User Music Corner • Carreg Ddu - Nienor Part 3 (with Synthesizer V Vocals)

It's a while since I have posted any music here, but outside of family gatherings I have been busy over the Christmas break with new toys.

The first thing I focused on was to see if I could use Dreamtronics Synthesizer V to finish a song of mine. Synthesizer V is not the snappiest of product titles, nor does it give you a real clue as to what it does! It is a product that Parametric pointed out a few years back as an interesting technology to watch that provides you with some very high quality singers.

So here is the results of it singing on one of my tracks, and very much a snapshot of where I got to with this before I get back to another Christmas project. In summary, I am seriously impressed with what Synthesizer V can do.

iframe

The lengthy part of the post for those that are interested in the back story and how this was made

Since 2007, on and off I have been working on my Carreg Ddu project, which is best described as Celtic/Ambient/Progressive - based on Welsh and other folklore, and anything else in the vein of stories that have always interested me.

I was working with a local singer on this project, but that came to a natural end quite a few years back with the overall project in an unfinished state, and I have wanted to at least try and get the tracks still to be done completed, but never really have the time or inclination in amongst everything else I do to spend to search out another singer, make a large time commitment, etc.

So I have had it in mind for a while to experiment with a product like Synthesizer V, and finally took the plunge. I had in mind to at least use it to get guide vocals so I could then search out a "real singer" to sing it "properly", or, rhetorical question, if it is really as good as they say it is, would I need to? To answer that question, I have to say I am seriously impressed, and this is only after a few days of learning the basics without doing any deep dives into all the tweaking you could do.

The song, as the name suggests, is a segment of a much longer song called Nienor. Tolkien fans may get the reference: It is a song about a key character in the Eldar days story "The Children of Hurin", which is probably my favourite Tolkien work outside of Lord of the Rings. It is quite a dark story, but this part of the song is a bright part in the overall story, reflected in the music, and something I must have written around 2011 when I was playing a lot more guitar and experimenting with alternate tunings. This one is in "Celtic" DADGAD tuning, capo'd at the 5th fret, with Mellotron string and choir pads, and book ended with a few Moog solos from my new Moog Muse.

And Synthesizer V, once you have an understanding of the basics is actually quite easy to use. Basically draw in your melody notes, or you can import a melody from audio, which I did here as I had the original rough demo vocal (warts and all), select your singer, and then you type in lyrics into the notes as shown below (click to get a clearer image), noting the following

• the lyrics in the notes are converted to the phonemes shown above the notes, and you can also edit these to ensure you get the correct pronunciation - e.g. do you want "the" pronounced more like "thee" in the context of the lyric? And I had to tweak the Tolkien names a little to get them correct (I think!)
• br gives you a breath sound - singing sounds unnatural to me without them in there, even if down in the mix!
• + breaks a word up into syllables to be sung as separate notes (but you want to type the whole word in one note)
• - holds the last syllable sung whilst allowing you to slur to a different note - which is important in the context of this song melody

And there are lots of options for voice adjustment in terms of singing style, like "soft", "bold", "airy", etc., along with further adjustments for breathiness, tension, gender, etc.

So here I have experimented with the main vocal using a singer database called "Solaria" which is the one that really wowed me when you check out the demos, and in the chorus segments, e.g at around 1:56, I have added in four part harmonies using other vocal databases, cutting down to two as you come out of it back to the verses.



Now this one is done as a demo of capability, I have the confidence to tackle the whole song, including getting some masculine singers which would suit certain parts better. I can sing, but I do not have a strong voice and am happier doing backing vocals! The good thing about doing backing in the Floyd bands is it has (I think) given me an ear for harmonies.


What was used

• Dreamtronics Synthesizer V for all vocals
• My Mexican Fender Stratocaster and GK3 divided pickup going into a Roland GR55 and its acoustic guitar model, double tracked, each part slightly panned left and right
• Moog Muse for the synth solos, a pretty basic resonant filtered pulse lead you can get out of pretty much anything (I demoed this with my Nord G2 Engine) but, hey, I now have a Moog and that is going to be doing all Moog type sounds in the studio in future!
• GForce MTron Pro for Mellotron Strings and Choirs
• Spectrasonics Trillian for the bass using its Fender Precision Bass model (note this not an autoplayed bass, I programmed the line myself)
• Steinberg Groove Agent 5 (full product) for the drums. Nothing major needed here.
• Izotope Neutron and Ozone mastering tools
• Waves R-bass (on the bass!), which always does something magical to bass recordings to my ears
• Waves H-Verb plate reverb
• Steinberg Cubase 14

Statistics: Posted by Derek — Sat Dec 28, 2024 4:49 pm

---