Working For Americans

TL;DR: more guitary than my preferred synthery. With production practice too.

For a recent collab, I undertook collation duties: mixing received stems without (hopefully) losing their original energy. Those stems were played on real instruments – bits of wood with wires attached, that sort of thing – and the mixing, EQ, compression etc. for these was all a bit different to the treatment of the beepery I prefer for my own songs. So I thought I’d practice: I tracked down a few guitar samples (in Cubase’s Media Bay) and nudged them around with some novel (for me) effects. I didn’t really get comfortable editing the drums for this different style – using click-on-the-grid – I wanted to put cymbals everywhere!

It has reinforced the use of VCA channels for tracks that have volume automation (I’ll see if I can find a relevant YT video or write a brief explainer). In summary, I find it easier to use VCAs to adjust the overall volume for tracks that have volume automation applied. Might just be a Cubase thing.

I now know more about the “StudioDelay” in Cubase and what Quadrafuzz¹ distortion is like when applied to kick. And snare. And the main output. Not sure I particularly like the song. 😊

Aside from guitar samples, there’s GA drum sounds, Halion bass and vocal synths (Allen and Jessica).

The song’s intent was lost when the lyrics got cut to the single phrase. Imagination required, sorry!

¹ Quadrafuzz – I thought the name a bit odd but turns out the effect is 4 parallel distortion units spread across the frequency spectrum, so lows & highs etc. can be targetted with a different treatment (or not).

Lyrics
There used to be a time
Working for Americans

There used to be a time
Working for Americans

There used to be a time
Working for Americans