This one was fun.
Iskis Gallickgus!
So, if you don’t know by now, I have a bit of training in different languages. Though I’m sadly only really fluent in English, I’ve learned enough in other languages (I’m working on Mandarin Chinese right now) to understand phonemes and word construction, that is, how words sound and put together to give meaning. I’m not a linguist but, to date, I’ve studied three different sounding languages (English-types, Slavic and now West Asian, especially Mandarin) and so this has given me some perspective on sounds in general.
So what am I saying in this track?
Iskis Gallickgus, and I’m not sure if they’re both supposed to be capitalized or not, but that’s the best transliteration of what I’m saying over and over.
What does it mean?
No idea, but I was looking up Latin books to read (Caesar and Livy) so that may have had some effect on my choice of words. Besides, I’ve always thought Latin was a good incantation language, probably because so many have been written in the language.
Before I stumbled on the Latin-like incantation, I was going to use some made up words in English. I found a couple of websites that looked promising for their ability to string together words that, although not real words, were based on common mispronunciations of English words. (https://www.soybomb.com/tricks/words/ and https://feldarkrealms.com/)
I decided against it because they sounded like I was trying too hard. So, instead, I went with whatever came to mind.
I was still feeling rather unmotivated today and it took a bit of effort to get going. I even had a 10-minute nap as some encouragement. Those are dangerous late in the day because they can very easily become three hours or longer and then throw off your entire sleep schedule.
After the nap I was still feeling rather lazy so I decided to set everything up on my bed so I didn’t feel so constrained by being “in the studio”.
I set up my Zoom H4n in the usual way, with power cord and headphones plugged in. But, for scratch tracks, I used my Powerbeats headphones that were connected to the iPad. This way I can record my vocals at a higher sample rate than I could if I plugged it directly into the iPad or computer. Working this way does create some extra work that I would love to get rid of, but it’s manageable for now.
I recorded a few different layers:
The first was the main melody or rhythm which was done in one take.
Second was the “He Ho” track, which took two or three attempts.
Third was “Seep sirp” track, which was something I came up with years ago but decided to throw it in, almost as if it was a set of hi hats on a drum kit.
Fourth was a bass rhythm which I made much like a Mongolian throat-singing rhythm. I added a few other sounds throughout the track, along the lines of the English vowel sounds “a e i o”, but it’s not a direct duplication.
Finally, I recorded several different types of repetitions of the words “Iskis Gallickgus” spoken in a normal tone. One does have the flavour of a priest or incantation of sorts, but it’s not a direct copy.
If I were to change one thing in this whole production it would be to change the “hey hey” to “Gallickgus Gallickgus” or something along those lines. “Hey hey” works, but I do like the idea of reinforcing the chant aspect of the rhythm.
You’ll notice that I colour-coded the tracks this time, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while but often neglect to do. My sessions don’t last very long and I usually label everything on the sides so it’s not too big of a deal right now. Besides, it’s all just me and the few things I use, so it’s not like I have to keep track of each individual drum.
As for effects I only added a very slight amount:
I didn’t add the Expansion plugin this time round since the tracks came through pretty clear on their own. I was right up against the microphone so there weren’t any issues with room noise.
I routed all of the tracks through Bus 1 at -20 which contained two types of reverb, the Chromaverb and Silver verb:
Why the “strings” compressor?
Cause it sounded good and gave the track some good volume. I brought down the gain a little bit and it seemed to make the track punch a little bit more than without it.
So that will do it for this track. Hope you enjoyed it. Iskis Gallickgus!