You Are My Sunshine Mp3

So I've been playing with some new fun software, like Audacity and Buzz, and a little Berhinger Eurorack mx 602a to record some music and mix it and add effects.  This is a hot combination.  So I thought I'd put together a song - my song of choice "You are my sunshine", since it is simple and I'm no master music genius (like Bill, who showed me a how to do this stuff with his cool equipment).  And since I love to share, I've put up the mp3 for a free download.  It's me on the violin, guitar, bass, and vocals - and I'm just tickled pink at would I could rig together.

Download "You are my sunshine". (1,555Kb) (about 5-10 minutes on dialup)

What I did here was put a pickup on my violin, and put that into one channel on the mixer board.  The mixer board is really used, in this case, to bring the level down to a point that it doesn't overload the computer's input.  If it does, it makes this nasty crunch (handy for distortion, but lame for violin).  I also hooked up an electic/acoustic guitar to another channel on the mixer, and adjusted the levels there.  I then plugged the output on from the Eurorack mixer board into the microphone input, using whatever cable that I could get to fit.  I fired up Audacity, set the preferences to play while it recorded, and proceeded to record the 7 tracks.  First played the guitar chords, then a straight violin.  After getting that right, which took me a while, I played the melody with the guitar (turned up a bit), and then a fancy version of the violin.  It was missing something, so I tried drumming on my guitar.  That didn't help.  Then I put in a bass track, which was just the ticket.

 Then came the trick of finding and hooking up a microphone, not to mention that I don't really sing, per se.  I couldn't find a mic that fit into any of the inputs on my mixer, so I plugged my mic I use for counter strike into the mic port.  This was too quiet, but my sound card has a "microphone boost" and "alternative microphone" checkboxes, that once checked, yeilded the proper sound level (sorta).  So I began the embaressing process of singing this song.  First a lower vocal part, and then I tried to do an even lower, but I couldn't.  So the second vocal had to be higher.  After a few embaressing attempts, I finally came up with a main vocal track that wasn't too embaressing.

So, with all the tracks laid down, I exported each track as a seperate wav file.  Then I fired up Jeskola's Buzz, switched to the Wavetable, and added all of those wav's.  This took me a while to figure out, so if you want to do this (this is all free software after all ;P), read close.  Then I switched to the "Machines" view and proceeded to add 7 instances of the "Matilde Tracker" (Under Gear->Trackers) - one for each track (renaming the tracks now makes this easier later on).  Then I added a Jeskola Mixer - and connected each of the trackers to the mixer, and the mixer to the master (use shift click to connect machines).

Here's the tricky part - Since this software is intense, it takes a second to set up the simple stuff like the next part.  Switch to the pattern editor (F2) and choose your first track using the "machines" dropdown.  Type "A".  You'll see that it fills in C#4 01 in the first 5 places in the pattern.  This software allows for you to create drum beats and rythms and synthetic tracks and all sorts of crazy stuff, which makes it tricky to just tell it to play it once, in the key that it is recorded, and which track number.  When you fill in a spot, you are filling in when to start the track, which "frequency" to play at (You us A to tell it the "natural" key of C#4), and which track number (in the wavtable screen) to begin playing.  Since you have the first on filled in, fill in C#4 02 for the second machine (use the "machines" dropdown"), C#4 03 for the third track, etc....

Second trick - and this was buried in the manual - switch to the Sequence Editor (F4).  This is like the pattern editor, but for the whole song.  You've got to tell it when to start each machine (the tracks), and how long the song is going to be.  First thing I do is choose 256 under the "Step" dropdown.  Next, fill in a row of 00 at the top row under each column (which should be your tracks).  This tells the machine when to start each track.  Each time it runs into a 00 it begins the track over.  Next, set the length of you song, in steps (I just experiment).  Click on 128, and then press Ctrl-E Ctrl-E (don't ask me why... took me forever to figure it out).  This will set the end of your song at the 128th step (whenever that is).

Well now you press play, and the loop button (up in the control bar), and begin listening to your song.  Switch back to the Machines screen (F3), double click on the mixer, and you can adjust the levels.  Add more machines, like delays and compression and distortion, and connect instruments to them and them to the mixer.  Then you can mix the original sound and the distorted sounds seperately.  You can pan left and right.   Oh my oh my, its' some damn good software.

Then, when you are ready to record, choose "View->Extended Hard Disk Recorder", click on "Select HD Plugin", and choose the MP3 encoder.  Click on "Save As..." and choose the filename you will save this as.  Make sure your song is playing, and when it comes around to the beginning, click on Rec.  It is recording in real time, so you can make adjustments to the mixer and effects and such and the results end up on your mp3.  When the song is over, click "Stop".  Boom, you've got a fully mixed and mastered mp3.

What do you think of my song ?  Please tell me, this is my first time doing this.

-Chris