Some Dream Theater fun!

[Danny Danzi]

If anyone has the latest Dream Theater album, you've noticed something different on it. Stems of EVERY song on the album for you to mess around with in your DAW. In the first clip, DtStem, I took one of the stems from a song called "A Rite of Passage" and just leveled it up as best as I could without any processing.

In the second clip, it's my take on how "I" would have made the tune sound if I was playing it or producing it. Was really fun to compare side by side. Another thing I wanted to show you guys with this particular example is how loud you can make something and still not lose your dynamics. The original DT song is highly compressed and pretty loud...but there really is no reason to have that much compression in my opinion. You can actually make things louder by not compressing as much if you have all the right stuff happening. I did use compression, but not to the point of where you'll see this in the wave file:

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I just threw this together really fast so it's not perfect or anything, but I used a few of the methods I've been talking about on the boards here for the past few days. A bit of guitar layering goin on here as well as a few mastering goodies.

I tried to make mine a little bigger, louder, less compressed as well as have a little more bottom end going on. I had a blast with this and hope you enjoy it. I'll give you a few production notes in case you happen to dig what I did here.

DAW Software: Sonar 8.5, Adobe Audition 3, WaveLab 6

Drums: 11 piece custom Roland V drums kit with dual triggers for the initial recording, BFD 2 processed along with it making that 2 drum kits combined together (36 tracks of drums as the dual triggers give me 18 instruments per kit) and Drumagog to sweeten things up a bit.

Bass: Felt like trying the bass inside Sonar's Dimension Pro which was a Fender through an Ampeg I believe. It's pretty convincing for a sampled bass which I triggered via midi through Bomes midi keyboard (the keyboard I'm typing to you on LOL) because I was too lazy to sit at my real keyboard.

Guitars: Carvin DC 400 custom into my trusty Digitech 2101 via XLR into a Tascam DM 4800 then into my Layla soundcards. 2 mono tracks of dry guitar, 2 cloned tracks of the dry ones processed for room sound, a 3rd guitar track in stereo played with a HAAS delay effect inside the 2101 in real time.

That's about it...hope you guys enjoy it.

[brianinogang]

OMG..... THIS IS COOOOL..... nicely done bro. yours is better than the actual sample. good job in fillin in the details on how you recorded this track. These are the kinds of threads that really broaden our recording knowledge. good stuff and GOOD JOB!!! cheers!!! Now im gonna get me one of those new DT albums

[Danny Danzi]

Many thanks, Brian. I figured if a few people liked it, I'd list the details just in case. If they hated it, they could just ignore the production details. LOL! Thanks again man!

[brianinogang]

Originally Posted by Danny Danzi

Many thanks, Brian. I figured if a few people liked it, I'd list the details just in case. If they hated it, they could just ignore the production details. LOL! Thanks again man!

HAHA thats the attitude that im talkin about!!! no problem dude. Im always on the lookout for threads like yours. lucky me i didnt bail out on reading the threads that i missed coz i havent been here a long time.hehe. Thanks for lettin us listen and learn. hey dude i also have the same kind of thread. just posted it yesterday. same concept and coincidentally, also about dream theater.. maybe you can take a swing on it. here's the link. if you have some time you can destroy it.hehe. thanks man!!!

dream theater - stream of consciousness

[eamon7]

hi danny. yea its me from guitarblast. what a treat to have you here. i'm pretty new to the site but hope to learn a few things. your samples are so clean its amazing. great proof that you can acheive loudness and not lose dynamics. that one of the many things i learned from you. anthough the snare lost a bit if its fatness in the 2nd mix the overall mix belw away the first one.

[Danny Danzi]

Hey eamon, good to see ya man! Thanks glad ya liked the stuff. I gotta ask though, when you say the snare lost fatness in the second mix, can you define fatness?

The reason I ask, that's another one of those words that some people get lost with. My idea of the word is, big, fat, sonic field presence, some girth to it etc. To me, the second mix snare has all that and the first mix snare sounds like a thin, weak, over-comped drum machine snare. I'm not arguing your opinion or anything, but I can't hear that at all on my end bro. Second mix snare sounds so fat to me it's like a shotgun blast especially at 0:38 on out where the crash cymbal lets up and leaves the mix.

Anyway, good to have ya here.

[fHumble fHingaz]

That's a pretty amazing example of what can be accomplished. I listened a while ago, but I misunderstood your post, thinking that yours was the first one! (duh!) Ahh...now I understand it's the other way around... The biggest difference I noticed (apart from the overall power of the track) was in the drum sound. In the DT version, it sounds like the engineer has overdone his use of Transient Designer - The transients on the kick & snare are so hard & loud that it's having the effect of reducing the sustain & "meat" of the tail of each of those respective sounds. Anyhow... cool playing & and a very insightful example - thanks.

[Danny Danzi]

Thanks fHumble, much appreciated. Yeah the DT original does have that over-used Transient Designer sound, doesn't it? Yet I used that too on my snare. What a killer plug...it's so easy to over-use it though if you're not careful. Hahaha glad ya came back and commented knowing which mix was which. Sorry if my notes were a bit unclear or misleading.

I realized just now that I probably put this in the wrong place...sorry for that...n00b mistake on my part.

[fHumble fHingaz]

What a killer plug...it's so easy to over-use it though if you're not careful.

You've got that right! I just got a UAD2 card - I tried out the demo of TD & it blew me away. I'm savin' up for it now, 'cause I blew my vouchers on the wonderful Fatso & Neve 88R plugins. I'll just have to be content using Sonar 8's TS64 Transient Shaper for the moment - It's still pretty damn good, but TD just has that seductive "something" about it.

[Danny Danzi]

fHumble, you can also try that plug by Stillwell audio I think it's called....Transient Monster. I liked it better than the Sonar Transient as it gave me more of that "pop" and "sustain" we get out of the UAD TD. Do a search for it if you get a chance, should be easy to find. If not let me know and I'll trakc it down for you. You don't get as much control out of it like you do the Sonar plug, but it gives you more of that TD sound without the artifacts of the Sonar plug. You'll see what I mean if you find it.