mindphaser
Group: Members
Posts: 46
Joined: Aug. 2005 |
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Posted: Mar. 03 2010, 17:38 |
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Hello!
I haven't posted here for quite a while because I had a lot of other things to do but as everybody's waiting impatiently for Hergest Ridge to be re-released (me included...), I'd like to shorten waiting time a bit and share my cover version of "Hergest Ridge Part 1" with you. You can download the file here:
Hergest Ridge (part 1) - demo mix MP3 - 22:09
I have uploaded the file to yousendit.com - please keep in mind that it's just online for 7 days from today and can be downloaded 100 times.
Some words about the motivation to record this and about the recording itself:
I've got the Hergest Ridge album at the age of 11 - the original mix, in spring 1984, so guess how old I am now...  - and was immediately stunned by the beauty of this music. Still to this day it's one of my favourite 5 albums (Ommadawn is among those 5 as well) and I still think melody-wise and from the mood it creates every time I listen to it, it's one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written - especially the first side and the start of the second side.
Another thing I found fascinating later is the recording technique used on this album. First of all how warm it sounds but, most important, the effect that a lot of instruments sounds as if they were recorded from very far away. [These effects of "distance" and "wide open spaces" is gone on the Hergest Ridge remix, sadly, so this one has never had the same effect on me as the original version...] I'm a (low scale) recording artist (...?) now and these effects I first conciously heard on my old Hergest Ridge LP obviously influenced my own recording technique a lot, although my own music is quite different.
In late 2008 I had the idea (and the time) to try to record a complete version of this old favourite of mine - not for release but just as an experiment, a study of composition and recording technique, and to see if it's possible to recreate the mood of the album when everything is played on analogue synthesisers.
The recording turned out to be much more difficult than I first thought because I didn't have any notes, of course, and had to play everything 'by ear'. That's where the "distant" recording technique got in my way - in some cases I couldn't identify certain notes because they were simply "too distant". But anyway my intention was not to record a note-perfect imitation of the music so I tried to find notes that seemed to fit.
As I wrote before, I tried to play everything on analogue synthesisers (real ones, not plug-ins) and I also tried to play everything by hand. This is, in a few cases, not completely true: There are still 2 samples in the recording - the tubular bells and the sleigh bells, because I couldn't create convincing replacements on my analogue machinery yet. And I used MIDI sequencing for a few times, but I've recorded some of the faster bits at half speed and played them back at normal speed. "Double speed synthesisers" actually...  For the "strummed" guitar parts I used real guitars, but ran them through a vocoder - a technique Mr Oldfield used as well much later, e.g. at the beginning of "Mount Teide".
The whole recording is still in a "demo" stadium - there are some instruments missing that I still want to record some day, the mix needs improvement, some transitions between parts are not quite right, the "sleigh bells" part still lacks some power, the samples need to be replaced... and, of course, part 2 is still missing. Let's see if I can find the time to do all this some day! 
Enjoy (and let me know what you think, if you want)!
Cheers from Hamburg,
Stefan
P.S. For all who are interested in such things, these are the instruments you can hear in the recording:
- Polymoog synthesisers
- Moog Little Phatty (not vintage, but analogue...)
- Korg MS10
- Korg MS20
- Solina String-Ensemble
- Farfisa Compact-Duo
- Yamaha YC-45D
- Vox Continental
- Roland Strings RS-202
- Elkatwin 61
- Mellotron 400 (choir tapes)
- electric & acoustic guitars ("vocoded")
- Roland CR78 ("vocoded")
- MAM VF11 vocoder
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