The Sunday Song: Id Est
On page 155 of Theory of Fun for Game Design there is some sheet music. It looks like this.
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This is that song, played on solo acoustic guitar. – download
The song is played in DADGAE tuning, one of my favorite “weird” tunings — basically DADGAD with an added 2nd. As usual, I miked up like crazy: two condenser mics aimed at the guitar (one at the soundhole, the other at the 12th fret) plus a bigger diaphragm mic sitting a couple of feet away. I also used a pickup on this one, a Dean Markley Promag Grand.
I have the sound space set up a little weird… the ambient mic is “in the back,” by applying a fair amount of reverb to it. It’s panned around 36% to the right. The fretboard mic and the pickup and panned hard left and right, with much lighter reverb. And the soundhole mic is dead center, with a dry signal.
This has been knocking around the house since 2003, but I just got around to recording it right before the holidays. Enjoy!
2 Responses to “The Sunday Song: Id Est”
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That was nice, Raph! I admire your ability on the guitar. It astounds me that I first picked an acoustic guitar nearly 18 years ago and it saddens me that I never had the resolve to actually learn how to play properly. You’re quite good at it and that’s awesome!
I enjoyed your details about how you recorded and mixed the song. I have experience and training with that from long, long ago (almost 20 years ago!). Anyhow, one of the neat tricks I learned is right-left time shifting, where you pull the right channel back in time slightly and moe the left channel forward in time slightly, with the result being a “surround sound” effect. Now you can do this to the whole track if you like, but I have found it’s actually most pleasing to only time shift duplicate track of the main instrument (or in your case of multiple microphones, one mic source, such as the one further away from the guitar). The time shifted tracks are at a lower volume and can have a slight reverb applied to them before time shifting. Doing this is so simple, but it can sound amazing – like being in the instrument itself (especially with headphones on).
Though, I should warn you to keep in mind that when it comes to music itself, I “go simply go forth and DO” rather apply years of study or understanding. 🙂
I was thinking that you might like listing to Andy McKee’s guitar playing and Ronald Jenkees’ improvisations on the keyboard. Both are pretty inspiring for their imagination and skill, but not widely known (as far as I am aware).
I like Andy McKee a lot. I did this piece based on the tuning he uses: