Google it....

Bits of the site may be getting more and more broken as I move things and delete them getting ready for the new site. Low traffic through these parts at the moment so it's not the end of the world.

Re-read my last post and realised that you might not even know what mastering is. Click here to read the wikipedia article about it. Last time we did this, we sent out about 6 or 7 samples to get mastered....the results were varied to say the least - mastering affects the outcome of the CD as much as anything we've done up to this point and we're not letting it get messed up now.

Rehearsal last night - still trying to remember how some of these songs go. Starting to feel more and more natural though, am used to in-ear monitors again and just need to start getting down to some work, rather than just playing through to warm ourselves up.

We will be booking shows soon.

Max.

Masters Of The Universe

So today is the first stage of the last process of recording/mixing/mastering. I am sending off the first mostly-finished song off to get it mastered by one of the companies we are looking at mastering the album. We will send out as many of these samples as we can, here's how it works for us:

1. Band/studio records band.

2. Band has a limited mastering budget and there are a lot of companies that do mastering out there, so each company offers to do a 'test'/'sample' master to show how well they can produce the songs.

3. Band sends out song.


4. Companies master the song and try to impress with customer service (I get a lot of phone calls and email even when we're not recording from companies wondering what we're up to, looking for business).

5. We pick the one we like the most (and the one we can afford), and find out how that company works - whether we would attend the mastering session etc.

6. Company masters the album. We hopefully love it and are able to send it straight to the factory to get made. yey!!

This takes a little while which is why we are sending off samples now, while the rest of the album is being mixed. There are now something like 7 songs in various states of mixedness (don't think that's a word, but you get the point).

I gotta go get this thing sent out,

Max x

This isn't a learning curve, it's a brick wall.

Ok, we're finally starting to get somewhere. When we started mixing, it felt like being given an Airfix Kit and told to build a fully-functioning Concorde. In a few weeks.

After feeling a little overwhelmed for a few minutes (read: days), things have started to work themselves out. As I said before, I was working on a song called Your Foot And The Floor - I spent about a week learning about how the bass and the guitar should sit together, about how best to work with my voice (if you're interested, i've found that compressing the hell out of it makes it sound a lot better, you gotta get round the fact that I can't sing that well).

Once I was happy with the way everything was sounding, I moved on to a song called Warm Glows and White Lies, which is track 2 on the record. This is something that I really wanted to get right - this will be one of those songs that ends up getting put out on compilations (those punk things we always get offered and yet seem to disappear after the first week..what is that about anyway?) so I wanted it to sound great. And I'm happy to report that it does. There are still a few things to do, and some decisions to be made about it, but I learned a lot in a short space of time and it was hard, but we're getting better every day.

So what now? Well, I am moving a lot faster through the songs now. In the last couple of days I have sorted out the main parts for a song called Fireworks, it has got a really contrasting intro that I spent like an hour trying different ideas out on last night, but the boring bits are done I think.

Tonight, I am getting Dancefloor sorted out. At the end of each chunk of work, I'm pulling together a list of what needs to be done to each track. Then it's just a case of working through all the lists til we're happy with the results. Unfortunately, some jobs take 10 minutes, others take hours.

I don't care how long this is taking, i'm not letting it slide now, we're close enough to taste it.

Max.

A list - by max...

Have made more discoveries about mixing. Here they are in no particular order:

1. I really, really like doing it. It's frustrating and takes hours but I seriously think this is something I wanna do a lot more of. We will be doing more songs after the album is out for 3-6 months or so alongside touring, just one or two at a time.

2. Every so often, to refresh my ears, I put on some music that I love and just listen to a few tracks. This is not hard work.

3. I do not like people being there while I mix. Even if they are silent or talking about something else altogether it is a mixture of distracting, off-putting and prevents me from throwing myself into it.

4. I talk to myself constantly while I mix. I am not insane, it helps me concentrate.

5. I air-drum along to songs when the mix sounds good. If I am not air-drumming, something is wrong.

6. I am around 80% of the way through my mix of Your Foot And The Floor - this is the closest to a commercial recording we have ever gotten. I will not be happy until the last 20% pushes it even closer to that sound. The aim is that if our songs turn up on your iPod shuffle, you don't think "geez, it's obvious that's an unsigned band, must remember to erase that", you should think "f*ck me, this song rocks...why am I suddenly air drumming?".

7. We are making sure that this CD kicks out of your sub-woofer with a little more control than Friends In Name Only did. The hours of trying out multi-band compression and automation for bass levels will hopefully pay off. Kev wants the bass to run out the sub all the time and rumble the room. I prefer it when the bass just sits above the sub and the kick drum hits you with a punchy sound from it. We are weighing up personal preference, a true luxury.

8. The work we put in during recording is obvious in mixing. I haven't had to 'fix' anything, just make it sit better with the other instruments.

9. I am still not a huge fan of my voice, but I am using that as a way of mixing the vocals. If I can like them in the song, they sound right.

10. Inexperience is my biggest obstacle while mixing. It's something that you can only beat by putting in more hours, I'm down with that. The drive, passion, dedication and commitment have never been in question.I will try and post up something a little more technical for people we met on tour (and will meet in the future) who are interested in recording.

Max.

Mixing.

So today was the first day of mixing. It's a pretty daunting task - think about the logistics for a second...we have thirteen songs, each one around 3-4 minutes long and each one contains around 60 tracks of audio, ranging from each individual drum on Kev's kit - to every guitar part that Dan could come up with, vocals etc. That's roughly 800 tracks.

Each of these tracks can then have a pretty limitless array of effects added to it in any order - reverb, echo, eq, panning etc. to make it sound different. We have to decide how we want each one to sound, how loud it should be in comparison to the other 60-70 tracks that all need, what effects we should apply.

Discoveries on first day:

- Working with cheaper/free software means you have to work harder to achieve a better sound. This takes longer. Frustration is inevitable.


- Mixing is not a group activity. We have one PC running the whole show, when you're at the controls the call is yours on what the fuck is going on.

- Dan and me work very differently. He thinks things through and takes time to make changes. I wanna do everything faster and barely think at all. Neither is right or wrong.

- I need more than a few hours sleep before attempting to spend the day mixing. I didn't make a change today, I just stood at the back of the room and said things that I hoped were helpful but I suspect were just annoying.

I am gonna go sleep. We're gonna make it kid, we just need a run up for the big ones.

Max x