In September 2008 I got my first (virtual) analog synthesizer and a few months later I got the FM8 VSTi from Native Instruments. I'd dabbled with electronic before, but this was the first time I'd made any serious commitment of time (and money!) in the gear to do it. Back to Earth was the first song I made with this new equipment, and was written around the keyboard riff you hear in the chorus.
As an aficionado of 80s music, the song sort of developed around that sound, like a pop song from the mid 80s, right before the point that dance music begun to influence pop. The intention was for the song to be all electronic and the obvious choice would have been to put a synth bassline on it. However, for some reason I jammed the bassline on my bass guitar and it sounded good to me, so I thought I'd stick with it.
I was quite happy with it initially, but I fell out of luck with it quite quickly, as I wrote Don't Break My Heart, A Lie and Let it Ride not long afterwards and it sat in demo form until this year. I wanted to track the song in Record 1.5/Reason 5, and exported the bounced filed of the synths from Cubase, as R&R didn't support VSTs (quite rightly!) nor did MIDI out for the Nord Lead (not so happy about that...). The drums were originally done with the drums in Cubase's Halion device, but I changed to one of the high quality kits in Reason's factory soundbank. The moog-style synth solo was added in at the end from the Nord Lead, and played freehand. Unfortunately, the song was a little bit too high for me to sing so I left it a little while until Reason 6 was released - essentially combining Record 1.5 and Reason 5 plus some extra new devices and features, one of which was audio transpose! I dropped everything down by two semitones and it was easier to sing.
The bassline is retained from the original demo. I kept it partly because I thought I'd done a decent job, and partly because I wanted to experiment using Recycle and Reason's Dr. Octo Rex device to effectively audio quantise the part. Thankfully, on my original demo I'd recorded the signal dry, then sent the recorded signal to my outboard Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro. I was able to find the takes of the original dry signal, import them into recycle for slicing, then load each part (verse, bridge, chorus and middle 8) into one instance of Dr. Octo Rex. Finally, I quantised each slice to tighten it all up. I was happy with the results. And it's so far the only time I've ever played slap-bass!
The version currently on soundcloud is a rough mix, but I would like to return to it in the future and really polish it, and despite all the work I did with the bassline to recorded it properly and more cleanly.
Back To Earth (Rough Mix) by Ligumo
I wrote the song not long after I'd quit a rather soul-destroying job to work for myself. The first few months were difficult but I decided to stick with it. The song is about my thoughts of my old job, sometimes wondering whether I'd done the right thing, and resolving to stick with what I'd done.
As an aficionado of 80s music, the song sort of developed around that sound, like a pop song from the mid 80s, right before the point that dance music begun to influence pop. The intention was for the song to be all electronic and the obvious choice would have been to put a synth bassline on it. However, for some reason I jammed the bassline on my bass guitar and it sounded good to me, so I thought I'd stick with it.
I was quite happy with it initially, but I fell out of luck with it quite quickly, as I wrote Don't Break My Heart, A Lie and Let it Ride not long afterwards and it sat in demo form until this year. I wanted to track the song in Record 1.5/Reason 5, and exported the bounced filed of the synths from Cubase, as R&R didn't support VSTs (quite rightly!) nor did MIDI out for the Nord Lead (not so happy about that...). The drums were originally done with the drums in Cubase's Halion device, but I changed to one of the high quality kits in Reason's factory soundbank. The moog-style synth solo was added in at the end from the Nord Lead, and played freehand. Unfortunately, the song was a little bit too high for me to sing so I left it a little while until Reason 6 was released - essentially combining Record 1.5 and Reason 5 plus some extra new devices and features, one of which was audio transpose! I dropped everything down by two semitones and it was easier to sing.
The bassline is retained from the original demo. I kept it partly because I thought I'd done a decent job, and partly because I wanted to experiment using Recycle and Reason's Dr. Octo Rex device to effectively audio quantise the part. Thankfully, on my original demo I'd recorded the signal dry, then sent the recorded signal to my outboard Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro. I was able to find the takes of the original dry signal, import them into recycle for slicing, then load each part (verse, bridge, chorus and middle 8) into one instance of Dr. Octo Rex. Finally, I quantised each slice to tighten it all up. I was happy with the results. And it's so far the only time I've ever played slap-bass!
The version currently on soundcloud is a rough mix, but I would like to return to it in the future and really polish it, and despite all the work I did with the bassline to recorded it properly and more cleanly.
Back To Earth (Rough Mix) by Ligumo
I wrote the song not long after I'd quit a rather soul-destroying job to work for myself. The first few months were difficult but I decided to stick with it. The song is about my thoughts of my old job, sometimes wondering whether I'd done the right thing, and resolving to stick with what I'd done.
