RPM'09 Album - "Headmelt" by LX Nen

[Andrew Robinson]

Thanks Romain, great to read such detailed feedback, I'm really glad
you liked it, since I admire and try to learn from your work too!

There is just 1 problem, probably my fault for not bundling the zip
file right, or getting the tags wrong at the last minute... I think
you have the tracks in a different order to me, since your comments
seem to be in an unusual order?

Here's my tracklist, with timings, do the timings match up at your end?

1. Icemelt	 (5:39)	
2. T M D	(6:46)	
3. U Happy (6:16)
4. P R T M (7:03)
5. All Your Bass (4:16)
6. Glisten	(5:03)
7. Hic (4:47)
8. B Castle (5:27)
9. Bast (12:05)
10. ...and Back (2:15)

I can answer your general questions though...

> I would like to know if you used logic or ableton (maybe both)?

I'm using Logic Express 7, I haven't bought Ableton yet, but I am
considering getting it instead of Logic 8. However, I don't do much of
the work in Logic, I don't do any midi sequencing at all on this
album, Everything you hear comes from Reason, either heavily worked-on
Rex loops or the Matrix sequencer.

I work with an 8 or 16 bar loop in Reason and do all my sequencing and
most of my sound-adjusting there, then I save each channel to an aiff
audio file. Then I close Reason, and start using Logic to arrange
those loops into a song. I don't use rewire, the temptation to tweak
things forever is too great!

> What do you use to make your beats?+  ( when you mix your  drum-kit
> in general do you mix the different instruments apart  i mean
> ( snare ,bas drum,cymbals etc apart ?) I hope this question make sense.

All the beats are made with Reason 4, usually a combination of drum
machines and several Rex loops. I try to get interesting drum sounds
by mistreating Rex loops. I often audition them through heavy
compression, the distortion box, or an octave away from their usual
pitch, and I look for odd combinations such as making a 90bpm track
with a slowed down drum and bass loop. I usually tweak the pitches of
individual drums, and mute a lot of them, then layer other hits or
loops to fill the gaps back in - quite often I have 1 rex loop
providing the kick, another doing the snare, and a third providing
percussive oddities, maybe with a drum machine or two doubling the
kick or snare. I try to get things right using reason's mixer and
effects boxes, so there's no work to do in Logic, just drop the loops
in where I need them for the arrangement. Sometimes this works, and
other times I decide to get creative with plug-ins in Logic.

On Headmelt, in Logic the songs vary from having no plug-ins at all
apart from a limiter on the whole mix and 1 eq on the kick to some
that might have 30 or 40 plugins.

I'll try to answer all your specific points when I've worked out which
track they refer to! Generally, all they synths are reason's analogue
monosynth mistreated in a variety of ways, but occaasionally they are
samples played on reason's sampler. Anything that sounds vaguely like
an electric guitar is actually the reason analogue through Logic's
guitar amp simulator.

- Andy_R