Currently listening: 3 Doors Down - Kryptonite   

It has been a merry ole time to do this job. Since I got the off-vocal version of this song, I wanted to try it. If psychedelia was not enough to sing it, there was the reverse recording effect, plus the whole thing about who made the first video clips for what we knew as MTV since the 80's.

I've tried to strike the voice sound balance to actually match the dull sound of the base recording. I'm assuming the recording was done in then-pristine 4 track recorders, but since they always layered something or else, it's probably true they had transferred the music at least 2 times before recording the main voice. As you can see, I haven't consulted its Wiki to check any possible facts and I'm just saying by analyzing the sound file as it is. The drums sound squashed, and the voices sound one generation over the instruments, therefore my guess of a 2nd generation recording. Of course, if you take this recording to yet another four-track to print vocals, the final recording would end up being main voice a second generation, while the harmony vocals third, and the instruments fourth. Then, it's no wonder why they had to take it to a mastering engineer (besides doing the ungrateful job of producing a master print mold in a lathe). The final recording must have been has dull as my shoes.

I guess I did a pretty decent job. The voice strikes the sound of the base recording pretty close (modern recording techniques would render the recording foul due to an excess of fidelity). The second match was the voice effect itself . To get that sound you have to have the signal go through a slight delay, without any feedback, and pan hard left and right each the direct signal and the delayed one. Key tip: the time delay has to be 17 milliseconds exactly. Why? that's the technical secret of the "artificial double tracking" they used back on the day when John would be bothered about tracking a second vocal to create a more uniform vocal take. As a trivia tip, an accident on the tape transport of that high-speed echo machine would lead to discover the "flanger" effect.

The only effect I could not achieve because I remembered up when writing this: Tape saturation. It would give it the final touch on the voice quality. If you listen in mono, you can hear the voice blend in just right. Try it if available, dear casual reader.

Finally, my voice sounds as nasal as I could. This is best imitated by Oasis singer Noel Gallagher. I tried to sing a uniform nasal falsetto voice, but as you can see, it sounds kind of fake, not like John's which tends to sound powerful.

The story behind this song is, I wanted to play around with a software called Sound Trax which comes included in the Nero suite for burning and backup. The idea behind all these utilities are to give you the ability to create the kind of content the way you really want, and not just another burning software alone. So, there it is a recoding utility, the audio cleaning tool (sometimes referred as audio doctoring tool), the multi-track and surround mix recording utility, the audio sequencing and mixing utility, and the DVD/SVCD/CD front-end creation utility besides the label maker.

Sound Trax reminded me of Cool Edit Pro and my very own shenanigans about recording with a software with several shortcomings. Look at Sound Trax:

 
Sound Trax main window (and pain in the neck, btw)

I made a couple of attempts recording, and the synchronization loss was so awful, I switched immediately to Cubase, where the recording, and specially the mixing, were a breeze. I don't want to know what my would have happened to my patience if I kept trying with Sound Trax.

I wanted to fix my Cubase screen shots (which had to be fractional), but I'm feeling lazy as of now, therefore I'll just put up the segments, because we all know I use a huge recording desk which no ordinary display can show as a whole.

Main Tracking window

 
Mixing Desk, plus some of the FX, and the Voice Channel Strip (showing how did I eq)

The rest of the FX view, including the two Dynamics processors and the Double Delay used for the "Magic Number"

Meantime, here's this little plaything, not without mentioning this recording is by no means to make profit, nor to take advantage of anyone or anything. It was meant to show my recording abilities, and as such I'm not claiming any ownership of any but my own effort and my voice. This recording is posted for recreational purposes.

May 22nd UPDATE - I felt the need to redo the mixing and here it is. Not really much else... I just happened to have a better time shifting via the software-based ADT (for a whopping 20 ms). well, ja ne... JJ

Joey.