Surprise, I'm back!<br /><br />Apologies for the hiatus. It was a combination of feeling a little sick and also going nuts with tweaking my mixing techniques along with my mastering signal-chain. That, and back during the first week of November I took the plunge and got my hands on SynthesizerV! I've been experimenting with a few personal covers over here in order to get some practice in with the software (along with the aforementioned mixing & mastering stuff).<br /><br />After having my breakthrough and being happy with my new tweaks to mixing and mastering, it was time to deliver on what I had mentioned in my Post-Plutonia Marathon video. I've been really itching to finally cover this track from YS!<br /><br />I've always really loved this arrangement of "The Morning Grow", as it really has this "Rocky montage" kind of vibe to it. So going into this, I did my best to try and keep faithful to that 80's rock montage energy \m/!<br /><br />I kept the song structure the same, but I found a lot of opportunities to noodle and add little things here and there. For starters, I decided to up my galloping on the guitar during the verses. I always dug the galloping from the original, but I wanted to step it up a bit. Not wanting to stop there, I had the snares rolling and galloping along with the guitar. Also added some strings for dramatic impact during these parts too.<br /><br />For the leads, I tried to keep it "close enough", but largely decided to have fun and do my own thing. Also had the lead guitars doing stuff during the choruses as well. Mostly just supporting the vibe that the synth strings have going on. I did break into some noodling during the final chorus to set things up for the outro though. Also to really seal the deal on the whole "80's rock" vibe, I just HAD to throw a chorus on to the lead guitar signal-chain!<br /><br />During the soft bridge part, the original had this sparkly synth, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was doing. So, I kind of just winged it when mapping out the MIDI. I think it worked out nicely though!<br /><br />Now the other big thing I added was some harmony parts for the vocals! The original main melody was done with the Eri voicebank, while the harmonies were done with Mai. Since I've gotten the software, I've been really enjoying coming up with harmonies for vocal parts, as I think that these two voicebanks sound heavenly together!<br /><br />On a sidenote, I really loved how I got my layered synths and pianos to sound together! Managed to get it exactly like how I heard it in my head.<br /><br />On to some technical stuff... So it turns out that upping the drum-room & overhead mics really completed my drum sound. I don't know why I never thought to mess with it again until now! The cymbals and toms really benefited from it. I also messed with my bass, mainly just easing off on the compressor. I also gave a little boost to the mids to help give more definition.<br /><br />For mastering, I really went and gave that signal-chain an overhaul! Tweaked my EQ's and other secret-sauce plugins in the chain. The one thing that really did a lot was delving into some multi-band mid-side processing. I basically wanted to try and get a bit more width to the master, without using the dirty and easy method of slapping one of those stereo-enhancer sorts of plugins on to the master.<br /><br />So anyhow, to get my width, I decided to process and compress the lows, mids, and highs all separately and differently. That, along with my other tweaks in the chain really worked well, in my opinion.<br /><br />To top things off, I went and also tweaked my limiters at the end of the chain as well. The changes have them being a bit snappier compared to what I had before. Its a subtle thing, but definitely a welcome improvement!<br /><br />Anyways, I think I've rattled on long enough here. I'm absolutely HYPED for more vocal-synth stuff in the future, though most of that will probably be under the "Miko Mayhem!" name. I'm all charged up over here and ready to get back on the grind with my new and improved sound! Hope you all look forward to more \m/! ~DAR