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

Masters of our own destiny!!!!

 

We believe we are now happy with the mixes.  To be honest, they didn't need much tweaking from what we had at the end of February, but some small things have been fixed.

The next step is to prepare the tracks for mastering.

This involved removing some effects off our mix master bus and then rendering the tracks out as wave files instead of our normal MP3s.

These wave files have now been  placed in a new project that we will use to master the EP.

I'm still waiting to photograph the artwork for the EP.

I did go and get my light box out of the loft, but found that it is very broken. So will need to go and find another back drop soon.

So given holidays coming up in the next few weeks. It is likely that we will master the EP next month, and release it to the world sometime in July.

In the meantime, we have been working on EP6.

We have started writing a punk like song.  That is mostly written, though no real recording has been done.   At the moment, this has a working title of  "Leaving".

We are going to record one very old Hair Thieves tune, called "Strange Familiar World", though we are hoping to keep some parts from the original and just tart up some other bits of it.

There will be another instrumental.  At the moment, this looks to be called "Reverie Part1".  Reverie Part 2 was on EP4.

And we have some snippets of lyrics and several bits of music to make up the final tune.

So it all is looking good in the land of the Hair Thieves at the moment.

Later

Rollasoc

Its a funny ol' game.

I've been looking through a load of my old notebooks and directories of lyrics and finding things I have long forgotten about.

I found my original notes for the song Assimilation, off the forthcoming EP.   According to the notes, I wrote the lyrics on the 22nd September 2003. So it is nearly ten years old.  The music was written on 10th September 2005.

We've had the demo sitting around for pretty much the end of 2005.

The song has even been played a few times over the years at open mic nights.

So we have finally gotten around to actually recording it, though it has changed a little since the original demo.

Originally, the form of the song was into, chorus (sung over verse), chorus, verse, chorus, verse chorus, middle8, chorus chorus.

 The new form is chous (over verse), chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, Chorus, verse.

When E suggested the reworking I though he was mad.   Starting the song with the chorus over a verse was non standard enough, to then finish with a verse, sounded mad.

But as with the nature of the song, not resolving the final verse to the chorus makes for a better ending (and knocks about a minute out of the song, by having two less choruses).

Anyway, you will be able to hear the tune very soon.  We believe we have finished mixing the EP.  We will master it in the coming weeks and release it sometime in the next couple of months.

Right, back to finding inspiration for EP6.

Onwards and upwards!

Rollasoc

PS the tab is wrong anyway! 

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".

Happy New Year!!!!!

We believe we have finished the last recording session for EP5.

As it turned out, after comping an existing part, we decided not to rerecord the bass for the instumental, "Bathmophobia".

I had been struggling at home alone with re-recording the acoustic for "Invisible Wall", Not being happy with the current version nor the freebie acoustic version we did for the Bridgnorth music festival.

So we spent some time testing different mic setups, but especially distances between the mic and the guitar.

I then went home and re-recorded the acoustic part, which I a lot happier with.  So that is it, EP5 recorded.

Now comes the task of mixing.  This will begin next week in earnest.

My plan this week is to get all the project files into some kind of order, sorting out the grouping, topping /tailing the audio files, setting up some basic send effects and general organisation of the project. All necessary but tedious jobs.

So next week mixing begins.

The track listing for EP5 remains:-
1. Invisible Wall
2. Beijing Morning
3. Assimilation
4. Bathmophobia

We will be making a simple video for Beijing Morning.

This will also be the first EP where we have not collaborated with other muicians.

More news next week.

Rollasoc

End of the year!!!

Well the year was mostly going to plan.

Finish EP5 and maybe play a gig or two.

How hard could that be?

Turns out to be harder than we thought.

Well, the EP is almost there, it just needs mixing and we did play Bridgnorth music festival. So it isn't all doom and gloom.

Normally, we take December off each year. This year we have taken the last four months off.

We are meeting up tomorrow for a drink. I am now mobile again, so work will commence in January to finish the EP and start the next one.

I will also be blogging more frequently on musical matters.

Plus after two years of living in a very musical town, it is time to get out there and play some of the open mics on a regular basis.

So I am quietly optimistic that providing the world doesn't end on Friday that 2013 will be a good year!

Happy Christmas / winter break / whatever and have a happy new year!!!

Rollasoc