Another recording session been and gone...

So after a big mess up with who's being recorded and what equipment to use etc, our recording session went very well.

Me and Alie got to Xtreme Studios early in the morning like we usually do anyway and decided we'd get a head start on setting up the live room for the recording. After getting all the equipment from the technicians which consisted of 2 C1000s condenser microphones, 2 XLR leads and 2 microphone clips. 

First off we had to try and move the piano forward so we were able to place the microphones behind it, but after my shoulder decided to die on me whilst doing this I wasn't able to move the piano properly so Alie done it instead. After this we got straight on with setting up and plugging the XLR leads into the patch bay in the live room. We had the left microphone for channel 1 and the right microphone plugged into channel 3 as channel 2 doesn't work. 

Setting up the live room didn't take long at all and we got straight on with powering up the desk, as we done so and loaded pro tools we had a problem with picking up any signal from the microphones on the desk. Anyway after restarting the whole studio Adam turned up and got straight on helping Alie out getting the studio set up ready for me to perform. 

Whilst they were working out the solution I decided to go and get a start on warming up for my recording session. I played 'Charlie Brown' by Coldplay through a few times before I was fully ready to get started and record as soon as possible to make sure there's plenty of time for any retakes. 

It didn't take Alie and Adam long to work out what the problem was and straight away got everything prepared and made sure I was ready to record. After the first recording of 'Charlie Brown', Alie realized that the left microphone didn't pick anything up as something was wrong with the input, this didn't take long to resolve and straight away went ahead to record 'Charlie Brown' for the final time. After hearing it played back to me in the studio I was satisfied with the outcome and decided it would be the final recording for the acoustic EP. 

Next up was 'To Sheila' by The Smashing Pumpkins. I went into the live room to practice the song through a few times as I wasn't as confident with this song, this showed when it came to the recording of the song as I had to do lots of retakes as I kept on cutting bits short because I was coming up on the pedal too much, then I was playing parts too quietly and too slowly and some completely out of time. Alie, kindly came into the live room to give me some advice when recording which I found helpful and I thought was rather nice of her too. So after a few more times I finally got it right and was satisfied with the outcome. I orginally decided I would record different layers of piano to get a different texture but after not knowing what to add and how complex it would've been to do this Alie told me to think about it and see if I would like to do this another time. 

Overall, I thought that we all worked well together and that Alie and Adam were helpful during the recording process with lending me advice and understanding the feelings of the performer and not just telling me what to do and instead left it down to me to let them know when I was ready to start. 

Thanks for reading, 

Chazzy.  

Slight change of plans...

So after deciding last week that we would be recording Adams band this decision has now been changed to something different at the last minute.

This obviously is a bit of a pain but luckily me and Alie sorted a back up plan if the initial plan to record Adams band was floored. And good thing we did this because yes, we are now no longer recording Adams band but now instead are re-recording my songs for the acoustic EP. Overall I am happy that I have been given the chance to re-record my songs so I can get it all done and out of the way but it's just that it's been all at last minute notice, instead of being able to make sure that all the floorplan and equipment list is done a week in advance of the recording session we've had to do all this and prepare myself all a day before the session.

I have decided to re-record my songs because I made a few mistakes in the previous recording and was not satified with one of my song choices. Instead of recording With or Without You by U2 I am going to be replacing this song with To Sheila by The Smashing Pumpkins and then I will re-do Charlie Brown by Coldplay as I made a few mistakes when I was last recorded.

For this recording me and Alie have decided that we would use two C1000s condenser microphones as we found out the last time that we recorded the piano that the C1000s microphones worked best and gave us the soft piano sound we were looking for.

The last time we recorded songs on the piano we used the B5 condenser microphone as well as one C1000s condenser microphone. We used the B5 for the high end and the C1000s for the low end of the piano. Although it gave us a reasonably good sound when it came to mixing the tracks afterwards the B5 picked up far too much of the high end and made the notes sound like a horrible ringing sound. This influenced mine and Alie's decision to use two C1000s microphones each situated at opposing ends of the piano, this will give the piano a more softer and even sound without the extra ringing on the high notes that the B5 condenser microphone gave us.

A floor plan will be added soon as I've not had enough time to create one yet as I've been busy trying to organize other parts of the recording session with Alie.

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

Third recording session and financial stuff...

So after deciding two EP's would be the way forward for our group we have decided that we would be recording Adam's band for our up and coming recording session.
As this was on pretty short notice we are yet to discuss the equipment that we are going to use to record his band with.

As well as deciding all the album cover, track listings, recording sessions etc.. we have also been discussing the financial side of recording and producing an album, to do this we gathered together a list of phone numbers for different recording studios and Adam phoned them up and asked them for an equipment list and the price of how much it would be to record and hire the equipment per hour.

From this we work out what our budget will be and work with this as if we were going to do all of our recording in a studio and how much they'd charge us etc...

So far we have a good start on this and are continuing to work on this as a group.

The track listings have also changed slightly for the acoustic EP as me and Alie are both going to be doing two songs of our own and then doing two songs together to make the track listing six songs long which is about right for an EP. I am going to be re-recording one of my songs and changing my second song completely so a lot of work is still yet to be done but I am looking forward to the finishing products!


Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

Album artwork designing...

So after mainly thinking about everything else such as recording sessions and the track listing for the album we decided to get a start on album artwork.
As its an acoustic album as a group we all want different things yet we all want something simple yet reasonably detailed.

After spending three hours thinking about the different ways we could go about so we were all satisfied as a group of three we came up with the idea of creating a survey for random people in college to see what they think. These questions are asking people what kind of design they'd like to see on an acoustic album and what kind of colours. We think this would be a good idea because after all this is mostly about what attracts people to buy an album instead of being biased about it and just including what we want on it. We all agreed this would be a good idea as it would also be good market research for our product also.

Although deciding this we also all decided to each come up with two designs each to get an idea of what we all like on an album cover and try to come up with a solution to our on going problem of agreeing on something. I came up with two idea's one being a photography based album cover and the other being a more graphical drawing kind of cover. Although I have tried tirelessly to finish them I have had issues trying to fix the album covers together so no one has had a chance to see what I have come up with yet, however I'm still working on this problem and hope to get my ideas into the group as soon as I can.

After all this we then came across another fault within the group, Adam wanted to record his band however our album was based around an acoustic album so this wouldn't fit in with our initial product idea. Alie then came up with an idea to talk to us about which became the idea that solved the issues we had within the group. She came up with the idea that we would create two EP's instead of one album. One EP would be based around acoustic and the other being an EP for Adams band recordings. We all agreed that we liked this idea and are now currently working on it.

So this brings this blog to an end.

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.