The Missing Pilot

•  The Missing Pilot.ogg (Ogg Vorbis, 256Kb/s, 6.9MB)
•  The Missing Pilot.mp3 (MP3, 256Kb/s, 7.2MB)

This work was composed, performed, and produced by Jeremy Neal Kelly. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.

‘The Missing Pilot’ is my first song. I recorded it in my apartment with a laptop and some relatively inexpensive recording equipment.

I was thinking of New Order and Gang of Four when I started recording, though I don't think the result sounds much like either. The drums were a particular problem. Percussion is an integral part of both these bands' music, but I do not myself own or play drums, nor do I have a good space for recording them. The obvious alternative is to sequence the drums, but this can sound a bit stiff, and though New Order certainly uses sequencers, they also have a very capable live drummer. Ultimately I did choose the sequencer, hoping that the guitars would bring some musicality to the mix. I think this worked to some extent, but I'm not completely satisfied. Nor am I too happy with the sounds produced by the Boss DR-5, which I used here. I'll probably use a soft sampler next time

By far the most difficult parts of the project where the lyrics and the singing.

Most artists in the popular genres I like produce rather weak lyrics; I could not tell you what half the songs in my CD collection are even about. With this in mind I spent several months studying lyrics I do like and trying lamely to write my own.

What I finally came up with was inspired by several sources: Wire's ‘Marooned’, the story of Scott of the Antarctic, Low's ‘Fear’, and, unconsciously perhaps, the cover art for Low's ‘Songs For A Dead Pilot’ EP:

I think these are okay, if rather stiff. Neko Case's brilliant ‘Fox Confessor Brings the Flood’ has recently changed my notion of what lyrics can and should be, so I'll be looking in that direction for my next song.

Now, I have never been a singer, but I thought that with a bit of practice I could produce something of passable quality. Alas, this did not happen. So, after many wasted hours in front of the microphone, I bought a copy of Melodyne's Cre8, which I used to correct my questionable intonation and timing. The results are technically correct, but you can hear the pitch correction in a few places, and the sound remains awfully thin. In future I will write songs that place less emphasis on vocals.

I performed the song with a U.S. Fat Telecaster played though Line 6's PodXT Pro, and an Alesis Micron. I love the PodXT and every other Line 6 product I have owned; I can't imaging recording without it. The Micron also sounds really nice and is exceptionally well-designed. The vocals were recorded with an MXL 990, which I like, though I don't have much to compare it with. I recorded everything through an M-Audio Firewire 410. The 410 performed well for me, but the model has been superceded by several new interfaces, so I can't exactly recommend it. Aside from the vocals, everything was recorded direct.

I mixed with Cakewalk's SONAR 4 Producer Edition, about which I am ambivalent. SONAR is very powerful and quite stable, but the user interface is aggravating (though it does look nice), and the sequencer is completely uninspired. I'm considering the ways life might be better if I used Ableton's Live.

Instead of using studio monitors, I mixed with headphones: Sennheiser HD600s. I know this is a serious faux pas in recording circles, but the arguments for using monitors simply do not convince me. I have this whole rant about headphones and loudspeakers and blah blah blah, but you seem like a nice person, so I'll spare you. Anyway, the song will sound best through headphones, not least because I failed to check the mix in mono until the very end. That was a mistake.

The song is not mastered in any real sense, partly because I do not know any mastering engineers, and partly because I distrust the mastering process in general. I did equalize the track in an attempt to remove the bias imparted by the HD600s. I used no bus-level compression.

Ultimately I think the song turned out okay, though I intend to approach my next piece differently. In particular it will be much simpler, and hopefully, much easier to record.