I have been working on the recording since last week, cutting out some parts that I felt were blunders, unpleasant or redundant. There is also some aspects that I forgot to mention prior, like the use of microcassette re-recordings of Jack’s voice occasionally put back through the microphones on the spot to add extra scuzz, or the use of a random Goregrind CD filtered through the Pitch Shift chain towards the end which I thought were fun artefacts of improvisation, as well as an amazing sample I don’t even remember happening at the time and I don’t know what it even is appearing halfway.

I am working in FL Studio, which is not so great for editing and cutting up, but works well enough, and I enjoy the sharp cuts it gives, regardless. I mixed the recording I got from the Amp using my phone (I love raw sound) with the audio going straight into the interface, and listening back I can write about the recording a bit better.

Issues in the recording;

• Jack’s Phone is interfering with audio sources, creating undesirable ‘beats’.
• Some pitch-shifted vocal sections are ugly.
• “Explosive” part toward the end is puny.
• The recording is mono.

I cut out some of the vocals because of this and cut out a section where we were having issues with the interference which were the easy fixes, but for the other 2 issues I thought it might be best if I recorded some extra material in VCV rack to compensate, using only the clean vocal track and noise sources. I didn’t think to screenshot the patches sadly so I will try and describe them to the best of my ability, but using complex simpler to loop the voice, and sending the channel to filters with noise-modulated cutoffs, with some careful filtering and tight reverbs I was able to simulate a fake field-recording-esque recording from the voice which I think is quite beautiful to think about. I also added another chord with resonators, which elevates it I think.

I also added a second patch running the vocals through a marble emulation plugin, which is more strange and free-sounding than the noise sources, and played the voice through some excessive freeze delays so that the voice lingers excessively and swarms in stereo. I feel like this makes the sound a lot fuller than prior and adding more elements made from voice makes this to me feel like more collaborative, as Jack C is a bit swamped with work right now so can’t really add much more than he has, so I will have to squeeze as much as possible out of what he has given me, and this approach to me is pretty fun.

Also, since the theme is Joan of Arc, the infernal textures really lend well, which is something that I guess was happening subconsciously during the session. With the clean take of the vocals, I structured them and stretched them throughout the track, and eq-ed them so they were distinguished enough from the rest of the voices in the mix in the high end, but I didn’t make them so much discernible as much audible, as to me that is the point. I tried some voice manipulation on Ableton on campus too, stretching the voice into small stuttering jabs which is quite entertaining, which I gave a nice ringing timbre notched reverb as well. There is a lot going on, basically, and I tried structuring it the best I could so that these things happen noticeably and it isn’t just mindlessly piling more on top.

The mix so far is extremely messy due to the clipping on the original recording, so I need to work that into a feature rather than a detriment. I also want to add some extra drone material to make the work friendlier since I don’t expect whoever is marking this work to be as into this stuff as I am. As it is though, I’m glad all I have to do for the next week is refinement since a lot of this has been procrastinating what to do, and even though Jack C has had to prioritise his own work at the moment I still view this as a collaborative process. I am not sure if I will be able to make the next week’s class since I am basically out of money but I feel confident enough in what I have that I should be fine.