Working On A Sunday Night

Just working on a sunday night. It never stops.

Late Night Studio Session

Working in the studio late night. Mac everywhere. Love this business. 3 am and nothing but Apples glowing.

Vocal Recording

Spent the night recording vocals. Great work by vocalist Travis Mendez. Travis does really tight double work so we ended up stacking a lot of tracks in sections. Its always a great feeling to watch your ideas brought to life.

In The Studio Writing

Another Day Gone
(Total reading time less then 1 minute)

I’ve been in the studio writing this week trying to turn out a large amount of work. Here is a short listen to one f the tracks I currently have in production. The mix is rough because I am still waiting for the verses to be finished but the chorus vocals are done. You can see from the screen shot below there are many vocals used in the chorus of the track. There is a male voice, which is myself, and a female voice provided by Renee Stakey. There is also use of all sorts of vocal effects and other goodies. I love to do vocal production with talented singers. Strong vocal production really brings a track to life.  At this point all of the vocals are being overdubbed to a 2 track of the instrumental which is in another logic session. When all the vocals are done every thing will be combined into the final session for the arrangement and mix.

Hope you enjoy. This is just a taste of the finished product. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Screen of the Logic Vocal Session

The Smooth Jazz Continues

Day 2 – A Smooth Jazz Work In Progress
(Total reading time 1 minute)

It is my second day working on a smooth jazz style track for a future demo submission.  There are still parts up in the air, but things are starting to come together nicely.  My original idea was to do the lead track with harmony muted trumpet.  After working with a new melody on the main sections I decided to play flugelhorn instead.  The tone is much mellow and I feel it sits a bit better.  I hope to have the track completely done in the next two to three days.  I am still mixing as I go and working the arrangement.  There are some screen shots of Logic Studio below.  If you take a listen I would love your feedback.

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That’s all I have to say.

Peter Weis

The Odd Couple – A Film By Jeff Moran – Morales

This is a trailer for my friend Jeff”s documentary, The Odd Couple.  Jeff and I grew up in the same neighborhood.  When he emailed me a few weeks ago about needing a replacement hip hop track for something he couldn’t get clearance on I jumped at the chance to help him.  It is important to help the people around you that are working towards similar goals.  I look forward to working with Jeff in the future on more of his projects.  Jeff is also a pretty awesome photographer you can check out his company Box Of Dreamz for more information.

The Odd Couple Thesis Film – click to watch the trailer.

That’s all I have to say

Peter Weis

Some New Cues I Have Been Working On

A Quick Demo

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Some more about the technology being used.

For the past few days I have been working on putting together some cues for a new demo.  I’ve also been using this time to get to know Native Instruments Kontakt 4 a bit better.  I have been a long time EXS24 user, and have a large collection of my sound libraries in EXS format.  EXS24 is Logic Studios sampler, a virtual instrument that lets you use your computer and MIDI keyboard to play back the sound of just about any instrument.  I have had Kontakt around in my studio since version 2.  The program was a bit CPU heavy for the computer that I was using, a G5 dual 2.0.   In February I installed Logic Studio 9 on my mac book pro and have been working mostly with Kontakt from that point.  Logic Studio 9 has a great new feature called Bounce Regions.  Using this function you can get around almost any CPU problem.  It makes things so much easier, especially if you are dealing with a lot of AU plugins, high track counts and heavy sample libraries.

I have been doing most of my MIDI programming with a MAudio 88 Key controller.  In addition to that I have been tweaking more and more of my sound libraries so they work my Akai’s EWI USB.   The EWI is an instrument that lets you work with MIDI, except playing an instrument similar to saxophone instead of a piano.

Most of the sounds you heard in the demos above are from Kontakt, EXS and the Garage Band Jam Packs. Their are also a few of my own custom goodies in their as well.

If you have any questions about the technology or the process in creating these tracks cues just leave a comment below and I will answer.

Thats all I have to say.

Peter Weis

Sounds From A Recently Finished Project

Take A Listen
(Total reading time less then 1 min, Total Listening time 3 minutes)

I finished a project this week and wanted to share a few snippets from some of the tracks I have been working on. Unfortunately these are just snippets. All of the tracks were completed in Logic Studio and mixed “In The Box” only the standard Logic Studio Plugins were used for mixing. Virtual instruments from and various sample libraries were used for the production and composition, including a few EXS instruments I created just for the project. Thanks in advance for listening.

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Trance Addiction – Just Having Some Fun

New Music – Addiction (Trance)
(Total reading time 1 minute. Total Listening time 8 minutes)

Sometimes you need to stop working for a bit and just have some fun. For the past week I have been sitting in my studio working on music cues for a company here on the east coast. Writing the same type of music day after day can get to you after a while. This afternoon I finally took a break and had some fun. Doing more music of course…LOL.

I am also considering releasing this for sale in the near future. Be warned this is some pretty hardcore dance music. Think DJ Tiesto and Armin Van Buren. Thanks for reading and listening.

Addiction 134 BPM

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In case you are wondering it only took me one medium cup of Dunkin Donuts Coffee to write that. Scary.

Thats all I have to say.

Peter Weis

Photo by James At Uni check him out on Flkr

How To Record A Choir In Your Basement

How to record a choir in your basement.

Here is an acapella clip of the choir with a rough mix.

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Anything is possible if you have a vision and a plan. I proved that today during a recording session in my studio. This is a snap shot of guerilla recording techniques at their best.

For the past 3 months I have been working with friend and artists Renee Stakey on her album. Todays session was special though. We were recording a choir part for one of the songs. Since my studio is fairly small and my vocal booth is even smaller I had to do some creative and guerrilla recording.

The basic set up was a pair of Samson condenser microphones setup in opposite directions and one Audio Technica microphone in the middle in set to omni mode.  The microphone choices and positions were not ideal, nor was the placement but i made the best of the available gear and limited space.  We began recording in different groups of 4-5 people circled around the microphone, recording each choir part numerous times. Some parts we recorded with only 1 group of people. Other parts we recorded 2-3 times with different people and placement around the mic each time. Even though the recording booth was small, about 5′ x 6′ I chose to record as many people as possible in at once to keep the sound fairly clean and tight. Reverb will be added later using Logic Studio’s Space Designer.

All of the microphones were plugged into a Presonus Firestudio and Logic Studio 8 running on a G5 with a bit less then 4 gigs of ram. The pair of mics was recorded to a stereo track. The one mic in omni mode was recorded to a mono track. As I recorded each group the recorded parts in Logic Studio were color coded. After recording a few takes I would stop and make any needed adjustments to keep things fairly balanced.

Once the tracks began stacking up I began to create groups for each section of faders in logic and create a bus for each section. When all the recording was done the choir parts took up a total of 83 tracks in logic. This also included separate tracks of the choir clapping and 3 alternate takes of all 7 people singing at the same time into 1 large diaphragm mic in the control room.  The control room recording of all 7 people singing at once was done with a Zoom H2. The control room recording and the H2 recording might not make it to the final mix, but they do have a lot of character so you never know.

Finally a special thanks to Renee Stakey for pushing my recording studio to places it never imagined.

When the final track is done I will post a mp3 clip of it on the website. If you have any questions I’d be more then happy to answer them. Just leave a comment below.

Peter Weis