RUNNING FROM RED (EXTENDED MIX)
about
The spur for this project was listening again to Jeff Wayne’s re-release of War of the Worlds. The Spirit Of Man (DubUlladub) was one of four new additional tracks in which he referred to musical themes used throughout the original while injecting new rhythms and synth sounds.
I’ve often used synths, either as fake real instruments (e.g. violin, flute etc.) or as synthy-synths, in most of my home productions. I just love the variety and quality of the sounds/textures. Using the digital piano keyboard input also allows me to avoid mics and ‘live playing’ as I’m still self-conscious especially when Elaine is within earshot, often in the next room. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve always wanted to do a special synth-focused track, and I suppose this is it.
Running from Red, from our 2015 album Prescient, was one of Martin Hale’s very personal songs about his mother fleeing East Prussia as a child as the Soviet army swept westward. It was recorded and mixed at my place on my laptop back in 2014. When I file-searched by backups, I found all the constituent parts as recorded. Martin did all the original guitars and vocals. He had also chosen the drum loops, found on the net and downloaded. I added bass, strings and sound effects, and then edited/mixed the whole thing with Martin in the “producer” chair at my side.
For this new version, I looped his original acoustic guitar Em/Cma7 arpeggiated riff and invented new synth phrases to be played over the top. Through trial and error I got a few working well. I also created a new drum track using the fabulous EZ Drummer drum program (that I started using halfway through the Prescient album and have been using ever since for all my recorded work). But this is the first time I’ve used an ‘electronic’ kit! I added new sound effects. Once I had the song recorded and arranged it took 30+ more editing/mixing sessions to smooth the many rough edges so that the whole thing flowed together as a cohesive piece. Everything was mixed from scratch ... a true re-mix rather than a re-master.
While some of the synth sounds aren’t exactly what I wanted, auditioning the 2000+ available preset sounds would have done my head in. So I just stopped experimenting once something worked in the mix (things can sound wonderful in isolation but fail to shine when competing with the other instruments).