one:day:life - Studio Blog

Photos from Friday's show...

2007-05-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

The photos from the show on Friday night have been posted up. Click here to see them all.

Thank you to everyone that came along and to all the bands that played - everyone was wicked and we had a great time.

Its been a while...

2007-05-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, tis Maunder here.

Went into the studio last night to escape reality/see Max. He's in the final stages of mixing everything down, tweaking etc, but says the whole caboodle should be finished, well, today! Woo! Just a little bit later to wait for mastering and getting the discs made.

I'm sure he'll post here soon once he's had chance to catch up on some sleep and get a shower. Its been a while...

Photos of photos.

2007-05-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

So we have been busy for the past few days - we are now making the final changes to the songs before they go off to mastering this week. I can't believe we are so close to the end of this.

Click on the photo to check out Dan, Maunder and myself doing the artwork for the inside covers of the CD booklet. They still need to be edited, but hey what else am I gonna be doing if I'm not at the studio, having a life?

The idea of the CD artwork is that we are in one of our bedrooms and all the stuff on the walls and all over the floors is related to us in some ways. You might recognise some of it from over the years, some of you are even on it.

Max.

New Show Announced - The Twist, Colchester - May 25th

2007-05-04T07:01:00.000-07:00

We told you we'd be playing live again soon and the first non-school show has been announced for The Twist in Colchester on Friday, May 25th.

Tickets are £5 and need to be purchased from us in advance, but it's super-easy to order them, just click on the 'Buy Now' link below (you do not need a Paypal account, just a credit/debit card).

Goffs School Last Night

2007-05-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone that was at the show last night, we all had a really good time...I didn't get into trouble with the winning/losing bands as I wasn't officially one of the judges - there were 5 people giving marks out of 5 for all sorts of things, I just kept changing the numbers on Kev's card.

You can see all your lovely smiley faces by clicking here.

Max x

Tales Don't Tell Themselves

2007-04-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

YouSendIt

2007-04-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

So 17 of the masters have gone out via the web, and Dan posted off around 5 or 6 in the post this morning, it'll take like a week or so for all of them to come back, in which time we should be finishing up the final bits of mixing and making the few last changes that we want to make to the songs.

Last week I taught Hicks and Dan how to do the mailouts to everyone on the email list, so the next few times you hear from us, it'll probably come from one of those two. Dan is also finding us live shows at the moment - and we told Hicks to sort something out with a promoter he likes in town but I haven't heard back from him about it, i'll catch up with him soon.

Max.

Veering between ego and insecurity.

2007-04-20T02:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an update for you, and some proof that we're back rehearsing after a pretty long time off. This week was like our fourth rehearsal back, so we're pretty much back on top of everything, played all the old songs a couple of times and worked out some stuff for live shows.

So how about the album then? Well, there's progress:

Dan hooked up the information of about 25 mastering companies, and I am sending our current version of "Warm Glows And White Lies" out to them. They'll all master the song, then send them back. By the time they all come back we are hoping to have all the mixing finished (this is gonna be tight, but we will hopefully make it).

As soon as we're done, we send it all off and they master the lot. Meanwhile, I will be frantically trying to finish the artwork.

I am constantly veering between intense pride and an assurance that this is an amazing album and it sounds great and a deep insecurity that the production sucks and I will be found out as a fraud. This is not rational and is messing with my head.

Max.

Finally, some photos on this thing...

2007-04-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, hope you all had a good easter. Back in the studio today, been mixing vocals for a few of the songs.

We went in to the studio on sunday afternoon with three lovely ladies and had them talk about first dates and other things that made them laugh so that their voices could be laid over the middle-8 of a song called Caffeine.

Now that we are officially a pro member of the Flickr community, I have been uploading all the photos from the old gallery up there. There are some old shows missing, but i'll get them up over the next few days.

I also created a new set called "our friends", this is for people we know away from touring and being in a band - I am sure they will all be embarrassed, but I don't think many of them read this site, so we're pretty safe. Here are some shots from our Sunday night:

This is JohnnyB - he deletes your forum posts.

This is one of Dan's sisters - I don't know which one, they are identical twins. They both appear on the artwork for Friends In Name Only.

This is Anna - we have known her for years and despite me asking her to be on the album with just a speaking part, she still refused. We still love her anyway.

This is Paul, he is on the group vocals on the album. He makes us laugh, but he neither owns a computer, nor knows how to look at websites so odds are he will never see this.

This is Lizzie, she is one of the voices in the M8 of caffeine, she was talking about some loser guy, haha!!

This is Cara, another of the voices in the M8 of Caffeine. Yes, she is blurry like this in real life.

Max x

RSS feeds and geeky stuff.

2007-04-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

So I'm still getting stuff ready for the new website. In case you haventt had your ear to the ground in the geek fraternity, RSS feeds are the new black and the new site will be using them for pretty much everything. So if you are a bandwagon jumper like myself, below is a handy list of the feeds that we have already set up - these are the definite final addresses so feel free to put them in your readers/whatever it is you use.

If you have no idea what the hell any of that means you have two choices:

1 - You can read about RSS feeds here, and use a reader on the net like these or one for your PC like these (hint: Internet Explorer and Firefox take feeds now).

2 - Ignore this and come back to www.onedaylife.co.uk regularly where all this stuff will be laid out for you to browse through until your heart explodes.

Oh yeah, here are those feed addresses:

Max's Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maxodl
Dans Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/danodl
Kev's Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/kevodl
ODL Photos: http://feeds.feedburner.com/onedaylifephotos
Studio Blog (what you're reading): http://feeds.feedburner.com/onedaylife-studioblog
ODL Videos: http://feeds.feedburner.com/onedaylifevideos

I am sorting out the podcast feed with Matt, who adds all the photos and stuff for iTunes users. The podcasts will be on the site for everyone too so don't panic about it.

OK, geekfest over and out.

Max.

Flash, flash, flash photogrpahy.

2007-04-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

So we got a new digital camera as the last one was screwing up - I will take photos and get them up soon.

Rehearsal last night, played through every song we've recorded and a few we haven't. Having to get my mind around all the lyrics again, still forgetting the odd verse here and there, but it's all coming back to me slowly. The actual playing is getting a little easier as well. We'll step back up to twice a week rehearsal's when the albums mixed so we can get down to some real playing.

Captain Hicks was there last night and we chatted briefly about the street-team and the promo stuff. He will be in touch with you all soon, please reply and tell you are interested in getting involved.

We also did an interview with Steve Hicks for ICRFM - a local radio station. I'll see if I can get a copy and post it up here or put it in a podcast or something.

The first sample master came back, but it's not quite what we wanted (although admittedly I haven't had a chance to play it to the others yet) so we'll just carry on until we find what are looking for.

Max.

Google it....

2007-03-29T03:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-03-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-03-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-03-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

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

"Extras, extras, read all about 'em"

2007-02-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

So then, I thought I'd just stop in to talk about all the wonderful little 'extras' this album is getting added to it right now (Max & Dan are still at the studio, I'm in the relative comfort of my room).

For those of you who haven't read about whats been coined 'extras', its pretty much a cumulative name we've given to all the little bits that make an album feel complete: a glockenspiel part in your left ear you can barely hear, the choirs, the shouts, the strings, the background guitar bits, the cabasa parts - more about this in the forthcoming podcast, and all the gubbins we haven't put in so far.

Anyway, its getting there and sounding way more complete than the eps. The podcast should be up in the next few days, there are a few unmixed clips in it, also the podcast is pretty funny this time, worth a listen anyway. That should finally give you a taste of what we've been up to for the last several months.

Only a few more weeks to go on production, then we can go to the pub.

Maunder - hope that made sense.

Choirs And Groups

2007-02-23T04:44:00.000-08:00

End of a busy week in the studio. We had a 6-person choir in on Wednesday night, then a group of our friends came by last night to sing some extra parts. To be honest, I have barely listened to any of it, as amongst all of that me and Dan were using the little time we had to get the last few tambourine, shaker, triangle etc parts done. We even had to make our own shaker out of a water bottle and some rice (you remember doing that in school??) as the one we had sounded wrong for the song (it was a little high-pitched and had a funny rattle in each shake).

I'm gonna drop down to the studio later and listen back to what we've managed to record for the last two days and I'll report back.

More informative post soon, promise.

Max x

Safety In Numbers

2007-02-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

So this week we have some awesome stuff happening at the studio - we have a choir coming in on Wednesday night to record a few parts, then on Thursday we have some friends of ours coming over to do 'group' vocals (basically they all just kinda yell along to some songs).

I'll take some photos to Flickr and some video for YoutTube - we're so 21st century it hurts.

All the main vocals (apart from like 5 words) are now done, which feels awesome - a little bit of a slog towards the end, but hey - who cares now?

Max x

Do you remember why you did it?

2007-02-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

So close to finishing the vocals I can taste it...well, it's either that or the throat sweets we use to keep ourselves going. One more night should have the main vocals done for the songs. Then it's onto mixing/extras (we're doing them both at the same time for convenience and to save ourselves a little time.)

This is getting closer to something I've recorded I can actually listen to (all I ever hear are the mistakes, the things we could have done better, the words that didn't come out quite right etc.).

I have to write two more verses of lyrics this afternoon, but then i'm done...until we start writing again.

Max.

A summer on the east side.

2007-02-12T01:35:00.000-08:00

Got the intro for Fireworks done with Kev last night. We decided to give sampled drums a try for the intro of Red Lights Mean Go - no idea if it'll sound any good but you never know unless you try.

I Flickr'd a photo of him in case you miss him.

Max.

Back to my reality show.

2007-02-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was cool - listened to some of the out-takes from the vocals to put in the next podcast (we have been chatting about how to make them more regular, funnier, more entertaining and get other bands involved...make a bigger thing of them so we can all stay in touch).

Then a young lady by the name of Rachel Dawson came by to put a female touch on the record with her voice. She was a pro, so we rolled through the parts that we had in mind for her in a couple of hours. Making the most of having her there, we came up with some small parts on the fly and they sounded cool too. No idea how many of them will make it to the final mix but at least we got them down.

I am now measuring vocals left to do in verses and extra little parts rather than entire songs. no songs are left without vocals on. We will start mixing and doing final extras (vocal, guitar, percussion, samples etc) next week. You have no idea how relieved I am to get to this stage.

Am leaving in five minutes to record Kev's parts for song intros that we have been waiting ages to do. It's all starting to come together, little piece by little piece.

Max x

Cover story.

2007-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

This sucks - I was doing vocals for Dancefloor and after a couple of hours my voice developed a kinda scratchy noise that we couldn't get rid of (I took a break while Dan finished his vocals for Red Lights Mean Go, drank water and ate cough sweet type things). So we knocked off for the day and Dan came back to mine to do the wording for the CD artwork, the details of the extra photography still needed and what will go where.

Dan and Maunder seemed to like the draft of the cover I showed them so that's two happy customers so far. The website should look awesome with the same concept running through the whole lot.

In a way it's cool that we get a day or two to work on it now, rather than getting to the end of recording in a couple of weeks and starting to panic. (Ok, panicking isn't our style, but we'd have had to think harder).

I realised by the very low number of "thank-you's" on the record how much of this thing we'll have done ourselves. If you think you deserve a mention, speak up now.

Max x

p.s. I haven't spoken for two hours now. That is like a record for me or something.

Another day, another complete lack of dollars.

2007-02-05T09:31:00.000-08:00

Rather than being in the studio (not my fault, please see Mr Probert for an explanation) today, I worked on the artwork for the album. The concept is there and the cover photography is done, so all that's left is the hours of photoshop work. I spent like 3 hours on this today and I still can't get it to look like anything other than three oddly-shaped boys plastered haphazardly across a badly-drawn background. Inspiration, perspiration and more photoshop hours are required.

Wish me luck.

Max.

Singstar

2007-02-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

More vocals done. Finished "Shakedown" and "Invincible" over the last couple of days. Felt horrible at the start of the week, we had computer problems, throat problems and it's hard to throw yourself into something when you feel crap. Things picked up and we rocked through the rest of the week.

Dan has hit the day job this weekend and I'm just finishing up some of the lyrics we have left. I spoke to the guys about how much we wanted to let our ego's out in the words and they both said I should throw myself into it. We are not self deprecating. "I am not sorry, I am just sick and bored of doing all of this so well."

If you want to tear us apart when we're done with this (there will be a queue - you don't get sent the reviews from punk zines we get, I do. There will be a much longer list by the time we're pushing the album hard.) feel free - I wouldn't write it if I wasn't a big enough boy to know it was gonna come back and bite me in the ass. Worth it for the rush every time.

The songs are sounding good - we should be done with the vocals this week and then it's on to all the little extra bits that we've been thinking about all this time.

Max x