Doubtful Sounds at Depot

Late last month, Matt & I went in to Depot Sound in Devonport to try recording in a real studio (rather than our front rooms or basements). There are some pictures up on the Doubtful Sounds Blog. So far, it seems to have gone well, but of course we've yet to hear the mixes.

Certainly having to nail eight or ten songs in a couple of days with a clock ticking is a very different experience to recording a single song over however many evenings it takes. I guess one advantage is simply that booking a studio forces us to try and record stuff.

How much better the recordings are compared with what we can do at home - what's a good balance between working at home vs in the studio - are things we still have to figure out.

Painting by Numbers

Matt came down again afore Christmas (19 Dec I think) - we talked about mixing, we have a first run mastering from Depot Sound but that mostly shows we need to mix more or better. And we recorded basic tracks for "Painting By Numbers" for a potential Powertools compilation. If we can get it finished in time. We have problems with the guitar parts...

Theme from the Doubtful Sounds

Matt & Richard were both around today, so we got to play with recording in the front room of Darkest Karori. We all got a bit acoustick - Matt & Richard on guitars, me on my trusty mando (that really does need new strings - if not an upgrade). Matt overdubbed bass (see if you notice, should sound out of place if you listen hard). Then, there is the first ever real video coming soon to you-tube near you: low-res goodness in an imitable style. After that things degenerated. Matt does look cool with the Rick (but then everybody does). And Richard got to unleash his inner guitar god. (Hmm, but we didn't record any of that. Duh).

Onwards Slowly

More of a record than anything else: Matt was down a couple of weeks ago, 12-14 October, and we filled in more gaps. Left with apparently 14 tracks in varying versions of completeness. I think we have to start worrying more about mixing than recording - the current versions sound great on headphones, but not very good at all on the stereo.

Made a bunch of two-track bounces of what Matt & I recorded. mostly surprising how bad the singing and mixing is. Have to do something about that. And I uploaded them to myspace, but I'm not telling where.

Damned if you're rich.

And yesterday, I recorded yet another song. Basic blues, crap guitar playing, kind of depressing really. Spot the lyrics?

You're damned if you're rich: you've had your comfort now.
You're damned if you're well-fed: you've gonna starve.
You're damned if you're happy: you've gonna sing the blues.
You're damned if everybody loves you: think of the idiots everybody loves.

So the catch is, this means I've now got 11 songs down, one of which doesn't really fit with all the rest (see Family Last). So another two then I have twelve, which will do for this project, and I can then get on to something else. I just have to conjure two more songs up from nowhere.

Or perhaps ten songs is enough and I can move on already?

Elias II & III

So, after sorting out Elias didn't do that much with it for a week or so.

Then this week I though I should make a proper go of this: I even practiced a couple of times (not that it will show).

Last night, recorded a couple of guitar parts, its all just free time, no drumtracks, basically picked the second one. There is one obvious slip-up but it was the better of the two. Then I was exhausted, so went upstairs to watch the original Star Wars.

Early this afternoon, came down and recorded four or five vocal takes - probably the last one is best. Slapped on a reverb, it's nearly done but needs listening to a bit more, sorting the levels, bouncing down etc. All that fun fun stuff.

Anyway, so that's nearly done. It's good to be making some progress again. The only problem is, the next one on the list is a) not finished yet either, and b) will be really complicated - and I don't think the "band" arrangements work nearly as well as keeping things smaller. So perhaps I'll see if I can find another way around trying to fake a 10 piece band and a gospel choir in my computer.

Will he come?

He calls for Elias
Will he come to save Him?

So, yeah, a whole new song written but not recorded this morning. Working title: Elias.

Inspired by the McCahon "Elias series".

I didn't do a proper recording, just worked the lyrics out last night, then had a hack this morning on the acoustic guitar (drop-D tuning) and recorded a very rough guide track just using the built-in microphone of the laptop. Sounds horrible & distorted, and the demo has lots of pure crap on it (forgetting words, chords etc) but hopefully this will mean that I don't forget the sound.

Perhaps next week, perhaps tomorrow, I'll try a recording. Can't decide with or without drums. If this is aimed at the *end* of track listing, then, well, without perhaps makes the most sense (and is easier). Also need to transition from acoustic rapid strumming to a more restrained electric style, relying on sustain.

Preaching IV

So, gee, the thing about blogging is that you really have to keep posting, isn't it...

Anyway: the "Preaching" song is more or less finished. It took a while: 20th May for a rough mix which I lost when ProTools crashed (yay!); and then 27th when I managed to redo all that - luckily, I'd made some notes. Less finished because. well, it still sounds like something put together in a bedroom, which is of course precisely what it is. But there are lots of things that are more or less put together in bedrooms or lofts (Black Balloons by Jeremy Taylor; anything by Pine; Moth by Matthew Bannister) that still sound great. In fact, the simpler songs that I've done that are just voice & guitar sound much better than the more complex ones. I don't know why, but I think "mixing" and "mastering" must have something to do with it.

Preaching III

So, feeling kind of grotty this evening, large hangover-style headache due to not drinking anything at all today, it seems.

Spent a couple of hours working on mixing Preaching Jesus --- compressor squashing up the bass so you can actaully hear it, and working out which of the four vocal takes to keep (or rather which bits of which take). Still haven't programmed in the automation though (a job for tomorrow), and hopefully I'll manage to finish the drum programming too.

And that will be enough for just a rough mix: how long would doing a really serious job take?

Head Above Water

So, 12.30 AM, that equals the previous record.

Todays effort is quite short at 2.50, not really poppy, rather odd (and again old) little song, Head Above Water Not sure about it really, the vocals are quite weak & flutter in places - on the other hand, I quite like how the guitar sounds.

What's this one about - rather cliched I'm afraid:

keep my head above water
turn my face from the sun
keep my head above the water
now I'm all undone

I'm not sure I remember that far back - but it probably relates to the long and generally depressing time when I was finishing up a PhD. It's nowhere near as - well - Biblical as many of the rest, especially as I think I accidently replaced "flood" with "sun" in one of the verses. Oh well. But then perhaps it's better this way:

I used to laugh about rainbows
I used to smile at the sun
I used to laugh about rainbows
Now I'm all washed up

Hell

Yet another song done: current working title: hell --- although perhaps "Rock'N'Roll" would be better. Nasty digital clipping on the vocals, but well, I quite like it so I'm keeping it.

This is another old song which I've finally got around to recording. That's a good thing

Rock'n'Roll is the devil's music
And it comes straight up from Hell
And if you listen to the sinful rhythms
You'll go straight down there as well

Good news: it's only 12:30. That's a record.

It's not hard

Got another sinner song down: It's not hard.

Yeah, Right, as the billboards say. Not hard at all.

So now it's 2am. I should relax and get to sleep. Work tomorrow.

Family Last

So it's tuesday evening, and thanks to some encouragement I made it downstairs to record something else again. Putting the Family Last as it were. The result is a nice - surprisingly dubby - first attempt at using Ableton LIve to record. Called (Beat your) Children let's just say its a tribute to Family First and their campaign to legalise hitting Small People.

This was also my first attempt at Live which is perhaps why I'm still awake at 3am. Yes its good for loops and drums; and re-arranging and dubbing things up is really really easy. But the actual recording and getting that in time with what's playing turned out to be a nightmare. So the next technical thing to do may be to run Live as a slave to Protools, so protools can record the audio and Live the - other stuff, notably drums, perhaps bass patterns if I don't want to play them all in. So the vocal track isn't really synchronised properly, but most of the rest is OK.

The song, by the way, is I think the most depressing thing I've written. Ever. And the whole sinner project is going to be depressing.

Forever Tuesday Evening

Today I started the new regime of heading downstairs on tuesday evenings starting at 7pm. I don't have to worry about Small Person, I'm not supposed to go to work, just play with music stuff.

Or in today's case, I spent most of the time fighting protools - loading new versions of Multimedia demo plugins: the US based site seemed to have rate-limiting so I couldn't access the site when downloading something, couldn't download in parallel, so that plus OS upgrades plus trying to get Reason Adapted to run all took hours. Turns out I still have a bunch of Protools plug-ins to upgrade by calling customer support, and Reason 2.5 simply won't work with Protools 7, I either have to upgrade Reason - or settle for using Live, which was my original plan. Or - record tracks in Reason standalone, then bring them into Protools, which would be another option.

Finally, after going for about three hours, decided to cut to the chase with the second song on the four-track, The Fire. Again, crap guitars recorded years ago, bleak lyrics. Couldn't be arsed trying to redo it from scratch, as I like the generally noisy feel of the track, so ran a stereo mix of the tape deck, then added in noise with the extra famous Mastererizer, sprinkling of reverb and compression and that's another take.

The big problem is what comes next: I though I had five or six things on the four-track, but really there was only Lazarus and The Fire. So its either back to the notebooks for more songs for Sinner; mixing or re-recording existing Hey Babies tracks (not sure I can face that yet) or something new. Most likely something for Sinner from a notebook, I think.

New Blog

So I now have a new blog. Great.

more time on the computer. less time in the rest of my life.

In other news, I successfully (re)recorded a song from a few years ago, currently called Lazarus. Wavestation drone, two guitars, one voice track. Kind of like a minor blues in C, but I can't really play the guitar in C so the guitar part is crappy (or endearingly lo-fi). Also I started from an old 4-track demo so the timing is a bit random. Perhaps I should do it all over again, but, then again, perhpas not. More fun to do something else I think.