Come Together

Hey, it's been a while. I've made a little progress you know.
All songs are now recorded and completely mixed (save one). I spent a little time at my brother's place going through each song and tweaking (no nipples involved) here and there. My brother has a critical pair of ears and is not burdened by such extravagances as tact, so his comments were forthright and pretty constructive actually. He did suggest that the album needs an 'upbeat' song as it was sounding too depressing (does he not even know me?!) which initially I chaffed at. However, on reflection there was a need for a change of pace so I decided to resurrect a 'dance' song I had half-completed about a year ago. When I say 'dance,' it's really more Screamadelica inspired than influenced by the current flux of gym music. Anyway, this has led me to drop Into the Night from the album, as its overall feel is too similar to Acres and does drag the pace a little. I'm sure it will live on in another format though.

I've decided to send the tracks off to a mastering company, as I kept reading that mastering is an art of its own and as much as I have loved developing my production and mixing techniques over the last couple of years, I really don't have the patience to start again. The company I've gone with are an online outfit called www.audiomaster.co.uk and the process seems simple and reasonably priced. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm also in the middle of creating the artwork for the album. I'm using Photoshop Elements 9 (trial!) and it's quite frustrating as this software is FAR from intuitive for me. I shall persevere.

Laters Gators.

Where to begin to end?

So they're are about four tracks that in my head are more or less complete (see this evidence). I say more or less, as it's been drawn to my attention that a couple of these could do with some humanised drums to bring out more dynamics. They're finished in as much as the melody and majority of the elements what do make a song are there. Now what do I do?

I have 6 songs left to complete, that are in various stages of development/refining:

Tides - this is one of the oldest (see Lights Out and Glacier). My first encounter with recording in Logic and by 'eck does it show. Lots of overdone effects and the bridge/solo thing that is waaaaaaayyyy too long (and also a bit rubbish). It needs to be sliced and diced (maybe I can use this?). Having said that, I think it has one of the strongest melodies and the outro is pretty darn good if I say so myself (which I did in actual fact)


The Safest Place to Be - I have the music recorded for this which I'm pretty happy about. Needs the vocals recorded and some guitar parts, but not much more. It's turned into a little pop rock song, which is quite nice.

Switchback - the most recent song i've written. Needs major tidying up. The chorus is good though.

Into the Night - this is almost complete but need to tidy bits up here and there and possibly re-do the vocals as they do sound a bit 'strained' (no potty humour please)

Acres - by far the one with the most work needed. Just can't get my head around how to arrange it. Its a 'pretty' song I guess but can't quite get it to where I want it yet.

Glacier - this is a pretty old song. I have a completed version of this but I've picked up on things that need changing and the vocals need a do-over too.

Looking at the above, it seems I have a lot of work. The hardest part though is writing and arranging the songs, so in that context most of them are done (except Acres). I was a bit premature thinking about Album artwork though wasn't I?

Into the Night

Into the Night I need to re-record to give some more headroom. I didn't realise at the time that I was seriously peaking on the vocals by having the interface input up way too high. Oh well, it's been a MASSIVE learning curve so far. I will post soon with nerdy details and photos of my set up. To give a brief summary though, I'm doing all this on a Mac using Logic 9. Logic is the way forward my friends, you know it....

This was originally going to be the album title but seemed a bit too generic, but the title fit this song perfectly. A song about escape. Aren't they all?

Here's a clip (the "too little headroom version") -