Dane P. Yates

Production

[dejection]

2014.2

10332473

A l b u m A r t

[d e j e c t i o n ] (EP)

I. dejection I

• for piano ensemble and prepared lead/s

• Dane Yates (piano)

II. dejection II

• for piano, electric guitar and electronics

• Dane Yates (piano) and John Barrett (guitar)

III. [occult]

• for two performers and live electronics

• Dane Yates (all)

©ｩ 2014 Dane P. Yates

IV. [teaspoons+variations]

• for prerecorded piano, iPods, dancers and winds

• Dancers Musicians

• Ayesha Katz Nic Matthews (flute)

• Harry Morrissey Michael Dang (flute)

• Ezgi Gungor Lindsay Vickery (bass clarinet)

• David Mac Alex Turley (clarinet)

• Sascha Martineau (baritone saxophone)

• Dean Ryan-Lincoln Tim Newhouse (soprano saxophone)

Recorded at Mango Manor Studios (II), Goon Garden Studios (I, III) and WAAPA Studio II (IV).

©ｩ 2014 Dane P. Yates

o v e r v i e w

The pieces of [dejection] are unique, abstract and complicated coming from the point of view of a producer. The music,

(especially dejection I and [occult]) features effect chains that are critical to the piece itself and are needed in a performance.

The effects used, sometimes ‘wrongly’, give new meaning to what is heard and alters the original nature of what is played.

[dejection] features certain techniques in the recording process, which would be looked at or perceived of as strange and unusual

(evident in dejection I). The nature of this collection reflects upon certain aesthetics and concepts of mine, which I feel, benefit

the works, as well as me as a composer. During the process of production on these tracks, there were multiple points of conflict

between production and compositional values and which ‘side’ is of higher importance. At other times, production used on

certain pieces, (in particular [teaspoons+variations]) is very minimal, trying to conserve the original nature of the work, meant

as a performance piece.

Software / Equipment Used

- Reaper®ｨ

- Live 9 ®ｨ

- AKG Perception 820

- AKG D40

- Yamaha DGX640 Portable Grand

I. dejection I

for piano ensemble and prepared lead/s

(Recording)

- The recording for this piece was a bit out of the ordinary. It features multiple piano tracks layered over the top of

eachother, sometimes they fit, sometimes they don’t, and this effect is intended.

- I have a certain lead, that is shit, its totally fucked, but if you use it in certain ways, you get all these different sounds

from it, and I wanted to utilize this.

- The down side to this is, line noise… lots and lots of line noise.

- Towards the end of the track, I would improvise a passage over the top that did fit musically and harmonically with

what I was hearing, but then I would reverse the track, this seems to fit half of the time. I like the concept.

(Mixing)

- The mix for this was quite pleasant in terms of dynamic content and levels between gestures.

- A big problem I did have was the EQing in the verb of the main piano and distorted piano with lows booming.

- I fixed this with the EQ in the Verb as well as a post EQ

- During the mix I was able to get a better stereo image of the main piano as well as a lot of panning and stereo

widening of other effects. I widened the glitchy piano and panned the reversed pianos so they float through the

listening space.

(Mastering)

- Half of the master had been taken care of in the mixing process so all I had to do was chuck on iZotope and play

around with its features in order to make it; a, brighter, b, louder (little amounts ) and c, a better stereo image.

- Screenshots are given of Mastering in dejection I folder.

©ｩ Dane P. Yates 2014

II. dejection II

for piano, electric guitar and electronics

(Recording)

- The recording for this piece was super simple; it involved a quick jam with Johnny on guitar and me on keys. We

recorded this piece at Johnny’s ‘Mango Manor Studios’ using Live 9. The piano was the Ableton Piano running

through Johnny’s Roland Keyboard and we also used Podfarm®ｨ for Johnny’s Tones.

- We recording a quick jam, before getting Johnny to do multiple overdubs, with me instructing him what to do. ie high

tremolo, pretty chords, low lead etc.

(Mix)

- With all of the tracks going it was beginning to clip the 2buss, so I lowered all of the track faders to -18dB to provide

adequate headroom, which I feel, is a good starting point.

- The mix is seeming a little cluttered so I want to clean up the tracks to make things a little more clear, I achieved the

majority of this by high passing and low passing each track.

- Some things are louder than others in the mix so now that the tracks have been slightly cleaned up I have set the

levels of the tracks to form a beautiful relationship with eachother.

- So listening through I noticed the lead track stood out and needed to be glued more to the other elements. Some lush

reverb did the trick.

- Also the reverb wet level is automated to be stronger near the end.

- I controlled the dynamics manually using volume automation, sometimes the tracks would be too loud or soft when

other elements are added into the mixture.

(Master)

- For mastering I really like using the Izotope Ozone 6 bundle, it recently came out and is a super powerful all-in-one

tool. For this I won't be using presets.

- I am cutting off the useless frequencies that our ears cannot hear in the upper area of the spectrum. A low pass

brickwall cuts off everything above 18.5Khz.

- A high shelf is in need to bring in some high end clarity so the mix doesn’t seem so dull.

- That EQ looks SO BLOODY WEIRD!… but, it seems to work.

- A bell curve cut at 650Hz to clean up some of those boxy mids.

- Now onto the multiband compressor, it is split into 4 sections.

o Section 1: To keep the lowend more consistent I like to do a few dB of gain reduction, so I lower the threshold

to taste and adjust the gain to make up for the loss of levels through compressing.

o Section 2: For the lower mids I have the threshold on the compressor set to only engage in the loudest part of

the mix to keep it from being overly dynamic.

o Section 3: I do the same as the prior section.

o Section 4: Just some slight gain boosting here.

o Some slight saturation is added.

- A multiband imager is used to widen and narrow where needed, a polarity meter is included in iZotope to make sure

there is no phasing while widening.

- The master limiter is set to -0.3dB so no intersample peaking can happen.

Screenshots are given of Mastering in dejection II folder.

Apologies for any profanity seen.

©ｩ2014 Dane P. Yates

III. [occult]

for two performers and live electronics

(Recording)

- [occult] is one of my pieces which rely heavily on the fx chain that is being used.

- The fx used on several channels become a part of the instrument for me.

- All fx were turned on and were being monitored in headphones whilst recording.

- The score for this features sectional bars introducing new content. Such gestures are feedback, scraping and tapping

of the ukulele, light strings and chords, musical phrases as well as electronic processing. (score is provided)

(Mixing)

- As the effect chains have already been predesigned for the piece, the ‘mix’ of such took little effort due to the effort

already put in to thinking about the piece and how the electronics play out.

- EQing of the ukuleles and toy piano were needed as well as playing around with limiters, bringing forth musical

statements to the foreground as well as diminishing them, revealing new gestures.

(Mastering)

- The master for this, as you can tell be the waveform is, my take on the loudness war. This piece for me is a

combination of my own personal noise projects and experimental chamber music.

- What I wanted to achieve with this master were a heavily dynamic and excited piece, the panning and stereo imaging

of certain phrases is insane!!! Such a big fan of Ozone 6!

- Screenshots and other files available in folder.

©ｩ Dane P. Yates 2014

IV. [teaspoons+variations]

for prerecorded piano, iPods, dancers and winds

As you can hear in the raw original track, the piece doesn’t really punch much over -18db. There is also a lot of room noise and

white noise, especially around the high / mid high end of the spectrum. All tracks were recorded in mono, using an AKG Perception

820 Tube @ WAAPA Dancer Studio 2. As the piece is, in terms of genre or performance, an ‘avant garde, experimental, new

classical, chamber’ piece, I found it necessary for as little production as possible. The only things I found necessary from a

production stance to do were, bring levels up, remove the room noise, and some stereo imaging replicative of the position of

musicians, as a performance would take place.

L R

Flute bass clarinet soprano saxophone baritone saxophone clarinet flute

During the mixing process, I needed to bring up one of the flutes, as his performance was generally quieter than the rest of the

ensemble, even in his ‘loud’ parts. The baritone sax and soprano were recorded together as they were using a technique involving

the insertion of the end of the soprano into the bell or horn of the baritone, something I like to call a sexophone. The bari at times

can overpower the soprano but the technique worked good and it balances itself out 99% of the time, so I’m happy with it. This

recording overpowered the rest of the winds and in turn, had to be taken down. I high passed and low passed all of the tracks.

For mastering, the process was quite easy knowing my way around iZotope Ozone 6. I started with removing as much of the room

noise as possible with RX4 denoiser. Then Ozone.

Please find all screenshots of the mastering used in [teaspoons+variations] in the [teaspoons and variations] folder.

©ｩ2014 Dane P. Yates

s i d e n o t e s

I thought it would be a good idea to explain some things that have come up and you are probably shaking your head about.

1.

The line noise, clipping, distortion and other irritating sounds contained in dejection I are all intentional. I understand this can be perceived of

as BAD but it is all part of the aesthetic of using damaged leads.

2.

The overall noisiness of this EP may suggest bad mixing or mastering, but the assignment, for me, was something I could use to demonstrate

my pieces or pieces that reflect upon me as a composer. These effects and musical choosings are part of my concept and ‘my sound’.

3.

The general lack of effects, especially in [teaspoons+variations] do come off as making me look ‘lazy’ and/or a lack of effort going into the

EP. My decision for this was to keep it as a performance piece; I honestly did toy around with reverbs, compressions and other standard effects

but was not pleased with it because I didn’t feel that it was true to the piece. I’m hoping you can see a need to have a lack of processing with

acoustic ‘orchestral’ music.

©ｩ Dane P. Yates 2014