Downing Tools

We are getting close to shutting down the recording progress for the summer, due to house moves.  Finally after almost ten years together, we will be living in the same town.

Hopefully, this might mean the return of us playing live, even if only at a few local open mics.  What this will mean is no more 36 mile round trips to recording sessions.  So less time driving, more time writing and recording.

EP7 is almost three quarters there.   Two songs ("Love is Overdrive" & "Epic Song") are ready for mixing, (other than possibility of adding additional backing vocals to one if we need it).

The third tune (as seen in the images) is making good progress and in a first for us, uses some royalty free samples. In addition, there isn't a guitar in sight either.

Hopefully this will be ready for mixing in the week. 

On every EP there is a difficult track.  This appears to be track 2.  This is currently called "Drowning in Air". 

It started as an electronic track.  Which wasn't working, it is currently turning more orchestral, which in turn doesn't work at the tempo of the electronic track, (at which the vocals were recorded).

So a complete re-recording will be in order during the band downtime by me(given he has to sing it).

So there we have it.  Close but no cigar.  We have possibly one more recording session, before we take a break.   Hopefully, we will reconvene in the Autumn and get EP7 out of the door, shortly there after or at least before the end of the year.

I'm off to start re-recording "Drowning in Air".



Later


Rollasoc

Drastic

Last week I took a trip up the road to the historic town of Chester, for a convention about '90s band Mansun.

Mansun are one of my all time favourite bands.  Highly prolific in the short time they were together and underestimated in the grand scheme of '90s music history.

I'd only ever been to Chester once before.   When Mansun released their second album called Six.   Being from Chester, they had their album launch party at midnight, in the local Virgin Megastore.

I was one of the lucky winners of tickets to the event.

So it was nice to go back, have a better look around the town and go to the convention.

The convention stemmed form the Mansun's Only Love Song Facebook group.

The convention involved several tribute band, unseen archive video and audio, memorabilia and panels discussing the rise and demise of the band.

As part of the convention, the organisers asked bands to submit cover versions, for a compilation CD.

Over thirty songs were recorded.  Nineteen made it onto the CD.  The rest are downloadable, if you buy a CD.

We recorded one of the b-sides from Mansun's second EP.  A song called Drastic Sturgeon.

I have been playing this occasionally at open mic nights for years.  So it seemed the obvious choice of song.  Also, if you are unfamilar with Mansun, they are one of those rare bands that bundles singles with multiple new tracks as b-sides.  Sometimes the b-sides are better than the lead track.

You can buy the CD Here

Here are a few images that I took with my point and shoot or camera phone last week.

So a storming weekend.   I met some great people and it was nice to hear a new track from the Mansun frontman Paul Draper.  Looking forward to the album now.

Later,

Rollasoc

Epic Fail

 Greetings from the land of the Hair Thieves.

Due to holidays and more holidays, things have been a bit slow of late.

But progress is actually being made on EP6.

We have one tune ready for mixing.

The instrumental is taking shape and near completion.  It is currently called The fail song (hence this blogs title), due to us failing to write lyrics for it, so after a couple attempts it has been morphed into an instrumental, keeping the bare minimum of the original song.

I've taken a couple days off to work on one of the other tunes.  The aim is to get that ready for mixing, before I go off on holiday later in the week.

We have music for the final song, though no lyrics as yet.  So that will be our focus for the coming weeks.

E has even built himself a new music PC.  I'm awaiting new drum software to make my life a lot easier!

So all in all, not doing too badly and there is a good chance, this EP will see the light of day this year.

later,

Rollasoc

Remixes, Animation and EP6

Things have been a little slow in Hair Thieves land for the last month or so.

This has manly been due to me partaking in a Songwriting course from Berklee College of music online.  Which I passed with the odd score of 102.2%.

E has been busy remixing Beijing Morning off EP 5.  Have a listen here.




I have  purchased some animation software.  Here is a little test snippet of a proof of concept.

I am awaiting a modder to release to me  a manikin mod.  So I can make videos with our unofficial mascot.  Much like we used (back in 2007, which is ages ago) in the video for Shorewards from EP2.




I will probably make a video for Invisible Wall or possibly the instrumental Bathmophobia in the next month, though it might not look anything like the snippet.
  
In the meantime, we are back in writing mode for EP6.  We are currently working on the instrumental and I am about to start lyric writing for a song we have music for.

Right, I'd best get on with those lyrics.

Later

Rollasoc

EP5 Cover and sneaky listen.

Above is the cover image for EP5.    Making some reference to one of the songs on the new EP.

We've also put up a sneak preview of one of the new songs.

It is called Assimilation. This is likely to be close to the final version.  Some of the mastering of the other tracks have thrown up a couple of issues that need addressing in the mixing stage.  So mastering is taking longer than usual.

   

Low Hanging Fruit

We seem to have discovered Vine.

Vine being the latest annoying social media craze, that lets you record 7 seconds of video and tweet it..

Now I thought it might be useful to show a few quick snippets, occasionally, of progress. 

Here is a video of E playing with some effects prior to recording.






So expect more videos from the recording of EP6.   Though Facebook have just done a new video thingy that lets you take 15 second clips

First Pass

Initial mixes have been generated for EP5, I'm happy to say. 

A few Cubase issues aside, it has been a mostly painless process so far!  Fun with actual mixers and virtual mixers on Android have been a bit of a welcome distraction too.

We are going to live with these mixes for a week and pick up again next week with tweaking them into submission.

Hopefully, next week, we may release a un-mastered version to Soundcloud for a very limited period.

I don't think there will be a massive amount of changes needed to get these to an acceptable standard, ready for release.

So hopefully, by the end of the month, it should all be mixed and mastered and we can think about releasing it into the wild.

In the meantime, we have started collating a few new tunes and bits and bobs that we have left over from previous EPs, with the idea of getting EP6 out sometime this year, rather than in several years time.   We shall see how well that progresses! 

Mixing it up

Yesterday saw the start of mixing EP5.

It was pleasantly painless experience.  The plan was to do a rough mix of "Beijing Morning".

This was archived and mixing started on the instrumental "Bathmophobia".  So for once we appear to be getting ahead of ourselves.

So the plan is to live with this mix for a few days and then tweak again later.

More mixing sessions are scheduled for later in the week.

Below is a brief video E made, using his Android Tablet to control Cubase. Even though we normally use a hardware controller, it is interesting to see how modern technology can be used in the music process.

It also contains a sneak peak at the new song "Beijing Morning".