Proud to announce the release of DoctorD's long awaited album 'Missa Electronica'. Available on ReverbNation and soon on iTunes.

Has DoctorD invented a new genre - "Christian electro-pop"? Has he become insane?

Some words of explanation:

DoctorD is not a huge fan of religion, to say the least. As a true atheïst, he can but observe the cause and effects of religions throughout history and across our planet – mainly Catholicism and Christianity in the region where DoctorD is from. Sometimes it’s not a pretty sight, and sometimes it’s a beautiful sight. Religious feelings have brought up the best in artists in the past, and gave us great music, painting, architecture and literature. And the same religious feelings caused mass extermination in South America and throughout the world, wars in all of Europe, oppression, and much more ugliness.

This was the starting point of the “Missa Electronica” project. DoctorD’s mixed feelings about religion and Catholicism has been translated into 6 tracks that bring together church songs from his childhood (before he turned atheïst) with modern urban sounds.

Most of the tracks are tracks to dance to. In DoctorD’s vision of the near future, maybe even under Pope Francis, church buildings are transformed into dance clubs, altars replaced by DJ booths, and candles by massive sound and light systems. Places to celebrate life. Herein lies the true goal of Missa Electronica.

Mastering audio for publishing is an intimidating task. When you read the literature, most people say that you need to leave the mastering to the professionals, if you can. In my experience, they are right: whenever, in past project, I relied on professional mastering engineers to produce my masters, I was astonished by the result. However, there are situations (zero-budget projects being one of them ;-) where you will want to master yourself.

Enter the world of the mastering plugins. There are 3 or 4 excellent mastering plugins in the market, and Izotope's Ozone5 is one of them. Since I'm an Ozone5 user, let me share 2 experiences with you - I hope they can help or inspire someone. Enjoy.

Matching EQ: if you want your production to sound like this or that reference track, the Ozone5 Matching EQ is your tool. It's dead easy: you create 2 snapshots - one from the reference track and one from your track that you are producing. Set the first snapshot as 'reference' and the second one as 'target'. Click MATCH, and Ozone5 will propose an EQ curve (the red one in the figure to the left), which you can soften and smooth (you don't want to apply an EQ curve that is too edgy during mastering). I've used a lot of matching EQ on my last project, and it gives great results.

Maximizing. Or: fighting the loudness war. A lot, and I mean A LOT, has been written about the subject of loudness. In Ozone5, you literally see the compression happening (upper pane in the figure to the left), and you just play with your threshold to control the amount of maximizing compression. I used a peak of -0.6dB and an average RMS during the signature parts of the track of -4.0dB. I'm still way above the K-12 norm, I must admit, but hey I was producing club tracks - right?

I've been doing a lot of mixing the last couple of weeks, and the DAW I'm using is Cubase 6.5
Since I have two screens in my studio, the mixing setup is shown in the figure below. Here are some of my experiences, tips and tricks:

• I reserve mixing jobs for a separate day, on which I do nothing but mixing. Context-swapping between creating and mixing is very hard
• Don't mix more than 1 hour in one lapse - take oxygen breaks, take a walk, etc.
• Prepare your mix by exporting all VST instrument tracks as wav files and import them back in your mixing project. The mixing project should no longer contain VST tracks. I had the nasty experience earlier this week where the most recent version of a project would no longer open and I had not bounced its VST tracks. Bouncing your VST tracks will also protect your music against non-compatible VST instrument future versions.
• I use Group Tracks for drums, bass, guitar, lead synth, pads/strings, fills, lead vocals and backing vocals, and move the mixing view to the left screen (see below).
• create a mixing template with a rythm delay, space delay, 3sec plate reverb and large reverb - you'll use these FX on most of your tracks anyway
• The mixing itself. I try to work in 4 dimensions: volume, frequency, pan and FX. Frequency is, at least in my experience, the hardest one: detecting conflicting frequencies can be tought and requires full concentration. In the FX dimension, you can of course go as wild as you want, but for me, track-defining FX should be in BEFORE the mixing stage. During mixing, I add the 'pepper and salt'. Sometimes with some NI TheFinger or StutterEdit, both amazing products.
• Maybe the thing that works best for me is to approach mixing in iterations of 1 week: when I have a version of a mix of which I'm satisfied, I revisit it not earlier than 1 week (2 weeks is better ;-). You will be amazed by what a pair of fresh ears can hear on a track that you thought was OK... (I think this is called 'mixing bias')
  

Enjoy!

The colour version of the music video 'Traffic Jam' has been released. Traffic Jam is a short movie by Piet Sonck, and the title song is by Wolix. Produced by Roth Eleven Productions.

KNF releases a new music video, this time for their track 'Eté à Paris'. The song is about ordinary life in Paris, the less visible but very present life  - at least when you look through the glamour. The video is made as a series of photos that rythmically follow the one after the other, interspersed with some video fragments, delivering the message that goes with the song.

KNF is a duo, with one guy creating lyrics and sounds in Paris, and the other guy arranging, mixing and producing the tracks in Belgium. Marketing and publishing by Mandleve Records. Check out the KNF website.

KNF released their first music video. Created by Yoeri Hostie (https://vimeo.com/user10832946).

Roth Eleven Productions and Mandleve Records are proud to announce the release of the KNF album 'The KNF Resurrection'. Produced at Roth Eleven Productions, mastered at Audioworkx and published by Mandleve Records.

KNF is a studio project of two guys - K (living in Paris) and F (living near Brussels) - realized through mainly remote collaboration. Featuring the following marvellous guest vocalists: Pascal Champagne, Nele Famaey, Anke Van den Heuvel (aka 'Niko Jane') and Eva Aerts. The current release features 4 lush electro-pop tracks.

Check out their music and more info on the official KNF website