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 May 8 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

[Max Arwood]

My favorite song by you. Thanks for putting  in the time and energy to do this one. 

[Amberwolf]

46 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

My favorite song by you. Thanks for putting  in the time and energy to do this one. 

You're welcome, and thanks for listening!

 

What makes it your favorite?   

 

Any bits you don't like? 

 

(haven't had more than a handful of listens on this one, and no feedback yet except someone on the Endless Sphere forum that didn't like the "screeching annoying woman" sounds.    (or much of anything else, from what I could tell).  

[Max Arwood]

I love the intro. I don’t know what you used for it, but that drone bass was great. There is something about some frequencies that are missing (on purpose) which gives it that hollow sound. This is great because it allows you to have room to mix for ear candy. The lady for one. There is such a nice opening for her. Also the synth wiggles  just fills but they fit so nicely!

[Amberwolf]

What are the "synth wiggles"?   Do you mean the bits in the "rocking elven" part that are in the "bassline"?  If so, that's a highly modified / snipped up version of "WAFBF_Kit5_Drop_Bass_Loop_132BPM_Fm" from  WhatAboutProductions' Free Anniversary Collection Vol 10 pack, from the Future Bounce Flair demo set.  It was 'wierd" but catchy when I was just randomly clicking thru samples with the word "bass" in them out of the stuff collected in the last few months...and while there were parts I didn't like in the sound, those were easy to slipedit out, and then slice it up and transpose notes as needed, and copy some of the clip bits up to a distortion-bass-effects track for punching holes here and there.  

 

In this particular one, as an experiment to misuse existing things (because it's a challenge and it's fun when it doesn't end up frustrating ), everything in the song is from various sample sets, mostly from Ghosthack's Shymer and Ultimate Cinematic and Vocal bundles, from when they were on supercheap sales (APD?).   Part of the goal was to *not* use anything that was intended to be used together, that if there was any set of sounds, I would pick only one from that set, and any other sound like it had to come from another set--I did not quite hold myself to that, but almost.    Was a lot harder that way. 

The lady singing is mostly pieces from Ghosthack's Shymer, "Main Vocals (DRY) - Cm 60Bpm" from one of the "kits" (don't remember which one).   It's passed thru a sonitus EQ to take a bit of the 4500hz region down (smooths it out to my ears with all the reverb) then a big washy Sonitus reverb and then channeltools to "widen" it out.

I used pieces from the spoken elvish phrases of Shymer to build the base of the vocals for the last two sections, along with some pieces of a chant phrase "FL_HTV_120BPM_40_G_CHANT" from FunctionLoops Ethnic Female Voices.    All that stuff gets some reverb / echo but is a lot drier than the other part so it sounds closer and more in your face. 

 

I don't think I'm using their stuff like they intended.... 😆

 

The other sound she pairs with is mostly modified bits of "Ghosthack-UCV_Kit 03_Ethnic Violin_Fm 70Bpm (WET)" with bits of "Ghosthack-UCV_Kit 06_Cello_F 75Bpm (DRY)" and bits of "Ghosthack-UCV_Kit 03_Ethnic Violin_Fm 70Bpm (DRY)" to fill in places where the wet version didn't do what I wanted when I wanted it, so that's run thru a Sonitus reverb to try to wash it out similarly to the wet version--it's not the same but it doesn't really seem to stick out as different. 

 

The intro drone is several things combined, faded into each other.  The longer higher part is from the "MIP2_Xtra_D_Atmosphere" from BlackOctopus' Mystical Indian Percussion 2, and the deeper part is from the "MIP2_Xtra_D_DeepBass" from the same set.  

Near the beginning after the deepbass ends is a modified version of "Ghosthack-UCV_Kit 01_Bassline_Cm 70Bpm (Dry Only)"from the Ghosthack Ultimate Cinematic Vocals.  Orignally this was the entire intro, with repeats of it and breaks between, but it just didn't feel right.  I worked over it a lot and faded things in, out, etc., but didn't like (for this song) any of that, eventually picking a different drone I could just fade into the song that made it's presence known then let the song come in...

 

(if I were using synths to create the sounds, I'd've easily come upon the "right" sound but it's a lot harder picking from a limited set of sounds, which was my goal to restrain myself to force me to learn new things, since I could've designed a sound easily enough in a synth or two).  

 

Tehy are routed to two separate busses in parallel; the output itself goes to the subbass buss that eq's out everything above about 90hz and sends that to the master bus, and a post-fader send 6db up from the fader goes to the basshighs buss that filters out everything below about 1200hz and shoves the rest thru a sonitus reverb 

 

There's also a modulated and hard panned bass drone thru most of the first two thirdsish of the song taken from "Ghosthack-UCV_Kit 01_Panned Bassline_Cm 70Bpm (Dry Only)" from the Ghosthack Ultimate Cinematic Vocals.   This fades in just as the deepest part of the bass drone ends.   It goes mostly to the regular bass2 buss, with a bit fed to the sub and basshighs busses but not nearly as much as the intro drones have. 

 

 

[Larry T.]

This comment is for the 4:30 version:

That's some serious composing, recording, production and mixing. Love the girl's voicings. Overall I think this is fairly ahead of its time although I have a sense of Dead Can Dance and Steven Wilson in there. Keep it going. It's pretty coherent and the parts fit well enough at this point with maybe a bit more work to get the cohesiveness more realized and accessible 🎶 🎵

[Amberwolf]

6 hours ago, Larry T. said:

That's some serious composing, recording, production and mixing. Love the girl's voicings.

Thanks...I didn't record any of it, though, just used the existing pieces (sometimes heavily modified) to create what I heard in my head.  For the voice, it helps to have an Elf at your command...sort of.  

 

6 hours ago, Larry T. said:

Overall I think this is fairly ahead of its time although I have a sense of Dead Can Dance and Steven Wilson in there. Keep it going. It's pretty coherent and the parts fit well enough at this point with maybe a bit more work to get the cohesiveness more realized and accessible 🎶 🎵

Thanks--I would try, but I don't know what "get the cohesiveness more realized and accessible" means?

 

I am not familiar with DCD or SW, I found some videos but I don't know that what's on the top of a google search for these names is what you're thinking of (it doesn't sound like it to me). 

Edited 6 hours ago by Amberwolf