Now Playing. "Daily Pilgrimage to Scooter's (1990s Version)" by T1na Badgraph1csghost
While I was thinking of what song to put onto my last blog entry, I decided to try giving the Digidesign SampleCell treatment to one of my REALLY old FL Studio songs. Given the subject of the entry, "Daily Pilgrimage to Scooter's" from Eight Solid State presented itself pretty quickly; so I opened it for the first time since I saved it as an unregistered user back in 2020 and applied my SCII strings soundfont to it. At the same time, I changed the piano from FLEX's GM2 Dark Piano to the Proteus/1 "Loose Piano" instrument, and the drumkit to the Roland SC-55. Back then, I hadn't found much of anything apart from Spitfire LABS and what came with FL Studio Trial by default, so I limited my instruments to basically these. The most adventurous I ever got was with "Two Weeks Notice", the first song I wrote after coronaquitting my office job; where I used BBC Symphony Orchestra's trumpet and horn section, and VSCO2's upright piano. It was pretty similar to the stuff I put out on my first library album, Newsbreak (so much so, I even called it NEWSBREK.FLP).
Anyway, the thing about "Pilgrimage" is that, since I had such a limited set of plugins, it was easy to substitute one set for another. These days, I'm up to my spleen in orchestral libraries. You can't sit down anywhere in my studio without sitting on a cellist, pretty much. Pianos are the same way; I've got miles and miles of 9' grand pianos, 6' baby grands, uprights, spinnets, and harpsichords. And the whole Eight Solid State record is basically the same way; limited samples, easy to change out for a better sound.
Now, "better", obviously, is subjective. There's nothing wrong with any of the sounds I recorded and released on the record. I quite like LABS Strings and would recommend it for any newcomer to writing music on the computer. But, it's like what I was saying about videogame consoles several months ago: newer isn't always better. This experiment with "Pilgrimage" taught me that the SCII is still capable of producing a broadcast-quality sound, despite being 20 years old. The Proteus/1 piano, admittedly, does sound a little primitive, but buried in with other instruments with its own room reverb, it's really hard to tell, even in a solo. The SC-55 drums are the same way. Real drums were recorded to create this patch; nothing synthetic, nothing improvised. Round-robins are a little bit of a problem, but if that's your only gripe about the SC-55, sit down.
It's within the realm of possibility that I could remaster all the songs in the same manner... but should I? For my own personal use, of course I will. But, I've always believed that if someone releases a remaster, it means they didn't believe the original version could stand on its own and it needs to be replaced by this new and improved version. I don't believe that about Eight Solid State. Sure, some of it shows some newbie mistakes, like not realising that FL Studio treats the sustain pedal like a NOTE OFF event instead of a PEDAL ON/OFF (which makes quantising piano solos a royal pain in the ass). But, I genuinely believe in the quality of the original recordings; they perform the way I intended them and I wouldn't change a note, I wouldn't quantise a beat about them.
Plus, I like how primitive my studio sounds. I need to remind myself that I didn't always have such a grand (and largely free) studio setup, and I was still able to create broadcast-quality music in spite of it.
--21 April 2024--
Daily Pilgrimage to Scooter's
from EIGHT SOLID STATE. Written by Tina Rosenthal (LCI)
Copyright © 2020 LCI Music.
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