tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52713455364238438422024-02-19T08:22:03.802-08:00FORTUNA QuestFORTUNA Quest was a project where I was gonna record 429 songs. One song everyday during 2013, one song per week in 2014 and one song each month in 2015 and post the experiences of all of them. It was uncompleted in the second year after 281 songs recorded. Here you'll find all the songs and experiences of everything that happened between 2013 and 2014. Enjoy it!Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.comBlogger397125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-41026146341210610362015-01-09T12:07:00.002-08:002015-01-09T12:09:42.009-08:00The end of FORTUNA Quest<div style="text-align: justify;">
Well, I won't say I didn't see this coming. 2014 has been a horrible year for FORTUNA Quest. I had many internal conflicts (nothing bad, don't worry), and circumstances that made me disabled to do it well. I'd say to myself sometime before that if I didn't end a year with all done I just would stop doing it. So I did. After 381 recordings I terminate this. </div>
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It was a very big project in which I embarked. It gave me so many happy moments in my life, some hard and few awful ones. Literally I didn't know any of the production world, how to record, how to experiment with composition, different instruments, etc. I just had ideas time to time but I forced myself to have them everyday. I see back in the past and I'm amazed of how much I have learned in this two years. 281 is a big number, some recordings were used professionally, others would be just fun for me, others just silly experiments that no one would consider as songs, but all of them are my little babies. I'm a bit sad of not having done better hence now I have to close it but I was a novice, and I didn't know how my brain would act under some scenarios, or if they would exist, and how I could solve the infinite things that happened, it's been a real super school for me and I'm very proud of having taken part of it, it doesn't only taught me so so much about music but life and myself too. </div>
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This is not a bad thing though, I've thought a lot in the last year, my brain has actually changed and I have in mind so many things that I can actually do with all the wisdom I got from this quest that wouldn't have been possible if I wasn't do this and I'm so happy for that. I became an independent artist with my own philosophy and a bunch of tools that I know how to use now that will boost my career, or at least my artistic appetite which is a big part of my soul, I feel it like that. The future looks so good. I'll take the closure of this project as a step up in my life. Now I can just take all the time in the world to work on my songs, that's something priceless that I'm gonna embrace from now. </div>
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I want to thank all the people that took part in this project, friends all of them. Friends that helped me to end songs, people that gave me ideas to make things better, friends with songs that let me help them to record them and participate, friends that shared my songs, friends that commented what they thought helping me to have a better map of what I was doing and making me find myself so many times, friends that shared time with me and my problems, friends that inspired me and friends that didn't complain of me being so tiring making songs all day and talking about it, the friend that donate money to the project and I feel like I disappointed him, I'll just pay him back :) Thanx to everyone that got aware of FORTUNA Quest, I just hope you enjoyed it as far as it existed. Best wishes. I'll have a better life from this point so don't be sad. I love you guys!</div>
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<b>FORTUNA Quest 2013-2014</b></div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-37445964026043592982015-01-09T11:43:00.000-08:002015-01-09T11:43:10.227-08:0016th Week - Pastor Verdadero (381st Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=3753893842/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/pastor-verdadero">Pastor Verdadero by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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I got asked to make a song for a commercial. It looks like they are happy with my work lately and I'm thinking I really I could make a living from this. The song should be similar to that that I made for a Premier Poker commercial. So I knew exactly how to do it. Easy peasy. I just struggled last time with the mixing, hopefully this time after some time practicing I can do it better. I'm playing guitar better too. I had an instant idea, and recorded a demo to send to my 'bosses' (it's a friend's production company), they gave me the green light and started to record it. I was very careful that everything was very neat and the recording was as pro as possible. I found a sweet spot for my acoustic guitar, I used the best, newest and shortest cable I have to record guitar, I got a good gain input and made some layers just in case, and trying different things. And spend the rest of the time (a lot) mixing. I did a lot of extra time on compressors, I find them very interesting and mysterious yet, I experimented a lot. </div>
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Finally they accepted it and I'll get paid soon. Mission accomplished. </div>
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Enjoy it!</div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-31473042725656373992015-01-09T11:30:00.002-08:002015-01-09T11:30:31.665-08:0015th Week - O Amor Quando Se Revela (380th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=1931087479/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/o-amor-quando-se-revela">O Amor Quando Se Revela by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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I was asked to make a song for a documentary again. It's about myths on Spanish and Portuguese culture, and they requested me to make a Portuguese fado to accompany with the images of Portugal that they are gonna show up and it would have to be done in 3 days. I said 'yes' instantly but, do I know how to do this? I did a research of fados and I found that they use to be very simple: just one Spanish guitar, one Portuguese guitar and a sad girl's voice. I could find someone to record the voice and I'd try the Spanish and Portuguese guitars, although I had no idea where to get one. So I started being sure that the singer I was thinking of to sing it was available to do it. She accepted: Wicked!</div>
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Now I got into a loop of hard work and stress to find a Portuguese guitar. I had 3 days to find it, record the song with it (however that instrument is played) and it's Friday. I'd deal with a bunch of closed companies. I called several instruments renting companies and they didn't have any Portuguese guitar at all. I did all the networking I could and didn't get any response: I had to find a substitute instrument, maybe a lute, maybe a mandolin, a bandurria. I don't know, whatever!</div>
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I started again my quest of the seek of that instrument that I'd need. I found a lute somewhere and I was up to close the deal and rent it but I just found a Portuguese guitar teacher in Madrid on a teaching website. I got a new plan! or 2! Either I rent the guitar from him or I could have a lesson from him and then record it at his home. He told me he wouldn't rent his guitar so I had to go there, learn about the instrument and how to play it and, this was great, he offered himself to play it, he just would charge me his teaching rate per hours. </div>
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In the meanwhile I recorded the guitar (I spent so many hours, doing it until it sounded ok cause I'm a shitty guitarist) and Cris recorded the voice, she did really cool, we struggled with the accent but they told us that the accent wouldn't be very important cause the music in the documentary would be very quite. And went to teacher's home to end the song. He taught me about the guitar, it's a blending of traditional and futuristic instrument full of metallic pegs and double strings, very impressive. They play with plastic fake nails and the afination is B, A, E, B, A, D. As I didn't know this I recorded my song in Eb randomly chosen, so the performing would be a bit awkward. He was a shy guy and struggled to explain me about the guitar and as i had to make my own nails and glue them to my fingers in order to play it well, after 10 minutes of chatting, we decided to go straight to record. He did many takes, it was very awkward the tone for him and I could see it, but he played so well, and he's good post editing, so we end up with a good take that would work for sure. He even did the final mix, he know's the music better than me so he'd do much better than me. </div>
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I got impressed after get the final product how pro-active I become and how I could make a song so different of what I'm used to do and make it sound good enough to make it pass for a Portuguese song. Hi five to me!</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
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<br /></div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-29447151030463990312014-10-05T19:54:00.001-07:002014-10-05T19:54:53.758-07:0014th Week - Circo del Sol (379th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2114766759/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/circo-del-sol">Circo del Sol by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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I got news of the Cirque du Soleil doing auditions in Madrid. I run to their page and read the requirements:<br />
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-Full CV saying everything about you and your skills and writing down the kit that you own.<br />
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-1 minute video introducing yourself and telling why do you want to join Cirque du Soleil<br />
-5 videos of yourself playing the songs of a list (all of them)<br />
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So here I am, recording one of those songs. I spent the week learning them and recorded it. The songs were so amazing all of them, I really love the Cirque du Soleil style. Very ethnic and magical. I struggled a bit with a couple of them which I repeated dozens of times. My favorite one was this one called Celebration from the show Kà, which I saw after recording this, as well all the other shows, and it was the cooler too. It was more special and distinctive, and very focus on martial arts.<br />
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The first thing that I noticed when I went to record it was that I really need more equipment to record drums. I have only 2 mic stands and one of them has the shock mount totally broken. I had to use several rubber bands to make the mic not to move at all. I only have 2 cables (after the recording I found another one which makes 3) so I only had 2 mics to record even when I have many more. I remember watching a video of <b><a href="http://therecordingrevolution.com/">therecordingrevolution.com</a> </b>where the talked about 2 techniques to record drumkits with only two mics. One of them was the technique used to record John Bonham's drumkit on Led Zeppelin's albums called The Glyn John's Method . And the other was the Recorder Man technique which takes good sound from the kit but not much from the room, thanks god, because I hate the sound of my room. I used this last one, of course. It consists in placing a mic just above the snare drum pointing to the center of it with one condenser mic and the other would be pointing to the center of the kick drum to capture better its sound and should be at the same distance from the center of the snare drum to avoid phase issues. I did this spending more than hour because I broke a piece of the not broken mic stand, and also because of the height of the position of the mic and its weight the stand was leaning forward and falling, so I had to put a lot of weight on the base.<br />
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Once I start to record it I just did few attempts, first 4 were were because I didn't remember how the song was and forgot some parts, but once I got it I just did 2 or 3 takes. Ironically, at the beginning, I thought it would be the most difficult song for me. I didn't mix it or anything, I had enough just recording all the songs for so many hours (2 days).<br />
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After recording everything I was ready to send everything, so I visited their page and... Surprise! They had cancelled the audition. I think they still accept videos on the main page (Canadian?), so I'll try it and let's cross fingers.<br />
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Enjoy it!Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-54699323157014364492014-10-05T19:06:00.001-07:002014-10-05T19:55:00.149-07:0013th Week - June Hymn (378th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=1697660900/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/june-hymn">June Hymn by The Decemberists</a></iframe><br />
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In this week I've been recording my brother. He told me to record him singing a song of The Decemberists called 'June Hymn'. I took the chance to become his producer.<br />
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The first thing to bear in mind was that he wanted to try to sing it very low. He is not very sure of his normal voice and was quite sure than doing it lower it would sound better, more intimate, more whispering, more soft. If we were it to be so intimate I would like to get all the low end in his voice so I recommended him to get close to the mic so we got some proximity effect (when you get very close to cardioid pattern mics, which mine is, they capture more low frequencies, it's a classic technique that film teaser broadcasters use to get very deep and present voice). But first my brother had to record the guitar. We used my main acoustic guitar, it's a hard guitar to play and sounds a little tense but still we can get good sounds from it which it's been very handly in my recordings. He wanted frets to sound as he moved along to them. So I placed one main mic (Rode NT1) in a spot that I thought it was cool behind the hollow of the guitar and another one (Shure SM57) directly to the frets. After recording it I wasn't able to hear his fingers sliding over the strings but it's because he barely move hands, everything's played in the same spot, close to the nut. I got a very warm sound from the first one and a nice brighter sound from the other one.<br />
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We recorded his voice. Lately I like to record with the mic as far from the interface as possible and with the back of the mic pointing to it. The back part of a cardioid-pattern mic is the place where the sound gets worst to it, so pointing to the source of louder noise in the room, which is the interface, I avoid it to be recorded, not sure if totally but it's totally hidden by the voice, even more when he's singing from so close and the gain of the input signal is so low. So he did his performance. As my role of producer I had to tell him some tricks to get better his voice. Unfortunately the lowest notes were very difficult to him and they are not very accurate, but the rest is fine. He needed some takes as his voice was shaking in the first ones. But after 4 takes and few overdubs we did it. We decided that he should do his own backing vocals as he knew the song very well, I might have messed it up. As we recorded them I noticed that they were in tone but sonically main voice and backing vocals were clashing, but I thought a little bit of EQ would be fine. Later I'd discover that it wasn't that easy. After all this I just made a viola section with a virtual instrument to give it more expression and some fun to the song. As I suck playing keyboards my viola notes had to be fixed manually: some pitches, some lengths and positions and lots of velocities.<br />
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My approach to the mixing was to make it sound like Leonard Cohen or so, where the voice is very characteristic and the rest of the instruments just are in the background. Lonely man telling with sorrow his story. The first thing I worked on was in the voice and tried to give it personality. I got rid of some of the ugly frequencies that the proximity effect brought to the recording which were way too much. I tried to remove some unwanted frequencies first rather than boosting some others, although at the end I added gain slightly on 1k and 5k. I used the default Logic's EQ and compressor. I'm trying to use just one so I master it before I just jump from one to another as I'm used to. And I got a solid and neat voice. I also sent a delay to the voice because I wanted the voice sounding really in the front and reverb use to mess with that, so delay should be the answer. I used a spreader for guitar, so I could put it in the middle without bothering the way of the voice, and EQ (with lots of high end) and a bit compression (I liked the sound of the guitar the dynamics were a little bit too wide which I fixed). Then the backing vocals... This was by far the most difficult part of the production. No matter the volume they always covered the lead vocal. I experimented with many EQs to fix that and was so difficult, I was being too gentle. I started to tweak the knobs more radically and things started to work, the voices didn't sound very well but they fit in the mix if I did the right adjustments. Still don't know if that's what a professional would have done but it worked for me, maybe not the best sound but I could hear the words and I wasn't interfering with the other instruments. Last part of the mixing was automating the volume of the voice as some parts were dug into the track, mainly the low pitched notes and few others, but this part was easy to do.<br />
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Masterwise I just used L2 and tried if it would sound better or not. I think it will, now sounded less natural but instruments coexisting better. Finally I showed to my mom and the first thing that she said was: It reminds me Leonard Cohen. Such a compliment.<br />
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Enjoy it!<br />
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<br />Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-27316118675029354922014-07-28T19:07:00.001-07:002014-07-29T01:47:43.113-07:0012th Week - Your Sexy Provocation (377th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2641642680/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/your-sexy-provocation">Your Sexy Provocation by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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After swallowing the EDx course called Vocal Recording Technology I felt like I could rule the world. This guy called Prince Charles Alexander, who must be a good vocal producer, explained a lot of tricks, mic techniques, mixing facts, etc in a very easy to understand way. On the last week he used a soul song to show how to put into practice all the concepts taught before. So my mood was very 'soul-ish', and I wanted to create a sexy song, with a lot of emotions, a guy suffering cause this girl is too sexy and drives him crazy. </div>
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<b>Recording</b></div>
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The song was made practically ITB (In The Box, concept that I'm using a lot lately), just voices and guitars were recorded. I called my friend Pipe to let me record voices in his house as he has a very dry recording room and a cool neumann mic 800 euros worth, I had to try that! It was a difficult one, I thought I would be able to sing it very quick but the lyrics were too difficult to me as I never practiced it before, plus there's a ad lib part that was very very difficult to improvise while reading a lot of words. Finally I did quite good, I ended just before my voice started to sound rough and damaged. I just regret of my pronunciation mistakes and a high pitch note at the end that I got too close to the mic and sounds awful. Also small pitch mistakes (at the beginning there's a big one). The guitars though were recorded directly through my interface. Drums were logic ones, bass Scarbee (again),<br />
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<b>Mixing</b></div>
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I used orchestral virtual instruments such as castanets, chimes, triangle, strings section, even a clarinet. Also a shaker, a pad synth, two lead synths, a rhodes, bass, two guitars, drums, lead vocals, and 6 tracks of background vocals for the chorus; quite a lot of tracks that I had to work with. Were difficult to handle. My screen looked a bit messy, I think it's time to create a color code to assign to my tracks so I can move back and forth better in my mixes. Again I investigated a lot of compressing, it's quite addictive. So many possibilities. They are tiny tiny tweaks that change tiny tiny characteristics of the track that I'm compressing, I can feel that I'm behind of something great, but still using my intuition and learning a bit about it. For mixers compressing is a massive thing and I can feel for the way they talk about it is really important and rewarding when you master it. Other thing that I really payed attention was EQ, I remember myself totally focus trying different equalizers, using all the filters, messing around with bandwidths, frequencies, gain, etc... during all night until the sunset. I'm quite proud of the results with voice. I don't know if they were my skill or the quality of mic or something but sounds very good, and I did a mix around that voice that works. My singing is a bit better too. Ah, I didn't mention, I used for the first time the waves Voice plugin for a massive pitchless note at the beginning, it's a bit made up now but u can feel a weird vibrato on it. That's a cool plugin, seems very similar to melodyne, but I couldn't get melodyne and I prefer this one rather than autotune. I also used this technique from the vocal production course consisting in panning 6 voices singing the same line the 3 to the left and 3 to the right. They are not very accurate in pitch and rhythm so they don't sound as cool as I wanted, Pipe did 2 of them. This guy in the course used this plugin called Revoice which is so great, it can transform a voice track to be more similar in pitch and rhythm that another one. I would love to get that one. I tried to download a free demo but unfortunately I need to download the iLok key which costs money so, at the end, not free at all.<br />
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It seems like I learned a lot from the EDx course, I hear how I did a big step and now my voices sound cooler. Let's see if it's matter of wisdom or that the Neumann mic was much better than me. Anyway, I was more committed and focus on the mix than ever before and I think I did a great job with the overall mix, and I think my mix supports the song better than the most of the times I mix. I'm very happy now, and I have to say that this song was made in honor of my girlfriend, so she can be proud of me now. Otherwise... nah, she'll be proud.</div>
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Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-86548838232859207372014-07-27T18:06:00.000-07:002014-07-29T10:57:02.933-07:0011th Week - Roger (376th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=186895573/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/premier-poker">Premier Poker by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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I got a new opportunity making music for a commercial campaign by the online poker site Premier Poker. It's not the first time that I get this kind of job from Willy, you may remember my adventures with him, the creation of Anachronic, Viaje al Pasado and the attempted song The Burning of the Colossus. I'm still making orchestral ones for that documentary that required all this songs. Most of them were denied but this time was easy and I will get my song sounding on the TV soon! Does that mean loads of money? I wish, certainly I would love it.</div>
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I received a message of Willy asking me to check my email. I did and I found this email from his partner very confusing about a song similar to one that he sent to me. It was a fragment of an 'A Perfect Circle's' song. I called them and they told me to try to make a song that sounded similar to it: same instruments, same sound, different chords or a difference from the original, ... There's was a guitar sound that they didn't recognized firstly as guitar (that almost sound like a synth, very distorted) that I had to emulate. And I, also, had to change slightly the structure.<br />
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I started to work as soon as I could and thought it was a good idea to make a rough recording of what I was gonna do. So firstly the acoustic guitar, placing the mic wherever, then I recorded drums (always the easiest part) , distorted guitar (that I'd process to get that weird sound) and bass. That was all. I send it to them and they made me change things, over and over til I got a final structure done after 5 attempts. It was a fairly quick process beforehand I worked on the final version. They liked it now so I could re-record everything with a better sound.<br />
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I took my acoustic guitar again, to restart the process, and recorded this line, I tried some mic placements til I found one that I liked like 12" far away from the guitar aiming to the bridge. Next step was the drums, nothing very relevant about this, easy recording, just spent some time looking for the kit, among my libraries, that sounded more similar: piece of cake. Then electric guitar. I tried to figure out how to get that sound, from my experience it's easier to get a weird sound from plugging the guitar directly to my interface and use plugins to make that clean signal sound as I want, but the problem is that I can get very cool sounds but the quality of the signal is not very nice, distortions use to be messy, and now I'm recording to get the most pro sound that I can, so I had to discard that option. Otherwise I plugged the guitar into my Line 6 amp. The distortions are very crispy, and certainly not very similar to what I was asked to do, but I had the hope of being able to make it sound more close to the original sound. The sound captured through the mic is much better quality-wise. Now is the turn of the bass, I used Scarbee MM-Bass Amped as virtual instrument (my basses' sounds when I recorded them with a real bass are always so crap that the best option for me, by now, is to get this virtual instruments). Very easy line, I recorded it in some minutes. I had everything recorded so it was time to mix.<br />
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<b>Mixing</b></div>
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Here's where I spend the most of the time. I played a lot with many compressors on every instrument, different equalizers, I was able to display all the tracks from the drum kit in EZdrummer to separated tracks, for first time, so I could work individually on them. I tried many many different things, I even made a mix that they didn't like and started a new mix from zero again. I realized about the big compression sounding, in the original song, of the drumkit, that's something that amazed me because i'm starting to get my ear finer in compression which I found always very difficult. I got aware of how different some compressors sound. Doing the same, the sound changes from one to another very much. In this case I tried the 3 CLA's compressors of Waves, being the CLA-3A the hardest and the 2A more beautiful to my ears, maybe because reminded me to 80's music. At the end the sound of guitar sounded too fuzzy and not very cool for the mix. My 'bosses' didn't like it too. As you know I'm not a great mixer, but getting there. They asked to a better mixer friend to end the work and he did a good job.<br />
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<b>Thoughts</b></div>
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A new world of opportunities is opening in front of me. I think it's very plausible to me to make some money, even a living, from making songs for companies. I just feel to rookie on mixing, but I'm getting very obsessive about it as I did when I was learning drums in my best learning ages. So I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be decent on this and one day I would be able to make mixes good enough to be heard on TV commercials, karaokes, documentaries or videogames. I'll show you the final product when they show it on TV. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Enjoy it!</div>
<br /></div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-85378059541564812492014-07-13T13:29:00.000-07:002014-07-20T13:19:50.476-07:0010th Week - Putin (375th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=3086788832/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/putin">Putin by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
<br />
After getting out all my feelings with the "Letter to fans" I can restart a new cycle now. This is the first song of this one. I invited Dan to make some music taking advantage of that he came from London for holidays. You know him. He's been my musical partner so many times, and always getting great results. I've been working in some ideas these days and everything's flowing. I can say that I am again motivated to make music and becoming addicted to mixing and tracking.<br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It's curious
how the song was developing from a starting idea, which is the background guitar
at the end of the song. Dan was playing it just messing around with the guitar.
We decided to record it in a loop and see what this would take us to, and we
witnessed the creative process of the song. Firstly we stacked a piano phrase
on it, we added a marimba to it, then a drum groove that I played, then a bass
line and we got a good "trip-hop" track to work with. I didn't want
to work on lyrics now, it'd take a lot of time and I preferred to take
advantage of Dan's visit so I came with this idea of distorting the voice a lot
so the voice wouldn't be intelligible. To explain this to him I covered my
mouth with my hand, pegged my nose and started to rap without saying anything,
this brought us the idea of making it sound like a megaphone. So we recorded my
voice and worked on getting that specific sound. We also spent some time
playing with effects and artefacts until the point we got addicted to it and
couldn't stop. He also sung some improvised lines, which would be carefully
selected later at the edition stage to take the best from the song. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Miking<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I only used
mics for voice and guitar. My Rhode NT-1 for both of them. We recorded many
takes of the guitar sound just moving the mic some centimetres from the speaker
each time til we found a one that sounded nice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Mixing<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">One of the
things that I'm not very used to yet is to aim for a particular kind of sound.
Generally speaking yeah, but when going to individual instruments is very
difficult to me. This gets more frustrating when I'm working with drums, which
is my instrument, and I don't know what kind of sound would fit well with the
song. I've spent so much time working on grooving and dynamics and technique
and how to make the kit sound as I love (very full, round and a bit flappy) in
all these years but I haven't been enough aware of how to create different
sounds for different kinds of music, so this is something that I'm going to work
harder from now on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I mixed it
taking a lot of the ideas that Dan gave to me in the pre-mix. We discover some
cool plugins, like Morphoder by Waves, which is a very funny vocoder, it's
perceptible on your left speaker if you pay attention carefully, it's almost
like a cacophony following the voices speech. We used the Rotor Cabinet from
Logic on drums (I remove a lot amount of it for the mix cause I didn't find a
way to make it sound cool). We also used a pitch shifter to put an extra voice
track an octave below, this became an important piece of the song as we let
this voice to show up leading the song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Finally I think I did a lot of great job with equalization, finding
spaces for all the instruments, as well the effects on the background guitar is
very cool, I spent a lot of time breaking my brain to get something usable as
it sounded to harsh and annoying. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Wrap-Up<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">This song
has taught me a lot of the flow work and how working with other creative people
can lead you to places that you wouldn't imaging to would go towards. It's a
good feeling, just to go to somewhere that alone would be impossible, it's like
getting out of your house getting in a friend's one and tour it trying to
understand how's his life in it and why he does place certain things in
specific spots, which make you think about himself as individual and how different
is his mind than yours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Enjoy it! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-74354986977350477202014-07-13T13:18:00.001-07:002014-07-13T13:18:51.793-07:00Letter to Fans<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-align: justify;">
Hi everyone, many of you may be asking yourself 'where the heck is this guy? is he dead? we haven't known of him in years', well this letter will dissipate some of these questions, or that's the intention of this post. Well, I said this before but it's necessary to highlight it so we are clear and realistic: I FAILED</div>
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Does this mean that FORTUNA Quest is over? Not at all! I'll keep doing this. I'll make my 429 recording no matter what. Next I'll explain to you what happened in this months, my considerations about it and what it will be next. </div>
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First of all I wanna apologise to all of you. Some of you had so many expectations placed on me, others thought that I was crazy (obviously there are some insights to think in this way). I've seen my life separating from the project lately and it were wandering to the back of my brain little by little. I was in bad physical and and mental shape, things were happening and the whole just got me overwhelmed in many ways. </div>
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Everything started when I moved back to Spain, that was a hard beat in my lifestyle, everything changed: living with my family (they let me make noise but I don't feel comfortable making my silly songs and screaming here, that would make me step on the brake sometimes that I should be recording), living far from city, having to restart my life (contacts, jobs, routine...), not feeling the artistic vibe of London (this did a massive impact on me), the breaking up with my girlfriend, etc... I was failing over and over again since this happened and, even when not all my songs were made on time, I was able to finish my 365 song on the first year. That was a great accomplishment for me certainly and felt like I was a winner, but I started the new year very tired and not as motivated as I was meant to be. In this year I started very soon to fail. I got the help of Nacho who would make my covers and that was cool but something was unhappy inside of me, not very obvious, not a big deal, but that lack of motivation was there pushing in the opposite way. I soon realized that my songs' expectations were too high now and I freezed when I had to start a new song, a lot of resistance was occurring every time I started a song and for me was very difficult to improve the songs from one day to another. I thought this would improve letting time pass, and this never happened, the workflow was very tedious, and this always after of the big inner battle of what should I make the song about. I also felt like my ideas were all gone after squeezing my brain so hard last year. This thought were bombing my brain with evil information too. It was in this time when I received the call of a friend purposing me to make the music of his documentary. He would need 5 orchestral themes and one country-pop one (I posted an attempt and a faulty orchestral ones and the country one), from this moment I started to get within a new world in the music field. Digital scoring and orchestration were needed in order to make this to work, I were working hard on these, asking everyone how to do it, reading, I booked for orchestration lessons. At this point a got stuck so many time, feeling David fighting against Goliath, but this David would hide from fighting so many expecting Goliath realise that he wanted to be his friend and would ask him to coexist in perfect harmony. It wasn't really working. Weeks and weeks were passing and I was still stuck in this within battle. There's a love story in between this story, I don't want to tell about this but hard situations happened and magic ones too, my love came to visit me from far for 10 days and I stop doing any activity too (this was the magic situation (: ), anyway, I was not advancing, so for 10 days the things wouldn't change much. All this were my thought, but in the background something stunk. I didn't stop thinking of FORTUNA Quest a single day I knew I had a problem although I wasn't doing anything to change it. And I've been working in ideas up to develop and record. </div>
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The solution came from within me, How? A bunch of factors: the departure of my new girlfriend to her country which made me feel like 'and now what?', the visit to a physiotherapist who changed drastically my diet and made me workout to be in shape, which somehow made my brain feel emptier and clearer, the need of ending something that I spend so much time and effort doing which definitely have given me so much new knowledge, new skills, new musicality, etc. The willing of self-improvement, the feeling-like-a-fool fact and many other things made me feel again motivated to end what I said I would do with a plan under my arm. It's not very detailed but basically I will just chill with music, not push myself so much and do whatever I feel like doing. Not everything has to be super cool. I'm allowed to do crap, after all this is a personal project where I'm supposed to learn and take note of all the events, not only musically but psychologically, physically, philosophically, etc. I know much more of myself now, my limitations, how to stand up from a failure and so many things that I thought were impossible to learn. I feel much more musical all of a sudden, I learned a lot about orchestration too, and working on learning a lot of it. I listen to the music much better, I feel better the groove of the songs, I can recognize more instruments, more effects in the mix, I'm more open to music and it hits me in a deeper emotional level now. So my decision is: let's finish learn more, I have a backlog of 17 songs now, which is a really big and scary number, but I have my orchestral songs up to be finished, some ideas to develop and time enough to make all the songs (didn't I recorded 365 in last year?). </div>
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Said all this, I want to thank everyone that follows me and invite them to keep doing it because I feel great now and I think I'm up to do very cool stuff. See you around fellas. Love you!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-35351566556244465812014-03-24T19:27:00.002-07:002014-03-24T19:27:21.602-07:009th Week - Recuerdo Crónico (374th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=3437535766/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/recuerdo-cr-nico">Recuerdo Crónico by Jorge Marazu (Sergio Dalma version)</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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A singer in a band that I'm playing is the father of the guy that composed this song, he is a great artist and he managed to sell his song to Sergio Dalma, one of the greatest, or at least popular, singers in Spain. They made of it his new single and it's working very well here. So my band mate told me to convert it into a MIDI folder for him so he could sing over it in many places just carrying this file and playing it in any device they found on their way. When he asked I say: 'Yeah, Piece of cake!', nothing could be more untrue.<br />
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I went right to Logic and said to myself: 'ok, let's open a software instrument and then assign a channel to the right General MIDI patch...'<br />
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'Ok I can't... Let's try to research information in internet.'<br />
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Then I entered into a spiral of confusion and lack of handful information. People telling you to get into weird places in Logic that looked like made in 80's, out of the standard of professionalism, with glitches and horrible wiring techniques. After 3 days researching, going to friends' homes and chatting with professionals, some doubts were cleared but still no one had the answers to my questions. Isn't something so basic that it's lame that I couldn't find a way easily? Am I crazy? Maybe I am, I don't know. What I know for sure is that in my 5 day I was able only to write the drums and started to make bass and piano. I only was able to make bass sound like a bass using a special technique that I invented that I had to do every time that I loaded the project. Still when I played the result in a MIDI player everything sounded like a piano, but the drum kit which sounded good.<br />
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Finally I just made the rest of the song using my stupid 'special' technique and asked a friend for help to put the tracks in the right place with the right patches. I talked with him and he told me that with Cubase is so easy that a child could do it. The same told me another friend about Sonar. Which make me think that Logic made an incredible mistake with their product making such a basic thing, which is 80's technology, very hard or maybe impossible. Or maybe they don't care at all this part of the usage of their DAW.<br />
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Anyway, when I got the way of making it I just listened to the music and figured out all the instruments and then easily transposed them. Voice was more difficult because Sergio plays with rhythm a lot and articulation, and guitar and bass was fun because they used glissandos and bendings that gave me the chance of using bending with MIDI data which I wanted to try. With General Midi instruments in Logic I only could bend like 2 tones wide so I couldn't interpret some notes.<br />
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<b>Questions: </b>Is Logic doing bad? Did I do everything in my hand to solve the problem or I didn't find the real way to do this stuff with Logic?<br />
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Enjoy it!</div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-60938438969769004302014-03-24T18:07:00.001-07:002014-03-24T18:13:35.719-07:008th Week - Fireworks (373rd Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=331313643/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/fireworks">Fireworks by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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I wrote and recorded this song when I was studying in London 3 years ago. I remember that I did it in one week, the week that the deadline was gonna be over, always waiting til the end to start everything. That's been me during the largest part of my life and I always try to change it, I'm doing much better now but I still have that instinct living within me. </div>
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My goal was to make a new mix using the old tracks with all the knowledge that I've gained in all this time, in advance I'll tell you that the difference is not as big as I expected, but still sounds better, thanx god... I lasted a lot of time firstly to find the tracks lost in one of my various hard drives. Luckily I found it, it's good material to have as it's one of the songs that I remember with more affection. My first 'big' recording. After that I had to organize rejecting the tracks that I didn't want, putting the tracks that started to run later in the right place, naming the tracks, etc... It took quite long time, I had 73 tracks! So many different elements, and a lot of stacks that conformed a single sound. Even I lost a keyboard track that I had to re-record cause I found it essential in the recording; anyway I listened to that song so many times that every track is now essential to me. I had to trim some tracks that I already trimmed when I first mixed it at school. Back then I was using cubase, so I didn't have a project compatible with logic and everything had to be done manually. </div>
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<b>The mixing:</b></div>
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I was impressed to deal with such amount of tracks together with the easy that I did, when I stacked them together and I saw them days before looked so scary. I started with voice, which is something that someone recommended to me because he prefers to start with the element that you want listener to focus on. So I used the pitch correction tool on Logic that I didn't use last time and improved the pitch a little little bit, I tried some different compressors and compressions with each of them, till I found something that sounded good to me. I never note the parameters that I used in my compressions, I can't say if I used fast or slow attack or release, I should be more careful about that as I want to undestand what I'm doing and, when I read articles of mixers telling how they did something, understand what they are doing and why. I just do everything in the moment using my ear, which is good, but not enough. </div>
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Then I mixed bass, this guy told me to do that again because with bass and voice you had covered the main focus and the bottom that carries the song and you can start putting things around. I'm not sure yet if I like this, I was so get used to record it in the order that I recorded it (drums first, bass, and so on leaving the voice for the last place. I had a stack of different basses and did my balance of them and then put them together in a bus and worked with that track from there. I don't know why but I put some reverb to it, I felt that when it sounded alone at the beginning would need extra stuff, I was happy when I did it but now I can't notice the difference. </div>
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The drums are the most obvious improvement of my mixing, that's good bearing in mind that drums are my instrument and being able to appreciate that huge difference make me feel better with my skills. I used compressions with more knowledge, better eq, cutting off low frequencies when I didn't need them and highlighting those frequencies that I liked from all the parts. The panning is better too and the reverb more much better. The sounds that I chose for the recording were really bad, not the better choice, now I would have chosen from other libraries and I'd have known what the song required better. </div>
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Then the guitars, here I had to add software amps and something that impressed me was how compression improves guitar comparing with my old mix, I didn't use it before as I couldn't hear any difference, now my ears are now better and I'm happy of it. </div>
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The rest was keyboards that sounded incredible but themselves. They are all sound presets from FM7 synthesizer. I hate that those songs are so incredibly professional comparing with what I record, I can't compite with them at all yet, and the blending of mine and good ones sound unbalanced. I made just some Eq tweaks for keyboards and they work very well together. I had like 20 different keyboards, was really insane. </div>
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I put the backing vocals where I feel them to be right. The weird thing about backing vocals is that I don't know if I'd need more reverb as I learned to make them sound further or dry them up, they sound almost the same among all those instruments, I dry them a lot finally, I could understand better that they were there, but not sure that it was a good option, both options sounded good for my inexperienced ear. </div>
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At the end I mastered the whole song, I tried different things. It's the 3rd time that master a song and it's the first time that I hear that it was needed. I didn't know when was better or not but I had like a big big range in my ear that told me if it was too much compression or too less. I guess with experience that range will get smaller. </div>
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<b>Questions: </b>Is it better to record voice and bass at the beginning? What are the best tools for mastering? How much reverb of which type should I use for this song? How can I improve the sounds that I create from the mic placing till the end of the process? How to know that you have reached an standard for 'good sound'?<br />
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PS: Guitar solo is not mine, it's played by Sean Worrall a school mate at Music Tech in London. </div>
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Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-30535063518903684492014-03-19T09:53:00.000-07:002014-03-19T09:53:19.562-07:007th Week - Anachronic (372nd Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=1397818762/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/anachronic">Anachronic by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Well, although my last song wasn't enough to represent the quality of the documentary that it was made for I'm still in in the project, I was asked to make the rest orchestral songs and the one that I'm bringing down today. The idea was to make a song in the style of Chris Isaak's Graduation Day and after the producer of the documentary (AKA my friend Willy) will sing it in his own style and with his own tweaks on lyrics as they are not very cool and I committed many mistakes. But I ended up with a nice song, my favourite part is the chorus with all those backing vocals, turns me into a happy mood.</div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>I wrote several drafts before I started to record it and every time it got better. The harmony was very clear from the beginning but I had to change the melody a couple of times. The first thing that I recorded was the drums. In Chis Isaak's song there's a cross stick in the upbeat, that makes it darker and more intimate, I wanted something more folkie and I opted for brushes on snare drum to make it more 'dancy'. I had to record it with a virtual drum kit because I still don't have enough mics and cables to record my kit. I didn't find a kit played with brushes in Logic among all the presets but, fortunately, Logic provides with a browser were you can search key words and, in this way, I could find my brush kit. </div>
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The bass was an easy one too, I mean, the harmony is super easy but I'm not a great bass player so the challenge was to snap in time more than the notes that I played, which are very basic and obvious, nothing that may absorb any attention to the listener. Actually, I had to use flex mode in Logic to quantize some notes, technique that I used today by first time. I had a guitar guide track for the recording of bass with the purpose of flowing better. So far the rhythmic section is nice and flat, I want to give to the voice the main role. </div>
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Now is the turn of guitar and, hence, the microphone recording. Surprisingly I didn't struggle a lot recording this. Yeah, my guitar is very hard, and my pointing finger hurt a lot and I needed to repeat some times to get used to the rhythmic pattern, which finally suited very well, playing the bass note of the chord in the downbeats and strumming the rest of the chord later. I played as well with the position of the mic, I found the best position that I've ever done. I pointed to the fret 22 and place it like 40 cms away, like one foot maybe? (I have massive feet so my feet measure is bigger than standard) but still not very happy, I learned some techniques later that I'll try in coming recordings, so stay tuned. The quality of the sound that I got has much to be with the fact that I muffled my room and, now, it sounds much nicer, with not an awful tail as it had. Still can hear unwanted frequencies in the tail but the difference is big. I also learned that if I point the back of my mic to as source of noise, such as my laptop and interface, it'll sound the softer, so I placed them together and behind my mic. Well done! Very happy with the results. </div>
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I did the same for the voice, I placed my mic not only in front of the interface but also as far as I could and trying to project my voice to the center of the diaphragm and, far behind this, to a muffled wall. I sung closer than usually and I did well, much less room sound and I didn't get close enough to enable the proximity effect. I tried many takes because that low pitch wasn't sounding good at all and I had to learn how to make my voice work in that range by trying. My english accent is crap as usual but better, there's a lot of mistakes that I hear when I listen to it but when I sing it back I do the same even when I thought that this time had been much better. Still working on that. The backing vocals where easy to make and sing, just one take without any rehearsing, so obvious, but so lovely. They are my favourite part of the song. </div>
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The mixing was long but not very difficult. Now I feel like the guitar is louder than wanted and the voice is too dry. I played a lot with different compressions and I learned a lot, I'm getting better defining what the attack and release do and I find it very useful to lead the melody. </div>
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I think this is a great song that could be played in any pub in Texas and make people have fun with it, nice, soft, cheering, ... The sound is one of my bests, which means that I'm learning (as I expected FORTUNA Quest would be useful for), I played the instruments quite professionally, and the voice is not fully lame as normally is. I'll post the finished version with Willy's voice soon and you can compare. I miss some violins, I might record some for the final version. </div>
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<b>Questions: </b>What kind of reverb should I use? What's the best spot to place the mic for the acoustic guitar? How can I make my voice sound fuller, like in Chris Isaak's song? Why in my laptop the bass sounds a bit out of tune? Does it something to do with frequencies in the mix?</div>
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<br /></div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-37370274462163263912014-02-21T12:10:00.003-08:002014-02-21T12:28:44.515-08:006th Week - Viaje al Pasado (271st Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2238689443/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/viaje-al-pasado">Viaje al Pasado by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Guys, I've failed, not only once but twice. The biggest failure has been that I not one week but two weeks doing this song and the second is that, even spending so much time, I haven't finished! But when you think it couldn't be worse I had a third failure! The production company suggested me that the sound is not near the standard that they are looking for. So my next step if I don't want to lose the job is to join strength with a good orchestrator, my old friend Tony Master, leader, composer and guitarist of Allegro From My Requiem, he has much more experience and knowledge of orchestration and he also has much better libraries in the computer, so I gotta finish the song with him. </div>
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I thought I could make an exception lasting for longer with this song but when I realized that I was working for two weeks and I just did one song in them rather than two, which is the core of the project, I had to stop it and close it. It's incomplete but I gotta move ahead and keep doing this well. Obviously this failure involves that I penalty myself and my pride was damaged, now I have to update everything making 2 songs in one week. The credibility of the project is questionable now, but I wanna make it solid and I'll work hard to get it. From this kind of things I must learn and just not repeat it anymore. </div>
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And what I learned in the making of the song is invaluable too. I studied a lot of orchestration, I visited orchestras and talked with musicians, I finished the Berklee Sample course of orchestration, I joined the "write music like Mozart" course in Coursera and I tried so many things and discovered how to get some textures in music that it seemed to be impossible to me. I listened to what was wrong with my composition comparing with professional ones day by day during this 2 weeks and I could change a lot of things to better. It's true that sometimes my instrument samples weren't very good, I had 5 modulation types of each instrument and I needed things that weren't part of them, I didn't have effects with the percussion that I wanted to achieve, I wasn't able to make changes of intensity of a same note too which I required.</div>
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There are things that I miss now that I hear it again after talking some musicians: the absence of woodwinds is notable all the time but in the part with harp is just a big mistake. I have a problem figuring out woodwinds, I didn't even try to play them because I couldn't imagine but someone told me that just playing the same notes than the brass would work great, should I try? Sure! I have to try everything and hear it by myself. </div>
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I have to mention that after doing this song and getting involved in orchestral music so much has made me hear the music very different and be very critic with dynamics and textures, which I love. I hope it'll be part of me from now and form part of my art. </div>
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Enjoy it!</div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-8531557879020697012014-02-20T14:12:00.000-08:002014-02-20T14:12:09.995-08:005th Week - The Burning of the Colossus (270th Song) <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=3180532858/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/the-burning-of-the-colossus">The Burning of the Colossus by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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My friend Willy purposed me to make the music for a great documentary that his production company (<a href="http://www.spoilerfilms.com/">www.spoilerfilms.com/</a>) recorded. It's honestly such a pride for me to be asked, it's a massive production which requires high quality indeed. I said yes but I told him that I've never did such a big thing and that maybe I wasn't able to. He agreed and I got down to work. The result is something that we won't ever use but it very useful as warming up exercise. Next week I'd do a better approach to what it'll supposed to be. <div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>The first thing was to watch the documentary and get involved in the environment that this shows. It's a beautiful production of a village in France where they do history recreation which is that they represent an age of the history in that region trying not to put any anachronistic element, in this way they see more clearly the way they did the things that they did and if they have questions of how something could be done they can find or figure out. And the song that I had to do first to see if i'm able to do this job was the credits theme. It starts nearly the ending of the documentary and explodes when credits show up. They put a song to give me an idea of what they want. A piece very epic, like people getting ready to fight in the biggest battle ever, this would be like the prelude to the main theme which the title of the documentary comes in flames right in front of your face. And then the credits are getting up as usual and I develop the main melody. </div>
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My first task was to create a template for future projects of this style as I'm supposed to do more than one theme with orchestral arrangements. I watched some videos and started to study the basics of orchestration and I applied them. I divided the instruments in sections: woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. I loaded them from the Kontakt library and I got my template done. Second step was how to deal with kontakt, it's something that I haven't done much and I don't understand very well. So I watched some tutorials and I started to play with the instruments. Every instrument had some different modulations that I would use, but I didn't know how to activate them in the same track so I just opened several tracks of the instruments that I'd need more than one modulation. </div>
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This week I haven't had much time, I played three days in Avila and had to rehearse a lot with several bands, plus teaching drums, guitar and English, so I didn't do much really. The time that I spent I was very inspired though, I was thinking a lot of voices and I had a lot of ideas and I was feeling like Stravinsky seeing the movement of the notes in my head. Finally this is what I got, it's not bad, quite cheap but I could be used for the trailer of a movie or something. Now I gotta sit down and do a proper one for success. Next week more. BTW they didn't like it because it didn't fit with what was happening on the screen, next time I'll make it with the documentary in front of me. </div>
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Enjoy it!</div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-46275240251644189972014-02-20T09:00:00.001-08:002014-02-20T09:00:06.174-08:004th Week - Your Own Soul (269th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=2893124267/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/your-own-soul">Your Own Soul by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Hey guys, I did this song, potentially one of the best songs I've ever made but man... the voices just messed it up! I've been absorbing everything about Jpop these last 2 weeks and I was ready to make this one, I swear but I forgot that voice is the main instrument in pop and mine is not the best and when I realized I couldn't get another singer in time. Anyway, Jap vibe, good melodies (someone could recall Rick Astley because of the melody) and a lot of childish dancing. I just love it. I take advantage here to welcome a new team member to FORTUNA Quest, we were one (just me) and now two. His name is Nacho Gago, he'll be in charge of illustrations for covers, he's a great drawer and he's here to learn from this as I'm doing and as everyone is invited to do. FORTUNA Quest is not about me showing how cool I am because I do music, it's a school where everyone is invited to participate, I'm just the conductor, the head chief, the director, the big kahoona. But don't hesitate if you are an artist and you wanna take part. And never, ever, hesitate to ask any doubt you have in life, I'm friendly and I like to talk to anyone and very glad to help anyone and to have learning mates too. Said this let's start with the reflexions about this week's song. </div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>After all it was a very nice week, I've been very motivated and with lots of energy to play around and mess with Ableton Live, I spent so many time doing it and it didn't take any effort. I think I really love Japanese music. I was thinking that it will be a will to go there and live for at least one year of my life. I can't believe that I'm not gonna do it on day and that it'll be the best and more bizarre stage of my life. They normally uses the cadences that always touch me, the most typical uses to be first minor, sixth flat major and seven flat major and, now I can say it, there's no doubt that that's my favorite cadence in the world right now. </div>
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The recording was in-the-box based, just using FM8 and Live features. I spent so much time being sure that the structure was what I wanted and the melody that I was humming over and over till I get what I needed. I got now harmony and structure settled and some of the arrangements; I always lose a lot of time focusing on details and I don't lay back to see the big picture, but this time when I thought I was getting stuck just on those things I pushed myself to go back and continue with the rough form of the the song. Yet I did stop so many times with details, I'm kinda perfectionist with details but it makes me anxious and I forget about the whole thing. </div>
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Anyway, at the end I had room enough to think about arrangements, sound creating, etc. Was cool to spend time with small sounds that normally I wasn't able to get so deep because of the time basically. The way to create sweep sounds that I roughly tried before was now much better getting into different parameters that I had never touched before. </div>
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When this was finished I had two days, one for voices and one for mixing (I'm avoiding mastering so far, I'll do it later). My first idea was to sing it an octave higher, but I couldn't, too high for me, that's when I thought a female voice could fit very well, but now female singers around 24/7 in my studio. So I spent the first one firstly writing the lyrics, and then singing but, hey, I hadn't thought about the backing vocals yet. Anyway, I started to sing, and I thought everything was being good, I made up some backing vocals too but they didn't make me happy ever, I tried a lot of variations, but any how I went to sleep that day thinking I did a great job. But when I woke up the next day I realized that voices were rubbish! Hahaha, really bad. I didn't think that the difference of opinion between to days in a row would be so huge. But that's what I got and I had to mix it. Everything was quite good but the voices, not only pronunciation was bad as usual, and pitch was bad and modulation too but also the the recording or something, or I just wasn't able to make it work with the resto of the music. Mixing wise was a nightmare, I tried everything but nothing seemed to work, that's why I blame the recording, because it never happened to me on this grade of obviousness. Or maybe I have an ear that makes hears better when something is not cool than before, anyway, I've never been a good mixer and the voices are for me the most difficult thing to mix. </div>
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When I finished I sent it to Nacho and he had a cool cover ready for me, I just told him a couple of things that could work better and some of them were crap right out from my brain but someones worked good. So I'm very happy with him joining the team (hey, now were can be called team), it looks so professional compared with my last photoshopped pics. It seems like a new whole era for this <i>School of Arts</i>.</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-14787018094256051032014-01-22T11:10:00.001-08:002014-01-26T14:48:55.398-08:003rd Week - The Hunter (268th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=687105773/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/the-hunter">The Hunter by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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After one hard week preparing songs for my bands I gathered the guts to start making the song. I've spent 3 days making it this time, it's getting better! I've found very stressful to start making something that is supposed to be much better than in the first stage of FORTUNA Quest. I think I have to create megahits and I get stuck easily and I should just jump in and make something to happen. It's ok to stop and think what it could be great but I literally get stucked and don't move ahead. And when I see the bull is up to catch me I start running fast. This time I did it earlier that last two times, but still, I'm supposed to start on Wednesday and finish on Tuesday and that's the process. I've been witness of how just a small cool idea has been transformed onto a song, very long, full of tweaks, not great but, yeah, the process was there, just in three days. So imagine how cool can be to have the 7 days for this, I could have ended to record on the 3rd day and I'd have 4 more days to re-record some crapy details, to mix much longer, or even master. </div>
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I'm not very happy with the mix, this was the worse part of the process. I feel like things are stepping on each other, not letting bright the important parts. I'll tell you that I'm using LIVE with their default pluggins, no extra stuff, and I still have to get used to them, but still, EQ was very bad and it's like I all that I learned about compression didn't make sense for this song. I was dealing with a lot of tracks this time, like 12?? And it really makes a difference, listening to the rough mix I felt the potential of the parts, but the mix didn't fulfill all of the expectations. Shame. </div>
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What I've been playing a lot of guitar and bass, so much that my finger tips were peeled so bad. It was a lot of pain playing the bass solo, I had to slide up and down for hours with such rough thick strings. I'm starting to feel very confident playing simple things with all these instruments. I can think in music more than playing the right notes now and I groove a lot, I realized that I always played the bass behind, like if my finger moved on time but it was some miliseconds for the string to make the movement to create sound.<br />
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-84438111474046556252014-01-15T02:18:00.003-08:002014-01-15T02:18:59.795-08:002nd Week - Procrastination (267th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=3258581385/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/procrastination">Procrastination by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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What can I tell you? Here's my second song of this year. I haven't warmed up and procrastination has taken part of my soul, well I think my brain is yelling for holidays, but everyone knows that I can fulfill my brain's demands. Anyway, I'm doing some improvements with Ableton LIVE althought is still a pain in the ass, I need to think too much everytime that I have an idea to do it properly and in the half way I forget some of the first thoughts.</div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>In this week I've been learning photoshop, songs for my bands, looking for a job, rehearsing, working, playing a lot of drums, thing that I missed so much for the last year... Normally that's fine and I still find a lot of time to make music, I sacrificed my social life some years ago so I can deal with it, but last year was really intense and I haven't even rest from that, I never stop doing things and vacations are something from the past. I admit that I'm slightly stressed most of the time even though I enjoy this so much. Now I spend my leissure laying down, watching tutorials or tv series. I know, I know, lazy, boring and childish, I should spend more time making music, this is a very big project, just let me have my micro holidays for a while. Plus I need time to switch my mindset, I've spent so much time making a song everyday that now I think bigger and I stuck in front of the canvas.</div>
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Later when I finish one song I feel more motivated and imaging what are the new things that I'm willing to learn this year. Thinking of it is so cool to have a whole week where I can just hear what I did the day before and do some improvementes, 6 days a week! So let's get less lazy and do it better. I have a very great opportunity this year, I won't miss it. </div>
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Working on Live is getting a bit better, but still very difficult. Techno is not my music but I'm amazed about how they construct a song and makes your body to move for hours. The way they create sounds, and don't get too melodic, where the textures are more important than the chants. So I'm gonna work more on that. I'm not very happy of my lack of skills with this program so I'll do my next song on it as well. I want to do it much better and learn all those sound designing stuff that they use to do. I'm always struggling trying to do sweeps and sounds that grow and grow and grow till they explode, also some sounds very superficial (I don't know how to explain this) that I thought that was matter of EQ but still don't get them, so I'm gonna watch a lot of making music on Live tutorials to lear about this. Youtube is full of them! Good for me. </div>
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About the song I would say that I've spent 2 days and a half doing it. The first half was about basic melodies, the second about structure and the last about refining and polishing. I couldn't do some of the sounds that I had in mind, I just didn't know even how to start or how the hell they could be done. I did one sweep with FM8 which is not bad with filter and pitch envelope. I tried another one but I just couldn't make it sound. No idea why. And I'm very happy with the chords at the end, the sound like Lawrence of Arabia, they are B and Am, I guess I could explain them as a Phygian major mode. I was improvising over them in my leissure and I discovered that Phrygian scale fits, not only the normal one but also the Phrygian major, I'll study why this happens. </div>
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In this session I've learned that sometimes is good to let something sound for long time in techno to create a trance feeling in the listener, and that sometimes cheap things sound better if you improve the sound. This happened in the beggining of the song, it sounded like empy and very random that it started to loop smallest sections but actually when the sound was better had more sense. I did this because in my mind the structure was cool but when I made it it seemed stupid so instead of changing the structure I worked on sound and it was worth it. </div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-44267599958912706062014-01-08T09:30:00.001-08:002014-01-08T09:30:39.269-08:001st week - Tears For Remix (366th Song)<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=752355346/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 442px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/tears-for-remix">Tears For Remix by Tears For Fears</a></iframe><br />
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New year has arrived, new goals, new mindset, new organization, new ideas, new skills to be learnt. My first song was something that I had wanted to do since long time ago: to submit in a remix contest. I didn't have enough time to spend making a good song last year. And, see how curious, on of my favourite bands, the one that inspired more FORTUNA Quest songs in 2013, Tears For Fears, lauched this contest. Just perfect timing, it's like a divine signal.</div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>Yes, 2013 was a success, so many bad things but at the same time I finished it and I feel proud and I learned about bad things that I shouldn't do this year. I've spend my first week mainly preparing new stuff. Some compilations, the list of songs sorted by date, some photoshop learning (I want my songs pictures or ilustrations represent even better my songs) were done in the first days, non stop. I started the song in the 5th day and I realized that the mindset to do this year songs is so different; I didn't know how start, I felt the pressure of making a great song, I felt like I don't still know about deep techniques that take time, I just know a lot about quick stuff. It's kind of overwhelming, but when I finished this song I saw clearly what are the things that I'm gonna learn this year and a boost of motivation filled my body. </div>
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I had a big problem making this remix; when I opened the folder with all the tracks I saw that there was an ableton live project to open them, so I decided to use Live to do this work, actually I didn't use it last year very much and I could learn it much better now spending more days experimenting. I was working on the song when I closed Live. 'It's ok', I thought. But when I opened it my Live was crashed, I couldn't authorize it, I'm saving now to buy a new one, but I had to download it as quick as I could and every time that I tried, since my laptop has energy saver enable and it sleeps when I'm not using it for long, I had to go to eat or something and my computer slept and my download failed. Up to 3 times! So 5th day was over and I woke up at the 6th looking forward to download it. It took 7 hours til I get it and I started to work in the song at 9pm in the night, not much time but I did a lot of things til late. And then the 7th day, the day to close, to finish, to have everything ready to post it. I had to get in to 2013's mindset again and do the last tweaks fast and not experimenting too much. </div>
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I submitted the song finally, I'll let you know how it goes. I don't have many expectations, the song sounds very flat although I like the harmony that I built it over. And I'm don't have much control over the effects, they are so different than Logic ones. </div>
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I realized that I'm very inexpert with Live. I'm very slow, and I need to think a lot until comes to my mind a solution of each thing that I'm trying to do. It's tedious. I think I'm gonna make my first month songs with it and get more confident. By now I'll just make the next one and let's see how I feel then.</div>
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I liked the fact that I have days to think about what I did the day before and time to fix problems properly, not just patch badly stuff. Now writting I also feel how I can expand the things that I wanna talk about, splitting by days or whatever, I have more things to say. It's logical. Now I'm gonna get ready for the next song. I have ideas and I want to spend some money in new material.</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-85100599202039275112014-01-07T10:25:00.000-08:002014-01-09T04:17:26.622-08:00My favourite songs of 2013<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 470px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4274171595/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/album/my-favorite-songs-of-2013">My Favorite Songs of 2013 by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: center;">
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Here's a selection of the 45 songs that I like the most either for being wonderful or that it reminds me something cool or just I had fun making or listening to it. They're sorted by preference, being the first one the worst and the last one the best</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-65843617273130227332014-01-07T09:47:00.000-08:002014-01-08T10:21:01.533-08:00The Best Song of Each Month 2013<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 470px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1304900095/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/album/the-best-song-of-each-month-2013">The Best Song of Each Month 2013 by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><br />
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Here's a compilation of the best songs of each month in date order. This songs have been chosen by fans month by month.<br />
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Enjoy it! </div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-37842713995101122872013-12-31T15:54:00.003-08:002013-12-31T15:54:45.584-08:00Happy new year! Let's start 2014<div style="text-align: justify;">
Finally is 2014, the new year. The year when FORTUNA Quest switch to the next level. Stage 1 is accomplised succesfully. Now is time to more serious stuff. I've learned a lot and now this knowledge must be used and improved. Let's learn new things that because of the lack of time was impossible. Things that my mind can even imagine. Let's make things sound cooler. Let's songs get closed and more elaborated. Let's find the importance of arrangements. Let's grow up. </div>
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This year has been a lesson per se. It's the first time that I finish something that I start in long term. I always give up and I pretend that I'm not interested when I actually am. I saw so many stages in this year that affected to my songs: The places where I lived, the people that I was meeting, the jobs I was getting, my mood, my neighgors, etc... I saw how this project almost died 2, the first one in April, I was too tired and I was thinking FORTUNA Quest was only bothering me more than helping. Between me, my girlfriend and my friends made me to see how many cool things I was doing and how much I was learning. I promised me not to give up anymore after that. Then in November. October was a very busy and bad month for me, I stopped making music just because I was overwhelmed with situations in my life and when I arrived to Spain finally I found that I had to make like 15 songs more that I didn't make before, so I grounded and worked hard, but it wasn't very depressing sometimes, hard and hopeless. I thought I couldn't do it but I did, and as soon as I get those extra songs done I just was so happy that loved the fact of spending a lot of time everyday to make the new songs. I enjoyed every single song and was focus, full of energy and happy. Now the month ends and I feel very exhausted, but it was really worth it. I'm very motivated with the new year ahead. I'm gonna do my best and do some good things with the blog, pages, I'll try to record more videos, create a comunity and learn a lot! That's the whole point, learn and share what I learned. Hopefully more people learn of what I'm doing. </div>
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Now I want you to give me feedback, advices, questions that I'd answer and anything that could make from this a interactive social experience. Have a great year 2014, it'll be the best ever. </div>
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Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-41751126802180707462013-12-31T15:36:00.001-08:002013-12-31T15:56:35.997-08:00The Best of December 2013<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 470px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1527825120/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/notracklist=true/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/album/the-best-of-december-2013">The Best of December 2013 by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Last month in 2013 and the best one. In November I managed to ground myself and make all the missed songs and now in December I grounded myself again and did the greatest effort in my life to make good songs almost everyday. At least with a lot of time spent in them and trying really hard. I learned more than in any other month. My ear tuned more than ever, little changes in mixes are bigger for my ear, and when I see a gap in the music I can figure what the hell is missed. Great month, great songs, great learning and the most enjoyable too. I hope you enjoy this compilation more than ever.</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-25630716620660805782013-12-31T14:35:00.002-08:002013-12-31T14:35:43.204-08:0031st of December - Summer New Year's Eve (365th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=1426077369/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/notracklist=true/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/summer-new-years-eve">Summer New Year's Eve by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Hell yeah! My last 2013 song at last. I thought I wouldn't get it! I was thinking about my ex girlfriend that is spending this evening in Brisbane and there it's summer. I remember 2 years ago that I was in a surfing beach in Mexico on New Year's Eve too. It wasn't summer but it was hot anyway so doing it in summer may be even better. Anyway, the way that I have to represent that feeling is this song. </div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>I can say so many things that I'm being doing with this song, how I was learning the Johnny B. Goode guitar riff and I did a modification to start my song, how I used vintage drums, and amps for guitar and bass, etc. But everything is eclipsed by the fact that I finished the year finally, so my brain can barely think straight. </div>
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I had some problems with drums since I recorded them in my old laptop with Logic 9 and when I passed to my new one with Logic X my midi track didn't make the kit that I wanted to use for this song work. I panned the main voices not full L/R but slighly centered, it made it sound a bit rougher and I think it's better. </div>
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Next song in one week.</div>
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Enjoy it! </div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-66407056621422673492013-12-30T20:02:00.001-08:002013-12-30T20:02:27.490-08:0030th of December - We Are The World (364th Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=407747306/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/notracklist=true/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/we-are-the-world">We Are The World by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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Probably I should have kept this song for the last day but it was the last chance to gather my friends and my mother and sing together this triumphant song. We are the world, a super classic, an epic song that gather the best artists in the world and we perform now.</div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>Have such great friends at home and sing this song was like the ultimate session. So cool, fun and funny. My mother joined us as soon as we said to her. We just sung one by one the phrases trying to change voices sometimes and trying to imitate the great artist that sing it. </div>
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We were changing the position of the mic, the input gain, the distance that we were singing from the mic, etc, so the tracks were very unbalanced. That was the greatest challenge, to try to sound everything like if we were at the same place together and make it fit in the song, which is a karaoke track, chose the correct compression, EQ and reverb was ideal. Some of them were very difficult to fix. Finally the session was worth it and I'm very happy of the results. </div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271345536423843842.post-66655976401164258782013-12-29T14:49:00.000-08:002013-12-29T14:49:25.675-08:0029th Song - Bassssssshuco Puro (363rd Song)<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=861162442/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/notracklist=true/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://fortunaquest.bandcamp.com/track/bassssssshuco-puro">Bassssssshuco Puro by FORTUNA Quest</a></iframe><div style="text-align: justify;">
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This is another song that I promised that I would do. My brother requested to play a doom song with the best quotes of my very best friend Mata. And know is himself (my brother) who will help me to do it. He'll sing and play the guitar and bass, I'll play drums, do some backing vocals and mix it.</div>
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<b>Thoughts: </b>When my brother told me to listen to Neurosis to know what doom is about, I couldn't imagine that we were gonna record such a heavy music. Slow, intense, dark, satanic. We used my guitar with wide strings to tune it in C and dropped the 6th to Bb. I also had to low the 5th string of my bass to play a Bb. Our amps are broken and we had to do everything with Guitar Rig. </div>
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We were selecting the best quotes and the order that he would say them. And he started to sing. Sing? Growl!!!! At soon as my brother started to practice the song at low volume I saw that it wasn't gonna be very easy. He was coughing all the time and badly. I heard his voice changing and getting rougher through the session. There was some phrases that he didn't have enough air to say and we needed to open a new track and split them in two. When I went to growl I realized why he couldn't keep the flow of voice that long, there are vowels that makes you to expire more air, and even more if you want to rasp the voice. I wonder how can death metal singers do it so easily, do they have the muscles more relaxed and able to flap to make that sound? Because to get that I had to use to much air. </div>
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Finally my friend Mata came to say a quote himself as an intro. The mixing was very good, I spent like 4 hours very focus, enjoying the work, very picky with everything, learning, trying things, being sure that I've learned a lot this year, and I did. I used compressors and Eq on Superior drummer in all the tracks that I felt that I need it. I changed the sound of the bass drums, I felt very obvious that I needed a certain compression and Eq. The same with snare drum. I use compression in everything, it's like dress a track with a good suit for it. The most difficult thing was the voices, to make it fit in the mix I had to low down some frequencies from the guitar, do a good eq, good compression, good reverb and good delay and still not sounding great. But wow, I did so many things that made it sound much better with the music that I'm very very happy. The way that I got focus today was amazing, hopefully I can work like that more often.</div>
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Enjoy it!</div>
Liumanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14766435892307481288noreply@blogger.com0