The Giants of Albion

Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds
An island which the western sea surrounds,
By giants once possessed, now few remain
To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.
To reach that happy shore thy sails employ
There fate decrees to raise a second Troy
And found an empire in thy royal line,
Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.

-- Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain/Books 1, 11

OK, the quote wasn't really the inspiration for the song. The title came from the style I used - _ALBION.STY - and Wikipedia had this to say about Albion, so I went with that title.

I used a minor chord progression for a change, but went with the standard major 7ths in the chorus I love so much, built the track, put together a guide melody (not very good), and sat down to write some lyrics.

But... no luck with the lyrics.

Rather than continue to fight it, I decided to make an instrumental and move ahead.

I start with the SWAM sax and my EWI, but what I got wasn't convincing at all. Eventually I picked the lovely SampleModeling flugelhorn, and came up with something hopefully melodic.

I probably should have added a bridge to the song, but obviously didn't.

I had purchased the Greg Wells VoiceCentric plugin a while ago, but didn't get a chance to try it out on vocals yet. I thought it would be interesting to run the flugelhorn through that. So there's compression, delay and a bit of doubling in the flugel. And then it's run through a huge reverb from EZMix, because I love reverb, and I wanted something a bit more spacious than VoiceCentric had.

The MIDI electric guitars playing power chords are the Stratified and Roculus guitars from Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra, run through some EZMix effects. They're not entirely convincing, but they get the job done.

I added some MIDI strings, one side Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra, the other Native Instruments Strings to make it more interesting. I think I got carried away with some of the string parts - the simpler bits are actually the best parts.

The mix is run through the Lurssen Mastering Console, and then a stereo widener effect. I probably overdid the compression.

I didn't sweat the mix too much, so I'm sure it needs some fixing. So don't bother posting any comments on SoundCloud - they'll get lost when I post a new version. blush

Edit #1: Brought out the strings (per floydjane's suggestion), perhaps a bit too much at the beginning. Added BiaB power chords, and an oboe and a male choir at the end while I was at it. I also had my son play with the mix a bit.

Edit #2: Ooops. Doubled the woodwinds on the intro by mistake. Trying to do too much while running around on a Sunday morning. Sorry about that!

1759:Bass, Electric, Pop16ths Ev 085
2914:Guitar, Acoustic, Fingerpicking Folky16thsBrent Ev16 085
3056:Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm Pop16thsSyncBrent Ev16 085
1757:Accordion, Rhythm Pop8ths Ev 085
~365:Guitar, Acoustic, Fingerpicking Ev 085
Power Chords from various guitars
RealDrums: PopRock16ths^04-a:Sidestick, HiHat, b:Snare, Ride

As always, comments and criticisms are welcome.

Last edited by dcuny; 06/09/19 09:20 AM.
-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.