An updated version of Roxette - Here comes the weekend - v1.0 with rerecorded lead vocals and remixed sound.

From the Tourism album this is a favorite. I always thought of it as a happy song but then I rarely listen carefully to the lyrics. I thought it will be a quick and simple recording. The original recording sounds effortless. It turned out to be pretty complicated to replicate it.

On the audio engineering side I got to experiment with MIDI recording for drums and keyboard and also dry+wet recording for the guitars and bass. This of course made the recording process more difficult and time consuming but it was well worth the effort given the future productivity gains I'm expecting.

Guitars

I settled on a combination of a 12 string (with Variax emulation) and a 6 string.

The tracks were also recorded as dry but didn't rerender the wet tracks yet. This is a feature of the Helix guitar effects processor so that you can reapply effects later on an untouched guitar signal.

Vocals

With my upper range limit extended in the meantime I was able to rerecord vocals one octave higher, matching the pitch of the original recording. It all sounds so much nicer, in my opinion.

For the lead vocals I struggled again with the low register. Moving an octave higher wasn't an option because of my upper range limit.

I got help from a friend with the backing vocals and I she agree to credit her with a cat image overlay. Fair enough.

For the first time I gently processed the vocals with Autotune. I found it great for correcting annoying mistakes. I did not want it to alter the voices too much though.

Drums

Recorded as MIDI, I had the option of tweaking the instruments later. I settled on AbbeyRoad Vintage Drummer. Some mistakes were easy to edit with Reaper's MIDI editor.

In 1.2 I did a few more timing corrections on the MIDI track.

Bass

It is a more complicated bass line. The tab from Songsterr was reasonably accurate but required a few changes. The bass was again recorded also as a dry signal that maybe I'll rerender differently in a future version of this recording.

Luckily at this time I was already recording dry tracks for the guitars and bass. In 1.2 I was able to run the bass through BIAS FX 2 for a more mellow and pleasing sound. I didn't touch the guitars.

Keyboard pad - accordion

This accordion sample from Sonokinetic I have used before, at least in Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - v1.5, one of my very first recordings. I'm still very happy with how it sounds.

Recorded as MIDI, of course, and I tried a new 48 keys controller that I found a better choice than the 2 octave one I used to record the organ from Pink Floyd - Wish you were here - v1.0.

In 1.2 I tweaked the sound of the accordion within the VST.

Piano

Also recorded as MIDI, my trusty Maverick sample sounds great.

Helper instruments

It was the first recording where I started to pay attention to helper instruments, the shaker and tambourine in this case. They do help and I'll be on the lookout for using them in past and future recordings.

A shaker kicks in for the chorus. I found it in the Native Instruments Symphony Essentials sample pack. Also there I found the tambourine sample. Both recorded as MIDI but required not much tweaking.

Mixing

It was a treat to mix the song. Being able to tweak the instruments recorded as MIDI opened up a different world in creating sound. I'll never go back to recording the audio signal if MIDI is an option.

I explore effects from Ozone and Native Instruments for reverb, compression etc. Also studied more the process but of course there's still a lot to learn.

In 1.2 I adjusted the stereo panning of the acoustics and changed their panning position to around 80%, left and right, respectively for the two. Switched to using the effects chain of Nectar for vocals and Neutron for a few of the instruments.

Mastering

This was my first recording where I delved into mastering. I worked with Ozone 9. It is remarkable how much improvements you can make on top of the mixing output by using such a specialized tool and process. I'm tempted to master a few of my past recordings, just so that I can learn better the ropes.

Video editing

My second video with Cyberlink PowerDirector (version 18 this time) was also productive. I had to learn a few more things but I was really productive. The GPU accelerated rendering was consistently under 5 minutes, which is impressive considering my bad prior experiences with many versions of Vegas.

Coming back from DaVinci Resolve, PowerDirector is a dog. I had to but version 20 for technical reasons and it's still slow-as-dog to edit multiple 1080p tracks and the rendering speed frankly was underwhelming.