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New Song: "Hitchcock Blonde"

Ed Driscoll

Les Paul Forum Member
Joined
Apr 24, 2002
Messages
4,691
https://soundcloud.com/eddriscollcom/hitchcock-blonde-6-19-19

Hi all,

This was a song I originally recorded in May of 2007 while still living in California. The drums are a bunch of Sony Acid Loops (mostly from the Drum Tools CD-ROM). The rhythm guitar is my Fender Roland-Ready Strat and the lead guitar is my 2000 59RI Les Paul, both run through my then-recently purchased Roland VG-88 guitar modeling system. That big opening synth chord, and the flute-like synth on the half-time section of the song are both VG-88 patches. The sax solo near the end is a Propellerhead Reason patch, played on my Fender Roland-Ready Strat run through Roland's GI-20 GK pickup to midi converter. The bass was my '83 Fender Precision, straight into the audio interface.

Listening to the backing tracks I recorded in 2007, I thought they had great atmosphere, and a funky -- err, for me -- feel. And unlike some of the material I recorded back then, I still had the master tracks, and I thought with the gear I now own, I could make it a bit more sonically interesting. It was originally recorded, if I remember correctly, on a Sweetwater Music PC with an M-Audio Omni Studio interface, with a 44K sample rate and 16 bits. Earlier this month, I started by converting all the tracks to 48K, 24 bit.

The original lead vocal was recorded in my den with an ancient Shure SM-58 into the M-Audio box. I redid the vocals this month with -- slightly better gear in a slightly more acoustically treated room -- the recently reissued Neumann U-67 tube microphone into a Chandler Ltd. EMI Redd.47 tube pre-amp (an authorized clone of the pre-amps found in Abbey Road Studios for most of the Beatles' time there, into a Warm-Audio WA-2A tube-based optical compressor (an unauthorized LA-2A clone) in a Fireface UFX+ Thunderbolt audio interface.

While I had the vocal rig up, I added tambourine hits on the choruses on a small cheap pawn shop Remo tambourine. I did several passes to get the best hits, cut them together, and then finessed the timing by sliding the hits via Melodyne, which works great tuning vocals, and tightening percussion. I ended up flying the choruses' tambourine hits into the half-time middle-eight, and the final guitar solo, slightly rejiggered to fit the rest of the percussion on those sections.

The original bass was pretty rockin', but a bit dull sounding, so I warmed it up through the same Redd.47 and WA-2A rig, along with a dash of Sonar's Universal Audio 1073 compressor clone plugin on the channel strip in all-buttons-in "British mode," which adds treble and helps the bass cut through even mid-range heavy speakers like the Avantone Mix-Cubes.

The lead guitar and opening lead synth needed a bit of treble to cut through, so I used the Waves Audio Puigtech plugin, a clone of the classic Pultec Equalizer, endorsed by veteran producer Jack Joseph Puig.

I cut the snare hits out of the original Acid loop and "multed" them over to a new track. The snare was processed with Overloud's Breverb plug-in, in the “HiT Snare” preset. All of the drums were run through an Eventide H9000 room patch. The lead vocal has an H9000 plate, and the rest of the tracks have a bit of H9000 hall reverb. On the master bus was Izotope’s Ozone 8 in the vintage tube emulation mastering preset.

In the Artist's Way, Julia Cameron wrote, “Very gently, very gently, consider whether any aborted, abandoned, savaged, or sabotaged brainchildren can be rescued. Remember, you are not alone. All of us have taken creative U-turns. Choose one creative U-turn. Retrieve it. Mend it.” It was fun to take a track recorded over a decade ago, bring it up to date sonically, and do just that.
 

Foggy72

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2010
Messages
442
Hitchcock had a real thing for blondes. Most of his starlets were blonde (on purpose). His fave being Grace Kelly. She knew this but refused his attentions. They both lived in the same area in California, and had a long distance view of each others homes. Supposedly one evening she gifted him a striptease in her home, while he watched through a telescope. Grace was not so prim and proper as the public thought.
 

Ed Driscoll

Les Paul Forum Member
Joined
Apr 24, 2002
Messages
4,691
Hitchcock had a real thing for blondes. Most of his starlets were blonde (on purpose). His fave being Grace Kelly. She knew this but refused his attentions. They both lived in the same area in California, and had a long distance view of each others homes. Supposedly one evening she gifted him a striptease in her home, while he watched through a telescope. Grace was not so prim and proper as the public thought.

He also played very serious (and disturbing) head games with Tippi Hedren attempting to mold her into the next Grace Kelly. Marnie probably revealed more about Hitchcock than he wanted to admit at the time.
 
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