"Ho Lord" is a Contemporary Jazz/Funk soundtrack that gives tribute to my favorite keyboard/Pianist, George Duke.
The production of this track is exclusively electronic digital composing. I create music because I love to do it, period. I am not caught up into how much money I can make, I want the credit, plain and simple. If anyone wants to use my material, I am happy with getting the credit in writing, than anything else. I use a combination of DAW and hardware modules to create, mix, and master the sound. Sonar 6 with Stylus RMX plug-in is the foundation of the process. I use an USB 2.0 Audio/Midi interface by E-MU. I employ the use of Roland XV/SRX module along with sounds from the Korg 01/W Pro workstation.
I find that the piano samples on the Roland are as close to what I like my pianos to sound. You can hear it in this track along with the Roland Soprano Sax patch. RMX is the core of the drum track and the Korg gives me my bass track. All sequenced and layered using the Sonar 6 sequencer.
I first sample through randomly the multi mixes of the RMX to get the basis for the track. Switching out elements until I find a groove that inspires me. It's all about the inspiration not so much about a preconceived idea, it is more or less an evolutionary process that is furthered by the inspiration the comes when you hear a certain patch or listen to a certain groove.
Once I have my groove track down I either find a bass line that goes well, or just start playing melody ideas. On this track the bass line came first then the piano track followed by the sax.Once all that is done in Midi format, I record each individual track to audio.
At that point I add my processing, EQ, compression, reverb,etc. to each track. Once that is done it is time to tweak sound levels and the pan. Then I bounce all tracks to one, give a gain or reduce gain and add final tweaking.
I like to get my recording just under 0.0 db on the final mix. It is important to allow headroom at the beginning of mix so that there is room to manipulate or process your audio without fear of clipping. I usually stay about -6.0 db and gradully move toward 0.0 db at each step of the signal processing stages.
Further information is available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/rannijohns/
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