Pretend Orchestra and Sore Throat

So I worked on this for a good part of the morning.
Just the Instruments
And I found out I sound like Oscar the Grouch (even more so than on other days).

The "cheat" here is that everything was played live into the Korg Kross' sequencer. What's unusual here is I recorded the drums last, finger drumming on the keyboard. I did not want it to sound like a "pop/rock drummer"; but as pseudo-orchestral, contributing more to tone color than rhythm. The rhythm is propelled more by the bass track.

Kristopher's Kross!

The Kross' cello sounds like a nasal clarinet (ugh!). But the neat thing is there's a switch that changes the sound to pizzicato, and I'm able to use that to record the cello track straight through.

There are two guitar sounds buried in the mix - the Casino and the Telecaster Thinline.

The Orchestra - real and faking it

I watched the Manila Symphony Orchestra last night perform Mozart's Symphony #39 and Beethoven's Symphony #3 (Eroica). Man oh man. Pure music. Time to quit pretending to play.

No effects required

.... Ok, that won't work. There was a time when all I listened to was classical music, and I used to smuggle a lot of CDs (which work as nice coasters today, vintage digital, never thought we'd get to that) as you can't usually find these in the Philippines (or usually mis-classified under "easy listening" alongside Lawrence Welk and his Orchestra).

So I wrote this tune, twenty years ago, and was track#10 in our 1996 album. It's pop, with elements of the orchestra sprinkled in. One record reviewer thought we had a real cello (it was an Emu Proteus)
Afterschool, "Anything But Love"

I'll recreate this today. I still have an Emu Proteus. but I'll use a new toy, the Korg Kross, which seems to have some nice orchestral sounds.

New !