it in

Logic, I did this to prac?ce mixing isolated recordings.

MIDI Song For this song I had no need to record everything as
it is all MIDI but what I couldve done dierently would have
been to record live instruments and add them to the mix.

Wandering Eyes Cover I recorded the guitars using a jack
input to a Direct Input pre-amplier. The drums and Sitar in this
cover are MIDI instruments so no recording necessary apart
from using a MIDI controller.

SoMware Used
The soMware I used to record and mix my three
songs was Logic Pro 9 & Logic Pro X.

I could have used dierent DAWs such as Pro
Tools or Ableton.

Special Techniques
Some of the techniques I used to achieve certain sounds were
for example aMer recording in the lead guitar for Wandering
Eyes, EQing out some of the low end frequencies to get more
treble and achieve more of a surf guitar tone.

Using the arpeggiator on the MIDI Sitar and holding down the
specied notes on the MIDI controller I much prefered the
?ming in which the arpeggiator was set to and that was what I
wanted instead of holding down individual notes and having a
more drawn out sound with a slower aFack.

Developmental Pieces
During task 2 where I had to set up microphones
to record Drums in a space and then move the
microphones into dierent posi?ons, I chose to
record in the HNC live room. The factors I took
into considera?on were what space to record in,
what microphones to use for certain drums and
where to place said microphones in the room to
get dierent signals.

Close Microphone Recording

Far Microphone Recording

Some recordings came out beFer than others due

to the posi?oning of the microphones once I had
to move them around in the space I chose to
record in.

For example poin?ng the microphones at the
center of the drum rather than the side of the
drum.

Instrument Recordings
Some instruments like electric guitar or bass
were much easier to record due to being able to
DI them. Other instruments like the Bongo
drums were harder to record as the signal was
not that strong and required beFer mixing to
bring them into the mix clearer.