Behind You Lie Many Unseen

[Amberwolf]

Behind You Lie Many Unseen

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/behind-you-lie-many-unseen

Evolving cinematic track, 3:42 long.  The Elven rock hard in the last minute. 

EDIT: It's grown to 4:30 long, and after they rock they get funky. 

 

04-25-25: 042425 000001 100034n -- First public version

04-27-25:  042425 000001 200063t -- timing and mix changes, and glitch fixes.

04-28-25:  042425 000001 200075v -- replaced awkward section and fixed tuning glitch

04-30-25:  042425 000001 200104z -- tweak intro percussion

05-03-25:  042425 000001 300140F -- timing, mix, sound, vocal, etc changes to new funky section. 

05-05-25:  042425 000001 300144G -- timing, mix, sound, vocal, etc changes to funky section.

Edited yesterday at 05:11 AM by Amberwolf

[Amberwolf]

This was built almost entirely using Ghosthack's Shymer, Ultimate Composer Bundles 1-3, and Ultimate Cinematic Vocals, though almost none of the pieces are used wiht any other pieces of the same 'kits" or "stems" they were intended to be. As part of the experiment and learning process, I deliberately went thru Shymer's "song kits" and picked only one piece at most from each one.  Some are "loops" of patterns of sound, some are just individiual sound samples.    

The Elvish speech comes as spoken phrases, with English versions as well, in dry (no effects) and "wet" (effects applied), but I like the sound of the elvish versions better so I use them, and I use them for how they sound rather than what they mean (unlike in Gareki where I chose them for their meanings).     Later when I care what's being said and have something to say, I'll use the English ones in some other song.  I did leave most of the phrases intact in their order, but I stretched or squshed them in time to fit the beat of the song, and pitch shifted some of them for variations in ones used more than once. 

The sung syllables in the rockin' Elven section in the last minute of hte song were individual syllables of the chants in FunctionLoops' Ethnic Voices bundle.  I just picked a phrase at random, and split it up, and it turned out to work; almsot none of the syllables are in the order they were sung in.  These were also time-altered and pitch shifted in some cases.  

Similar things were done to choose and modify the staccato strings, the cellos, the long vocalizations and elven phrases, as well as the percussion, fretless bass, etc.

The only piece in there that is nearly unmodified is the pulsing bassline in part of the slow beginning and middle part of the song.

So, while I'm using existing recordings, it's not really much different in principle from playing a keyboard that uses samples of sounds to make it's instruments (which very very many of them do), except it is a bit more like creating that instrument in the first place (editing the samples for playback).   Or like paying an artist to record things for you that you then edit down into a recording....the main difference being that htese are recorded by such artists so that any other artist that wants to (and buys them) can create whatever they want with them, instead of being recorded to my specifications. 

[Amberwolf]

04-27-25:  042425 000001 200063t -- timing and mix changes, and glitch fixes.

  The Elven rock harder than before, in the last minute.

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/behind-you-lie-many-unseen

Edited April 28 by Amberwolf

[Amberwolf]

04-28-25:  042425 000001 200075v -- replaced awkward section and fixed tuning glitch

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/behind-you-lie-many-unseen

[Amberwolf]

04-28-25:  042425 000001 200096x -- timng and mix changes, bounced some clips to fix repeated broken fade problems (where some of the clips, especially in percussion at the last section, would "get" clip fades that extended *beyond* the actual clip, usualy several clips at a time all the same fade length, when none of htem actually had fades.  Everything fine, save the file, close it, go back later, and they'd be broken like that.  Fix it, resave, close, reopen, and broken again.     But bouncing them fixed it.)

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/behind-you-lie-many-unseen

04-30-25:  042425 000001 200104z -- tweak intro percussion

Edited May 1 by Amberwolf

[Amberwolf]

05-03-25:  042425 000001 300113A -- Extended: The elven get funky after they rock out.    

 

Added a new section that reprises the former last section, but funky bassline and some trumpet accents.  

[Amberwolf]

Something wierd broken in this project file: 

Went to continue editing the funky section and despite being perfectly normal when last saved, it opened like this (bassline track instead of drums this time).  I selected (black) the clips with the problem to highlight them; it's obviously impossible to have a clip fade in extend beyond the *end* of the clip, but every one of them does.  You can see that the unselected clips don't have the problem.  None of them had any fades when last saved.   I zoomed out to show the problem better, so there's two screenshots to show two of the problem sections.  There *are* fades, in or out, still visibly correct, on other clips, that are supposed to be there...but none of the broken ones had fades. 

The fades all "work", including the broken ones--so any clip taht's got one extended as far as the short ones do doesn't even make sound. 

 

To fix them, I have to select all the broken ones, then select an unbroken one that's earlier in time than any of them, grab it's fade, and move it--even a teensy amount, even starting a fade and then moving it back to the start edge of the clip so it's not active, undoes alll the broken fades.  But it is a PITA to have to look for this problem and fix it all the time.   

 

 I have yet to find a pattern to why it might happen--there's nothing in common with the times it happens that I've found so far, other than that when it does happen it is usually a bunch of clips in the same track, and that bouncing the clips to new ones is the only way to fix it so it doesn't happen every time I open the file (even fixing it and resaving as a new file does not fix those clips; they come up broken again the same way every time I reopen it). 

[Amberwolf]

Back to the creation and story....

It's wierd how some things work out, timing-wise.  When i added the funky bassline (the MalcomX clip out of the BasementFreaks Funk stuff), then to experiment with it I reprised the previous section by selecting eveyrhting in that section except it's bassline, and then ctrl-dragging it over to start with this bassline.  I hit play, and it almost sounded right, but the strings were "wierd" so I turned them up to hear them and then they were "right" and are the way you hear them now.    (too bad they dont' sound at all that way in the other section I built them for; it's kinda neat how they work with this one). 

Then I started deleting notes out of the bassline (cutting and muting sections of the clip), to make room for the strings and other stuff to come thru, and then pitchshifting some of the bassline notes to match or contrast what I heard in the rest of it (just using the Alt+/Alt- keys till it sounded right, mostly one or two up or down), and a couple places copied one of the bass notes over to accent a now empty space, etc.  

Muted almost all the chant vocals as they didn't fit this bassline, and some of the spoken Elvish. 

 

Still tweaking things and fixing the interface between the previous section and this one; will upload a new version once that's worked out. 

[Amberwolf]

05-03-25:  042425 000001 300140F -- timing, mix, sound, vocal, etc changes to funky section. 

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/behind-you-lie-many-unseen