Midnight Shade

In the past, I've used very few plug-ins, mostly reverb, compression, and small amounts of distortion - the common ones. Last week I decided to play around with some of the more "adventuresome" plug-ins at my disposal. Let me know what you think - good or bad.

Also, I want to apologize to Noel, Vic, and David Cuny for not having replied to their comments on one of my recent song posts - "Hotter Than Hades". I appreciate your input very much. I just wasn't able to get to them in a timely manner. And I didn't want to resurrect a song from page 3. But thanks so much!

This song is in the Smooth Jazz Fusion genre - quite a bit different from regular Smooth Jazz due to the effects used and the louder-than-usual drums. Plus, it's a little less fluid than typical Smooth Jazz.

Anyway, here are the particulars with a brief explanation of the plug-ins and why I chose them.


Song Summary – Midnight Shade

Title: Midnight Shade

File:Midnight Shade.SGU

Key=C , Tempo 90, Length (m:s)=3:01

Style is _BUTTER.STY (Butter Smooth Fusion Soloist)

RealTracks in style: ~903:Bass, Electric, SmoothCool Sw16 100
RealTracks in style: ~906:Piano, Electric, Rhythm SmoothCool Sw16 100
RealTracks in style: 3760:Guitar, Electric, Soloist FusionSmoothBrent Sw16 100
RealTracks in song: 1267:Synth Pad, PopShiningA-B Ev 120
RealDrums in Song:NashvilleRadioCoolSw16^1-a:Snare,Hihat , b:Snare, OpenHat

RT 3760 with following plug-ins: PG Dynamics, Sonitus - fx delay, Sonitus fx – modulator, Cakewalk- Para-Q


The plug-ins used, for those who might care about that -

PG Dynamics is a BIAB indigenous plug-in that pretty much gives the same effect as loudness (vs volume) control on a stereo amplifier. It slightly extends the presence/richness of the higher and lower frequencies, giving a touch more fullness to the outer edges of the employed frequency range. I used it for the obvious reason - to fatten the sound of the guitar.

The Sinitus fx - delay is pretty much self-explanatory. It creates an echo delay effect but includes a few more options than some other similar plug-ins. I like the delay effect on this song. But I gave it a relatively fast decay with a small amount of feedback that worked with the tempo of the song. I didn't want those two effects to carry over more than one beat from one bar to the next. That was the most tedious part of the project.

The Sinitus Modulator is basically a flange with a few other compatible options. I used a very small amount of flange - just enough to barely hear it. Why? because I like the somewhat quirky and mysterious sound of it.

The Cakewalk Para-Q gave me some phase shift along with some cross-tracking. I used a very small amount of phase shift as I wanted it to compliment the cross-talking, rather than compete with it. The cross-talk simply tosses a small amount of the left track over to the right channel, and vice versa for right to left.

The main reason I used the touch of phase shift and cross-talk was to fill out the soundscape. The EP was the only backing track other than the drums and bass. I tried multiple other backing tracks to work with the EP, but none of them were a good fit. Since the left and right-hand separation of the EP wasn't substantial when panned to the center, I used the cross-tracking to fill in the outer edges of the soundscape.

Hope that wasn't too boring!

But hope you enjoy the song.

Alan

BIAB 2024 Ultra Plus-all StylePaks*Win11*16GB DDR5*Rhyzen 9745x*AT 2035 Mic*Peavey Nashville 112 Amp*Ibanez ART120* Acoustic/Electric/Washburn D200S Acoustic*Stromberg Monterey Jazz Guitar

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