So, I've
lost my damn mind and decided to do another one of these split-screen videos. I
have to say that the Bohemian Rhapsody video was more successful than I could
have ever imaged while making it. I'm so
honored that so many people have decided to watch it and share it with their
friends. A lot of people have subscribed
to my YouTube channel and have been asking me to do another video, so here it
is!
Ok, Bohemian
Rhapsody is my favorite song of all time, so to me, doing that was a
no-brainer. Having been fascinated with
that song for most of my life, I pretty much knew the entire thing before I
went to record it. This time, I had to pick something that was not only equally
epic and fun, but also something that was just as meaningful to me. Before I get into the technical mumbo jumbo,
here's a little back story about my relationship with these songs. (If you just want to get to the tech stuff,
scroll down to WARNING: TECH TALK)
Since I was
a kid, movies have had such a strong influence on me. When I saw "La Bamba"
in 1987, that made me decide to start taking guitar lessons. Luckily for me, I
was really into the music of the 1950's which meant that I could have an entire
repertoire of music with only 4 or 5 chords under my belt. The Ritchie Valens
music served as a gateway to the early American rockers like Little Richard,
Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis. I was very content just listening to
this music and nothing else. That was until I saw the movie "Ferris
Beuler's Day Off." There's a parade scene in that movie where Matthew
Broderick mimes the Beatles' version of "Twist And Shout." That blew me away. It was still 3 chord rock but it was so much heavier
than what I was listening to. I knew my
Uncle Phil had all of the Beatles albums in his collection so I asked him if he
could make me a cassette of that song. So next time I visited him, he gave me a
cassette. On that cassette he put: Twist
and Shout, She Loves You, and I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Since I was a 50's nut, these songs weren't
much of a stretch. However, he also put the entire "Rubber Soul"
album on that same cassette. When I listened to that album, it changed my
life. Instantly, my favorite band was
the Beatles. I took it upon myself to learn every mundane detail about the
Beatles' history and music. My wardrobe consisted of mostly Beatles T-shirts,
which were very hard to come by at that time. If you could imagine a time when
it wasn't cool to like the Beatles, this was it. None of the other kids understood the
Beatles. (Just a quick side note: In
1995 when the Beatles Anthology was released, all of the sudden it became cool
to like Beatles. Figures.) My Beatles
fanaticism got so intense that I even begged my dad to get me a John Lennon 325
Rickenbacker (which I use in this video.)
Once I got
to High School, the Beatles became standard repertoire in most of my music
classes. I was lucky enough to go to Curtis
High School which is the unofficial
music high school
of Staten Island . Our
teacher, Lou Mannarino, was also a Beatles nut so he would work a lot of Beatles
songs into the curriculum. During my time at Curtis, we got to opportunity to
play at Lincoln Center with our school Symphony. This was a very exciting time. The coolest
thing about it was that we were going be doing Golden Slumbers/Carry That
Weight/The End as the finale song.
Playing it live was one thing, but getting to play it live with a full
orchestra was mind blowing! With
rehearsals for our Lincoln
Center concert underway,
we were all in Beatles-mode. We found
out that Paul McCartney was going to be on the Oprah show and we managed to get
tickets. During a commercial break I yelled out to Sir Paul and asked him if he
would play with us at Lincoln
Center . He gave a big grin and said,
"sure!" Now we were all going
nuts! We were on cloud 9. This was like
a dream come true. The news was covering the story and it was a big deal.
Sadly, Paul's wife Linda passed away shortly after that taping and he wasn't
able to attend our concert.
The concert
was a huge success. It was kind of bittersweet since Paul wasn't there, but it
was still amazing. We all knew that we were part of something special.
Later on in
college, I had a cover band called Hit Me With It. One day we decided that we wanted to do all
of Abbey Road
live. I think we had a gig on a Friday in Staten Island
and we wanted to have it ready for that gig. So on Thursday, we went to our
drummer's house in Westchester and we
rehearsed the entire album. That was all we did, one day. That night we walked
into a bar in Westchester . We noticed they
didn't have any band playing that night.
We asked if we could play and they let us. We set up and did the whole
album live as a kind of dress rehearsal. It was a lot of fun. The next night,
we did our Staten Island show and that was
also great. In fact, I posted the whole show on my YouTube channel if you want
to check it out.
These are
songs that keep popping up at times in my life.
They remind me of good times and great moments. They are really special to me so that was a
big part of why I chose to do them for this video.
WARNING: TECH TALK
Ok, so I
picked this medley to do. Apart from the
sentimental reasons, there are also technical reasons. First, this song is epic and very similar to
Bohemian Rhapsody in structure. (I actually think that Bohemian Rhapsody is
probably Queen's version of the Abbey
Road medley, but I'm sure there are plenty of
people who would disagree.) Second, I wanted an excuse to play with some
instruments I've never tried before. And lastly I knew it was something I was
going to be able to sing without killing myself.
Before I
get into the nitty gritty. I want to give credit where credit is due. I did not invent this genre of video. There is an extremely talented guy who did an
amazing split-screen video of Chick Corea's "Got A Match." He
inspired me to do my split-screen video. I highly recommend watching this
video: http://youtu.be/Otbe5c2OIxI
The first
thing I did was tempo mapping. I brought
the original song into Pro Tools and mapped out all of the tempo changes. There
were a lot of them. This song was not recorded to a click and the tempo
fluctuates about anywhere from 2 to 10 BPM from measure to measure. I initially
tried to record this to a steady click, but the song just doesn't work that
way. I used to think that songs with moving tempos were no good, but after
listening to a lot of classic songs more carefully, I realized that many
classic songs couldn't exist with a fixed tempo.
After
mapping out the tempo, I tackled the piano. I spent a good amount of time on
this. It just wasn't sounding right. Something was missing. I was either playing
too much or too little. After a quick internet search, I came across a YouTube
video posted by YouTube user, rasboi, contaning the multi-tracks of the Abbey Road
sessions. Needless to say, this was
extremely helpful and once I was able to hear the piano isolated, I could
figure it out and the part just fell into place. For the piano I'm using the Mini Grand plug
in that comes with Pro Tools.
The drums
were next on my list. This was the next of several roadblocks I would encounter
along the way. I called my friend, Damian Scro, and he talked me through the
parts. He explained that Ringo is a lefty, so a lot of his fills move in the
opposite direction of a righty drummer.
This complicated things for me since my drum skills are not that great. I
found this drum part to be much harder than Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian
Rhapsody was more structured. In this, there's a lot of jamming. I didn't want
to wimp out too much on this drum part, so once again, I decided it was best to
transcribe the whole thing onto paper. This was really helpful. After many
attempts, I finally got a good take of the drum part. I was heartbroken when I
went back to check the video footage I recorded during this take and found that
it was out of focus. I was so happy with the take that I decided to leave it as
is. In the video, you'll notice the drum screen looks weird when compared to
the others. This is because I did my best to sharpen it and make it look
semi-presentable. I'm happy to say, that
I will not be using this camera anymore after this project.
The drums
were recorded using a Roland TD-6 kit with a Alesis Surge cymbals. I used this kit as a MIDI controller and
recorded that MIDI data into Pro Tools. After
that, I sent that data to FXpansion's BFD2 plug in. To get that Abbey Road tea towel sound, I used very little
ambience on the kit. The room mics were
all muted. I also used BFD2's dampening
function to get the drums to sound as close to the record as I could.
You'll notice
there are 2 drum screens. The second screen is a simple kick snare overdub. You
can hear it on the original record hard panned to the right. For that I used Sample Tank.
Next was
the bass track. This was probably the easiest thing to record. I used a
Rickenbacker 4001s from the 70s that my uncle and I restored. There is a long story about the restoration
of this particular bass, but I will save that for a future post. The bass has flat wound strings on it which
are crucial to getting that Beatles bass tone.
I plugged that straight into an SSL preamp and used Native Instruments
Guitar Rig 4 plug in. I used their SVT
model. I used a pick which is also a crucial part of getting the Beatles bass
tone.
Once the
rhythm section was done, I was at a crossroads. Should I just use samples for
the orchestra, or should I attempt to actually play all these instruments? Well, in a moment of insanity, I decided to
give the real thing a try. I was able to borrow a trumpet, trombone, violin and
cello from friends and family. My plan
was to play each part 3 to 6 times to get that nice natural orchestral
chorusing. Then I would blend it all
with a nice reverb and it should sound like a real orchestra, right? WRONG!
I started
with the violin. I was so bad at the
violin that I couldn't stop myself from laughing during takes. After 3 hours of playing violin, I managed to
finish 8 bars of half notes. That's 16
notes in 3 hours. They all sounded scratchy and horrendous. I started to record a double of my 16 note
triumph to find that 2 wrongs did not make a right. The double track sounded
like bad squared. I just could not get a
useable tone from this instrument.
I was ready
to give up, but then I did some more online research and came across a very
helpful YouTube video posted by theonlinepianotutor. In her first lesson she
teaches how to hold the bow. At first I though that it was stupid, but then I
followed her directions as closely as I could and BAM....TONE! Granted, it wasn't a good tone, but it was
useable. I was able to produce long
tones without the notes getting scratchy and that was a good start.
Recording
the violin part was a long an painstaking process involving many many takes, a
lot of editing and pitch correction. I
am playing the parts you hear on the video, but I'm getting a lot of help from
studio magic. After I saw how long it took to record ONE violin part, I
realized there was no way I would be able to double this 6 times. I moved right onto to violin 2.
I will
admit that as I went through the string parts, it did get a little easier. I
also started to find easier ways to finger things so I wouldn't have to do too
much string crossing. I was able to get
a nice tone from the lower strings so I avoid the high strings at all costs.
Over the next 3 days I finished the entire string quartet. I gotta say cello
was my favorite because the note spacing is closer to what I'm used to. I felt
like I was smashing my fingers together to get half steps to happen on the
violin.
Once the
string quartet was assembled, it sounded OK.
Not great though. Only having 4
string instruments with no doubling was not giving me the lush sound I was
hearing on the original recording. It
sounded kind of thin and harsh. I did
like the sound of real bowing. The
samples never get that right. I decided to layer my real strings with some
samples from the Miroslav Philharmonik plug in. When I got the attack from my
real strings blended with the sustain of the samples, it was a really great
sound. It was a sound I couldn't have achieved
with real strings or samples alone.
I was
finally satisfied with the string sound.
After a lot of coaxing and some help from layered samples, it sounded
good. Now it was time to learn how to play trumpet. Trumpet is a cruel instrument. It was completely alien to me. Being a guitar player, the string instruments
made sense to me. Brass is a different
animal.
If I was
giddy from the sound of cats dying produced by my violin playing, then I was
downright hysterical from the sound of elephants farting produced by my brass
playing. I did some more online research
and found a few more helpful videos on how to play brass. (Please note, I do
not recommend learning this way. I
received formal private music lessons for a very long time when I was learning
guitar.)
What I
liked about the brass is that if you could hear the note in your head, and you
knew what valves to press, you could kinda sorta get the note out. I found a
good trumpet note chart online and I got to work. I got better as I went along. My attacks and release were a bit sloppy, but
I was able to hold out notes that were in tune.
I though I had trumpet licked until I got to the high parts.
To play
high notes on the trumpet, you need to make your lips as small as possible and
push as much air through that tiny opening as possible. The high notes killed me. My whole face was
in pain. I was lightheaded and had to take frequent breaks. It wasn't going well.
Finally,
something clicked and I just figured out how to do it. I basically let pro
tools roll while I played the parts over and over again. When I actually hit
the notes, I would use that particular segment and slide that into place. It's a crummy solution, but it was either
that, or no high notes. In the end, I actually
enjoyed the trumpet more than I anticipated.
Next I
moved onto the trombone. I took a brief
crash course online and found a decent slide position chart, compared to the
trumpet high notes, this was a walk in the park. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the
trombone's design. It's a fun
instrument.
I wasn't
able to get my hands on a french horn, tuba or a bow for my upright bass, so I
had to use samples for those parts,
They're pretty low in the mix anyway.
They mostly act as a pad for filling in the gaps.
At this
point, I was relieved the orchestra parts were done, but due to the nature of
how I recorded those parts, there was no useable video footage. This was a problem I would have to solve
later.
Now the fun
part began. Guitars! For all the guitars
with the exception of the Leslie part, I used the following setup. The guitar straight into an Engl Steve Morse head. The head was fed into an Engl 4x12 cabinet
equipped with Clestion V-60s. This
cabinet was placed in my bathroom and was miked up with a dynamic microphone
slightly off axis. The microphone went into the SSL preamp and then into pro
tools. The Engl head is very versatile and the EQ works like a studio EQ. I was able to get pretty close to the tones
on the record. EQ and compression during
the mix also got me a lot closer.
For the Leslie
guitar, I once again used Guitar Rig 4.
I used their AC-30 model into their Leslie emulator. It worked pretty well.
For guitars
I used a custom Ernie Ball Music Man Axis, an Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette
Special, a Rickenbacker 325V59 and an Ibanez AE-30 acoustic.
Vocals were
straight forward. I used an Audio
Technica AT-4033 condensor microphone into the SSL preamp. On the processing end it's EQ, Compression,
De-Esser. That is sent to a bus that has
a frequency selective compressor on it designed to smooth out my voice, which
can get harsh in the upper mids. I also put some more compression on it. I had to put a gate on because I picked up a
lot of weird sounds in between words with all the compression. It sounded like
I was eating soup between lines.
The mix was
very large and involved. I tried to get as close to the original recording as
possible without sacrificing quality. There was a lot of drastic EQ'ing and panning.
Once the
music was done, I had to solve my orchestra problem. With no useful footage
recorded, I needed to come up with something. I decided to make a gag out of it
and record my own green screen orchestra. This turned out to be another huge
challenge. I really didn't have the
right equipment to do this. My room was too small, I was using a green cloth
curtain that had a lot of folds and was picking up a lot of shadows, my lights
were not the right kind for this and my camera was just not picking up the
green correctly. I ended up using an iPhone to record the green screen footage
because the green was coming out better on the phone than my lousy camera. My
cousin, Phil, helped me with the green screen camera angles. I tried to stay as
still as I could while playing along with the track. If you're a stickler for details and you check
all my positions on the orchestral instruments, it should all be correct
because I was actually playing along.
(Before anyone jumps down my throat, I know my technique is probably miserable.)
At first I thought having some HD
video from the iPhone would have been a good thing, but I had a hell of a time
incorporating this HD footage into my SD session. I think from now on, I'm going to try to
shoot in 100% HD if I can. Once I keyed and masked out all of the green I had
to downgrade the quality of the file so I could retain the transparency in my
SD session. By the time I composited all
of the musicians over the stage backdrop, the quality was pretty bad. It also didn't help that my limited skills as
a cameraman and light designer produced some very uneven and washy shots. My
friend Steve Corn helped me make this footage look as good as possible
considering the source material.
Another big
problem I had was that violin 2 kept going out of the frame at it looked like
the violin kept disappearing. I decided
to add the conductor to cover up this invisible border. It covers up the problem spot and I think
it's pretty funny too. I could have just
re-shot the violin 2 part, but at that point it was much easier to just stand
there and wave my arms around.
Overall,
the lighting was a big problem in this video. In my last videos there wasn't
enough light. This one was too bright so I painstakingly tried to match all of
the videos in color and brightness as best as I can. I used Sony Vegas Pro for the video
editing. I really love this
program. It's well laid out and has a
lot of powerful tools included.
All in, the
video took about 2 weeks. Although this is much simpler song than Bohemian
Rhapsody, this was a much more difficult project. The loose nature of the band
tracks actually made it harder to cover.
Plus all of the orchestral stuff was very challenging from a playing and
producing perspective.
My favorite
part of this video was getting to play with instruments I've never tried. I recommend
it to all musicians. Especially if you write and arrange music. It gives you a
new respect for the people who are great players and it gives you a better
understanding when it comes to writing for those instruments.
My least
favorite part was dealing with all of the technical problems that kept
happening with the video. Usually the video editing is my favorite part, but
because my source material was so inconsistent, it made things really
difficult. Next time, I'll spend more time prepping shots. It also wouldn't
hurt to learn more about cameras and lighting before my next project.
In closing,
I have to give a huge thanks to my fiancé, Ann Marie. She's had to endure two
weeks of horrible violin, trumpet and trombone noises. She's had to hear me
listen to this song and watch this video over and over again. She's also been a
very good sport about my being completely obsessive over trying to get this
thing done. During the scrolling credits at the end, that's her sitting next
me. Thank you Ann Marie!
I'd also
like to thank all of the people who have watched my videos and subscribed to my
channel. I am overwhelmed by the positive response I've gotten and I can't say
thank you enough.
Finally,
thank you to the Beatles for writing great music and providing a lifetime of
inspiration.
-Richie Castellano
On a scale of 1 to 10, your talent is 25!!
ReplyDeleteAND being the perfectist you probably ARE, I need to point out that in your explanation, you have ONLY 1 typo... Can you find it? You intended to say "thought" when in fact you typed "though"... I just "thought" you would like to know, although I believe you already do :) GREAT JOB Richie
Some "Bloated Blogger" Creativity...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/user/sweettunes1000?feature=mhee
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteRichie- This is the best thing I've seen on YT in years. A labor of love I assume, and the effort was a huge success. I have watched this dozens of times, and shared it repeatedly.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in my early teens (mid-sixties) the question was "Beatles or Stones?" I generally preferred the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Tull and Cream. But the Abbey Road selection is exquisite. By the early 70s I had discovered BOC and the Grateful Dead. Both took a little getting used to.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a tour de force, but overwhelming. Brighton Rock works better for me. Similarly, Stairway to the Stars is a compact masterpiece compared to the rather unwieldy Stairway to Heaven.
In one of your podcasts you mention your favorite musicians. It's tough to pick a single favorite but I enjoy Peter Green, Steve Howe, Garcia, Lesh, Squire, Knopfler, Townshend, Allen Woody and David Pegg to name but a few. Martin Barre definitely near the top, and quite underappreciated. The early Tull brought something that was lacking in the contemporary Zeppelin tracks, experimental and adventurous and sometimes disconcerting. Ian Anderson a genius whose depth and vision has grown over the years. You will note Blackmore has revisited some medieval themes, blended with restrained electric to good effect.
Blue Oyster Cult. The original lineup was outstanding; Buck killer even before the Steinburger.(RIP Allen), and those live shows kicked ass- loud, clean and precise. The sound on vinyl does not do justice to the live performances.
This brings me to my new favorite: Richie Castellano. Since seeing YT vids of the band I have been amazed by your solos. Particularly those on Last Days of May. Man, you get it!! And your podcasts are a great treat, lots of talent in that room. Thanks for sharing.
I hope this didn't bore you. Just want to let you know how much I appreciate your efforts.
Rock on Richie!