HEVYDEVY FORUMS

Hey lads!

As some of you already now I have been obsessed by the will of
doing a tribute album for Dev since the summer of the year 2000.

Well, I've got good news..."TERRAFORMER" is in the making now.
After five years I now own all the gear and equipment I need and
I think I've collected enough experience to use it properly enough
to finally start recording without being dependent on external help
or studio work. You see, like Devin I like to have TOTAL control
over everything, considering the becoming of an album.
This way I neither need to hurry nor to make compromises.
That's the main reason the preparations for the genesis of
"Terraformer" took so long.

Well, right now I'm still experimenting...Playing with song structures,
building eq-presets and synthy-patches, etc...All I have right now is
some experimental medley, to find out how things will work out best
for me. But as soon as all the sequencer work is done and final
structures are set I'll start to record the stuff for real. Considering
the progresses I've made in the past few weeks this might be at
the middle of the next month. So there's a good chance that
"TERRAFORMER" will be out this summer. But like I said before...
If it should take longer, I'll take my time...it'll be released when I
think it's perfect the way it is.

About the sound (sonic quality)...
To tell you the truth I have absolutely NO idea of how it will sound
like in the end, but have my guaranty that I'll put all my heart and
soul into this record.
I don't have Devs experience and routine when it comes to recording,
mixing, maximizing and so on, so don't expect it to sound as huge and
fat as his stuff, but I'll do my best to deliver a well-sounding piece of
sonic experience, born out of all the inspiration I got from Devs work.
About the STYLE I can say that it's heavily influenced by Devins stuff,
but that's not a result of me thinking:
"Oh, I GOTTA make it sound like Dev!"
It's because Dev has been (and still is) my MAIN influence over the
past few years.

Another thing...please understand that this record is being made for
DEVIN in the first place. This means that HE has to decide if he wants
to share it with all of you after listening to it. IF he IS willing, I won't
hesitate to offer it to all of you...For free of course...it's a present,
and a VERY PERSONAL one, so I'd be a whore if I'd consider making
money with it. But if he decides to keep it for himself you and me will
have to respect that. Well, we'll see after it's done and he has listened
to it.

Thx for your attention so far.
Namaste!

Danny

Cool! Good luck with it all. Very interested to hear how it turns out.
Keep us updated!

Man, cool news or what? UPDATES, we need updates on the stuff!

what Coma said

Even more good news, lads!

After lotsa test recordings I just made the final decisions considering
the amps, cabinets and mics that I'm gonna use for the final recordings.
The ones of you involved into recording might know that finding some
nice basic guitar-tones can by tricky, but it definitely pays off to put
massive efford into dailing up something that fits in the mix without
much trouble instead of starting with earthshaking&brilliant "killer"-sounds.
These might sound great when heared alone but are guaranteed to turn
into a fizzy, boomy, blurry mess when layered on top of each other, and
you'll find yourself investing more time into (quite useless) eq-ing and
(frustrating&avoidable) re-recording then you'd have had if you already
started with "weaker" but well defined settings that already lack most of
the fizz-, boom-, and blur-frequencies unwanted in the final mix.

A NOTE to all readers...
The following section turned out to a little "how to get a nice guitar sound"
lesson. Non-guitarists and the ones looking for actual "TERRAFORMER"
info may jump to the next paragraph titled:
"TERRAFORMING PROGRESS INFO"
All guitarists unhappy with their sound (while performing with their band
or at recordings) are invited to read on.

Almost EVERYONE in the nowadays overdubs and thickens the guitar
sound of his records by layering multiple tracks on top of each other to
reach this nice, fat and special "100% sound"...
The problem is that if you start with a "Wow, rich bass, cutting highs...
Already sounds like it had been mastered, doesn't it?"-sound and
double it three or four times you won't get that "100%"-sound I referred
to before, but a load of SHIT! You'll collide with the bass guitar, cymbals
and vocals and you'll deperately try to get a nice cutting-through sound
by pushing it louder and louder...The problem is...THAT WON'T HELP!
You'll find the other instruments to by pushed back, turning their volume
up too then and end up where you started. I've experienced that myself
a LOT of times before (not only at recordings but also at playing live),
before I sat down and draw the right conclusion...less is more!
When playing for themselves and alone most rock and metal guitarists
will dail up amp settings that look like this:
"Lotsa bass!" (cause they're missing the fat body that a bass guitar
would add if it was there)
"Down with the mids! Mids are the enemy! Fuck the mids!"
(less mids = less tone definition = less audible playing mistakes)
This automatically leads to:
"Lets add some highs, I can't hear what I'm playing!"

So far so good...This CAN sound nice...As long as you're playing ALONE!
Now add a second guitarrist (or an entire band) to the game and hell
breaks loose! HE (of course) is likely to have the SAME settings.
To cut a long story short...It'll end up like this:
For none of the guitarists is really able to hear himself out (cause of the
noise and frequencies all the others add) they'll start to turn their amps
louder. Of course the others, being pushed back in the allover sound, will
react and do the same, and the session turns out into sheer sonic
mayhem. With the nowadays power amps, able to get loud as fuck,
two losers are already clearly defined. Your drummer and your ears...
...and, in the worst case (financially seen), your speakers...

So here's a free advice to all guitarists having these problems
and reading this: Mids are your friends! A guitar is a mid range
instrument...if you dail all the mids out, you cut its balls off.
Plus...you'll be able to get much louder without blowing your
speakers if you leave the mids in.
Time for a little experiment. First off all set your bass and highs knobs
to 12 a clock (neutral setting) and turn the mids ALL the way down.
Play a little...now set the mids to 12 o clock too...Ooops!
You recognized that your amp just seemed to get twice as loud as before?
Well, in fact it didn't...it's as loud as before...you just HEAR more of your
guitar sound. Learned a lesson? That's fine!
Another advice! Always tweak your amps sounds at rehearsal/gig level,
not at bedroom/living-room level...Otherwise you'll end up dailing in too
much bass and highs again. The human ear reacts much more sensible
to low and high frequencies than to the mids. This means that while
turning up the volume the mids seem to stay pretty linear at the same
level but the bass and highs increase almost expontential. This psycho-
acoustic phenomenon is also known as the "Fletcher/Munson Effect".
If you follow my advice you're guaranteed to be a much more happy
guitarist in the future.





TERRAFORMING PROGRESS INFO:


I'm still experimenting with ambient stuff, samples, keys and synths, but
you'll soon be able to listen to some short, raw excerpts from the intro
song "Interstellar Carnival" and from "Core Meltdown".

Some info on the songs that'll be on the record:
They're named: "Interstellar Carnival", "Gravity", "Core Meltdown",
"Ray-Storm", "Full Eclipse", "H2O" (one pretty long epic bastard,
devided into three parts called "Hypolimnion", "Metalimnion" and
"Eplilimnion"), "Biosphere" and "Microcosm" + a bonus track that'll
be, even if he decides to share the record with all of you, on Devins'
copy only.

About the title of the disk...I'm not sure it needs one, cause there'll
DEFINITELY NOT be a follow up/sequel to "TERRAFORMER".
Why? Cause this would make no sense at all. It'll become clear to
you after having listened to it (or not, depending on how Devin decides).
Anyway, everything will be said and done after you'll have listened to it
so I'll rush right to my next project. But if I SHOULD give it a sub-title,
I guess it'll be "Devine Genesis". (This will also make sense to you
after havin' dug into the stuff)

Okay, now some info on the two tracks I mentioned before
(Interstellar Carnival" and "Core Meltdown") and from which
you'll hear some excerpts soon (if you like to...).

"Interstellar Carnival" is the intro, and there's lotsa crazy stuff
going on there. Nuclear chaos in shapeless clouds of gas...
Dance of the atoms...light and colors and violent shit.
BIG-BANG...'nuff said.

Jumpin' over "Gravity", that slowly brings form into it all,
(i'm still working on some structures here) we come to
"Core Meltdown"...Fast, hot, furious...Birth of the sun.
Beautiful but leathal...Along with "Ray-Storm" the
most heavy and agressive song on "TERRAFORMER"
Hope your necks are well trained, otherwise you might
bang your head off your shoulders...

Hope that helped to ease your curiosity a bit...
I'll put the sample-clips online as soon as possible.
Once that'll be done I'll add the link HERE...

Namaste!

Danny

Sounds very interesting indeed and I couldn't agree more with your comments about guitar tone!

Terraformer <- a serious case of fan-derangement

Man, I love you you rule!!!!

Forget what I said last time..."Interstellar Carnival" and "Core Meltdown"
will have to wait...Today I've been structuring "Full Ecplise" and just found
some VERY nice new riffs, so I'm gonna trash the old version and go for
a new one...As I'm doing test recordings right now it would be nonsense
to break off the procedure and record some other stuff for you to listen
to. So an excerpt from "Full Eclipse" will be the first stuff that you're
gonna hear from "Terraformer". As you can guess from its name
"Full Eclipse" is a rather dark but also very powerful song, leading
into the first really positive song of the album which will be "H2O".
There won't be vocals on the preview/sample track except for the
backing/choir vocals, but these are just tonal voices without text...
I'm still working on the lyrics for the entire album, so I can't record
the lead vocals yet. I'm not sure when I'll be able to release the
teaser, but Sunday Afternoon seems pretty realistic.
Though this is just demo stuff to give you an idea of what TF will
sound like it takes time, so all the ones interested in the project...
...please be patient.

Thx for your attention...I'll keep you updated.

Dan

Wow man... The whole thing is very interesting!

I agree with you about the guitar sound section... I'm a drummer, but I know very well what you're talking about!!

Thx for all the feedback, lads...

'Bout guitar- (and overall-) tone once more...
To tell you the truth, I have absolutely NO idea of how it'll sound like
in the end. Of course I have quite clear vision in my head, but only
god knows if I'll be able to realize it. "Terraformer" is turning out into
a REALLY big production (referring to the work process here, not to
the quality of the end-product, about which I, like I said, can't tell
ANYTHING yet). When I had the idea for this project, I knew that pro-
ducing it wouldn't be a quick cup of tea. But it was last week when I
finally realized how big it REALLY is. For example...
When I roughly calculated how many tracks I'd use on the songs in
average my jaw just dropped. Okay, it'll be not as packed as Infinity
(if I remember correctly, Dev once said that he used up to 300(!)
tracks on some songs) but it's far beyond every demo or experimental
stuff I have done yet...To be honest, this is gonna be my first major
production. Anyway, I'm putting all my heart and soul into it...
And it's not that I recently bought some recording gear and said:
"Let's record a tribute to Dev."
"Terraformer" has been a way of living for me in the past five years, in
which I planned how to get my vision on a disk, purchased the necessary
gear piece by piece, learned how to use it, etc...By now I think I'm ready
to go, so I won't waste any more time.

So long, take care...

Dan

Wow. Talk about fandom. hehe.

Hope The Dev is willing to share at least a track once it's done.

Dude this is sounding great, I'm so exited and I probally won't even get to hear it! Haha thanks for the guitair tone info as well my band sounds better already, I play bass but our lead guitairist was making all the mistakes you were talking about. His tone fits so much better with the band now, thanks dude keep up the great work.

Hi, lads...
Again, thx for the feedback...

@ Funny_Little_Guy
Nice to hear that my little advice helped your band to improve the over-
all sound. By the way...You'd be happy that you have a guitarist that is
willing to actually TAKE an advice. Guitarists can be VERY complicated
people when it comes to their tone, you know. Few of them are willing
to compromise once they think they found that "holy grail" of tone.
And how MANY "grails" there are!
If you watch 'em from the corner of your eye you'll see 'em tweak
a lil bit here and a lil bit there between the songs or even during.
They're NEVER really satisfied. Of course they aren't...NO sound is
perfect for EVERY situation in a song.

Another funny thing I realized over the years...When guitarists buy
amps they (up to 80%) tend to buy the WRONG ones...At the shop
it all sounds great...they choose an amp that's "hip" for the style they
play, dail up a "fat" sound, like it and buy the darn thing. But at the
first rehearsal wih a complete band it all of a sudden sounds like shit!
They'll try to find a sound that fits in without much compromise for a
few month or years and then trade in the amp for the next one...
And that'll be, of course, an amp of the same league...
And its all starts again!

What I'm trying to say is that you have to be open minded as a guitarist.
An old Fender Twinmaster from the 60', overdriven with a tube-screamer
pedal, might have delivered EXACTLY the tone you've been looking for
cause the amp has the right characteristics...But no...! YOU had to buy a
Triple Rectifier or a Randall Warhead, cause THOSE are real high gain
amps and many famous metal guitarists play 'em. Don't get me wrong,
I'm not saying that you can't get nice tones from those. But you might
get a better tone from an amp you would have never ever considered to
buy, cause it seems to be "too small" or "vintage shit".

Another thing...I'm sorry, but I won't be able to present you some
samples from "Full Eclipse" today...It was my cousins birthday yesterday
and I haven't had time yet to structure the new riffs I found. So I'll record
a rough version of one of Devs' songs instead ("Seventh Wave"). This will
give you an idea of the sonic quality I'm able to achive with my actual
mixing skills, without forcing me to put too much time into something that
won't stand for the final quality and structure of the songs. I can play
most songs from AE, Infinity and Biomech from my head, so I won't have
to worry about sequencing and programming to much, cause I already
know the structures. Guess I should be able to put an mp3 online tonight.

Take care!

Dan

Allright...
I found some time today and recorded a rough and raw version
of "Seventh Wave"...On the one hand side to check my amp settings,
on the other hand cause I promised to deliver some sound files that
should give you an idea of how my own project (Terraformer) might
sound like in the end. So I sat down and recorded a basic drum track
and four guitar tracks. Grrrr...and right when I wanted to do the vocals
I realized that I had made a mistake in the verse, fucking up a riff
(the "....ho-o-o-o-ome!" part). The vocals wouldn't fit in and sounded
shitty. Yeah, I know I could have re-recorded that part, but I'm a lazy
fuck, and so there's no vocals for now. Also I don't have a bass guitar
available at the time being, so all you get to hear is drums and guitars.

Like I said before, it's just a quick, raw recording. The drums
arent eq-ed and processed yet, so please don't complain...
I KNOW they sound like shit.

The guitars were recorded with my Line6 "Vetta" amp, going straight into
my Roland VS 1824 CD workstation (by the way...thx for the tip on the
multimedia section of the "Physicist" record! These Roland things ROCK!)
without additional eq-ing...

I added some overall compression and a minimal ammount of
corrective eq...and thats it...sound pretty nice for an hour of work,
I think.

Now for the IMPORTANT part...You might have asked yourself:
"Where's the friggin download link?"
I have no free webspace right now, so if anyone is willing to put it
online for me just write me a mail and I'll send you the mp3 file so
you can put it online and post the like here...
Thx!

Okay, that's it for now...

Take care!

Dan

hey Terraformer,
hows the project coming along? havent heard anything for weeks.

keep posting tips on getting the best sound too, i need all the help i can get

Yeah how's it going?