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"The Raven" started 2019 as a collection of ideas for a band. It didn't work so I decided to dig into Home Recording although at that time I could hardly handle my mobile correctly ;-)
I recorded a few exercises, eg a Christmas Song (was that time of the year) and some funny Disco-Dance style stuff.
About a year later I felt confident enough to seriously start working on the songs.
I play keyboards only so how about the other instruments?
Drums: LOGIC's in-build drummer can be edited and it worked quite nice.
Bass/Guitars: I played some lines on keyboards but mostly used Band-In-A-Box or LOGIC loops which I chopped and re-assembled until I had what I was looking for.A tedious and time consuming procedure!
Vocals: I can't sing.Not even croak a basic melody (but did the creepy whisper on “Judgement Day” myself).
With these great tools it was possible to produce at least basic melodies: VOCALOID and EMVOICE ONE.
Both are "vocal sythesizers". You can not only write melodies but also add lyrics.
Yes, the voices sound artificial and slightly robotic but for showing a real singer what I had in mind, it was sufficient.
Here‘s the probably most famous VOCALOID singer, Hatsune Miku! Musically most likely not everyone's cup of tea but interesting and inspiring in terms of technical possibilities.
Some of the finished songs, like "Pray For Silence" and "Inescapable" still include VOCALOIDS as special vocal effects. It took me nearly a year to finish all 8 songs with this method. Surprisingly they turned out to be better than I had exspected and I decided to find "real" musicians to play it all.
The treadmill of finding musicians started again, without success until I came across FIVERR,a freelance services marketplace.
It took a while (and unfortunately a lot of money, too) to find the right match but Iwas lucky to find some great musicians there.
Since I had already spent more money on the project than I actually had planned, I decided to do the mixing myself.
And then the whole project kind of exploded :-)
In spring 2022 I took part in an Online Coaching Programm at Drumnote Productions and meet Roy Perez, head of school.
I quickly noticed that it would take me years of experience to pull out a decent mix. Furthermore- due to severe Tinnitus my hearing skills are not reliable.
It was a tough decision (in terms of money) but I decided to let Roy do the mixing. We met via ZOOM for the mixing sessions and honestly, that was the best decision I could have made! It was and an incredible journey!