This is another cover song that I have been wanting to record for MANY years. It is another Roger Taylor song from one of his solo albums and has always been one of those "epic" songs in my opinion in all of the songs in my library. This one is from his Strange Frontier album from 1984. When this album came out, I must have listened to it so many times - on vinyl - that the grooves wore out and this was one of the songs I listened to more than any. There are so many cool things in here, like in the song I did before from his first solo album (My Country Parts 1 & 2).
I tried to record this song an MANY occasions and came up short each time I tried, barely scratching the surface of what this song really is.
So here we are in 2020, amid the Corona Virus lockdown. I was watching some tutorial videos on the Presonus YouTube channel and came across one on using a combination of the Pattern Editor and the Impact instrument and that was the kickoff for this song to start taking shape that I needed. Really, that part wasn't really that complicated, but the inspiration got me going and I was able to pick the rest of it up from there.
So, with the lockdown, even though I have still been working at least as many hours as I usually would, the song "Killing time" seemed so appropriate that I just had to finish it. And what a great play on words: Killing Time, as in "got nothing better to do" or "it's time to kill" - who know which meaning was really intended! It took a lot of work, especially in keeping with the original arrangement while trying to add something modern and of my own, and especially making sure that I tried to stay at least somewhat true to the "middle section" of analog synth orchestra goodness!
In this one, I used Studio One, MANY synths from both the Sample Tank 2 library as well as the ones that came with the upgraded Analog Lab that came with my copy of Studio One. That CMI synth hit couldn't be done without this! Such a classic 80s sound that is on so many songs and was featured pretty prominently on this one. I also used the Pearl Mimic Pro for the drums, my Epiphone Traditional Pro II Les Paul (including some clean stuff done with the pickup "coil-split" to give it a bit of single coil sound). Beyond that, this one used a combination of the Console 1's SSL 4000e and the British Class A (for the first time) on drums, the vocals, and some other parts.
A ton of work went into this, but I actually got it done pretty quickly considering how long it took to get to the point of actually recording it (seriously, I checked the dates and my first attempts at this were in Cakewalk Sonar version 6 in 2007!).
I hope you enjoy it and will leave a comment or at least a reaction below. And Buy the Album! Again, from Roger Taylor, Strange Frontier.