6th of March:
I Firstly discussed with my band members what we were thinking of doing for our FMP and we all agreed to do a four track EP. Then i began writing my plan and completed it on Excel. I also started writing my proposal and I have finished my rationale. Our classmate Kai decided to do start his own Record Label for his FMP and asked to manage us which we all have agreed to as we thought he would help us out a lot.
7th of March:
We discussed and decided on doing a CD with the help of Kai as he's our manager. He asked for 25% of earnings and we all agreed. I also continued with my proposal and managed to get my project concept and evaluation complete, although i still need to finish my project action plan and bibliography done.
I also thought of what I could do my research on and I have decided to research how to mix on Logic Pro.
11th of March:
I continued to research how to mix as i am not confident at this and would like to get better. And watched a youtube video talking through it.
13th of March:
Today we decided to record a song that the band had written a month before.
We went to the studio and the mics had already been set up since Kai had arrived before us and had set everything up. Jack recorded. lot of guitar ideas onto logic since he was unsure how long the verses were so we ended up recording the rhythm and lead just to get an idea of how long we wanted the song to be, although we decided to spend more time writing to see if we should change anything. So after the studio wer ended up rehearsing the song in the rehearsal room and continued to write the song the best we could and decided to change the song up a bit which we now need to put into logic.
14th of March:
I finally finished my project action plan and bibliography and handed it in via turnitin.
My bandmate Jack and our manager kai got too the studio earlier and recorded our new track "Blue Train" which we had rehearsed yesterday into Logic. They managed to record the lead guitar and bass into the interface. In order to help Jack remember what bars were the verses and choruses he had written them down on paper to also help David with the rhythm guitar. Our plan was to record both guitars first then do either vocals or drums to help me record my drum parts.
After this we booked the upstairs studio for the afternoon so we could record drums. We used a room mic, a SM-57 on the snare, a kick drum mic, and two overhead mics. The last time we recorded a track we didn't use a mic on the snare which didn't sound good at all so we decided to put one this time and it really made the drums sound better.
After recording the drums we decided to record Lead guitar again so Jack plugged it into an amp instead this time and used an SM-57 13cm away from the amp. We recorded it this way as Jack thought it sounded more clean compared to plugging into the interface on Logic and it turned out to be perfect.
After recording the guitar we still had an hour and half left in the studio. The band discussed ways we could make this track different and we decided to record some speaking parts in the intro of the song, We thought this went well and Jack had added some banging into it as well which was hitting the drums which made things more exciting. The lyrics had been completed as well.
This was Jack recording the speaking parts down below.
Monday 17th of March:
We managed to record Dave and Jamie's vocals and harmonies over blue train in the studio.
We had 4 tracks of them doing different harmonies in the chorus
Tuesday 18th of March:
I spent most of this day doing research on mixing and looked into websites covering this topic and gathered information from those to add to my research. This afternoon we spent playing straight through all the songs we had already and we discussed what we should call out new song and we eventually decided on 'Blue trains'. We also discovered we had our older song 'Dreaming alone' all ready to record, so we booked the studio for Thursday.
Thursday 20th of March:
We began working on our song "Dreaming alone", which we had written earlier this year and decided to put onto our EP as we liked the song a lot. We also managed to record the entire song on this day, starting with the rhythm guitar which we plugged into the interface. It took a fair few times to record for all of us as the song has a fast tempo but we all managed to complete it. We then recorded Lead guitar, which was also plugged into the interface, and so was the bass. Recording everything has seemed to get relatively easier since we all understand how to set everything up like mics and Logic. This is the lyric sheet:
This was Jack practicing the solo and chords for dreaming alone just before recording:
Friday 21st of March:
Today I added the pictures i had taken already for my blogger and added them on and placed the correctly. I then spent the rest of the day writing with the rest of the band. We also planned to rehearse on Monday and Tuesday. The discussion included ideas about album covers, Kai said his girlfriend who studied art could design it for us. Jack had also came up with the idea to have different references to the songs included in the cover, which we all liked. We all agreed to include a dinosaur on the cover as a reference to the name 'Rex'.
Wednesday 26th of March:
Me and Jack went to the studio to record our newest song 'Wind and Rain'. We managed to record drums, lead guitar. and rhythm guitar.
27 March -
Today we all decided as a band to focus on updating our portfolio and research. I managed to update my portfolio and include what i did today and yesterday. And i also gathered information from different websites to add to my portfolio. I also began mixing Dreaming Alone, i began with the vocals, then switching between the guitars and drums.
Firstly I started with panning the drums, i panned the left overhead completely to the left, and the right overhead completely to the right and the snare drum slightly to the left.
Secondly, I EQ'd each track starting with the vocals in which i used the vintage console EQ as I thought this was easier to use with the vocals since it has a easier understanding of each gain. I also added a De esser at first but noticed it didn't make much of a difference as the noises were't harsh.
I then EQ'd the guitars individually, starting with the Rhythm guitar, then the lead guitar and lastly the bass. I used the channel EQ for the drums and used the sound waves at the bottom to help me.
I also added Reverb on all guitars and the vocals as well using the Space Designer Reverb. I also had to change the bass amp since it was set to a guitar amp and we didn't realize when we plugged it into the interface .
This was the EQ for the lead guitar, i felt the low end was very loud compared to the other frequencies so i brought that down a bit and the same with the mid frequencies in order to balance them out with the high frequencies.
3rd of April:
We had a session in the studio and finished recording 'Wind and Rain'. We recorded the vocals and re-recorded the lead guitar parts for the song.
7 April -
Recorded the song "Come Alive" and jack recorded the guitar track which is down below.
10 April -
Recording finish up
28th April -
I spent the whole day mixing Blue Trains.
I started with panning the drums. The left overhead completely to the left and the right overhead completely to the right, the kick drum in the centre and the snare slightly to the left.
I then mixed the vocals starting with the EQ. And adding compression, tape delay and reverb. I also panned the talking vocals at the start. Instead of using the vintage console EQ, i decided to experiment with the channel EQ instead to try and work out the gains on my own without guidance.
These are Dave's vocals, which i tried balancing it out as there were both high and low gains.
These are Jack and Jamie's talking bits at the beginning.
This was the compression on Jamie and Jack's talking bits which i had turned the threshold up quite a bit to make them more brighter and slightly louder, as I felt the panning had made them slightly quieter.
This was the tape delay which Kai had already added with us in the studio for one of the talking bits, it instantly made the vocals sound better as before it was added it sounded a bit dry while it was panning from ear to ear and this definitely fixed it because the echo was making it sound very atmospheric.
There were already pedals on the guitar so i just added the EQ on the small Lead guitar parts at the start middle and end.
This was the EQ for the bass down below, I had gotten rid of the high end and boosted the low end, which Kai had helped explain to me.
I also added compression and reverb on both guitars. We had a double track of each guitar and panned them to both sides to make the sound thicker.
The reverb on both guitars were the exact same, I added just a bit of reverb to make the guitars sound like they have more depth and atmosphere and to blend in with the rest of the instruments.
29th of April:
In the studio whilst recording Blue Trains I had automated both of the talking bits i the song, as one person during each talking bits vocals were a lot quieter than the other person, so I turned the louder person down a bit and the quieter person up a lot.
In this case, my vocals were very quiet whilst recording so as you can see I've turned them up quite a bit to balance both vocals out a bit.
Here you can see both the vocals we're both at a similar volume but towards the end it got very loud so that's why I've turned it down a bit.
Since the sound of echo worked well with the talking bits, I tried adding echo to the harmonies in the chorus but it made all of them sound quite off time which didn't blend well, so i decided to remove the echo and leave them as they are.
Instead, I just stuck with adding compression and EQ to the harmonies.
For the drums, i decided to do what i did with dreaming alone and keep it simple, all i did was EQ the snare and room mics to add more brightness.
Lastly, I uploaded Blue trains and Dreaming alone to soundcloud.
1st of May: Mixing Come alive
Firstly i began automating the volume by turning it down everytime i heard harsh vocal noises.
I then added compression to the vocals
I added soft distortion and made the vocals slightly louder since they were a lot quieter after automating them.
I then EQ'd the vocals te same way i did with Blue Trains, i just looked for male lead vocals that had already been made in Logic and turned the low frequencies down a bit.
The last thing i added for the vocals was reverb
I used Space Designer as i had previous experience with this reverb when i used it for unit 1 and or the vocals in Dreaming alone.
Next i moved onto the guitars, starting with lead guitar. The amp and pedals were already on there from when Jack added them in the studio.
I then experimented with Noise Gate because Lee had recommended it to remove the unwanted noises on the guitar and he helped me with.
I then added EQ to the lead guitar.
For this, i reduced the low gain and focused on the high since most of the guitar had higher parts than low and i balanced out the middle gain.
For the compression on the lead guitar, I experimented with this different compressor which Lee had explained to me.
I focused on mainly having the lead guitar louder than the rhythm since i felt the riffs blended with the vocals better. All i did was change the threshold and makeup and add soft distortion.
Once i finished with the lead guitar, I only EQ'd the rhythm guitar and added reverb as i felt it was already loud enough and didn't need compression, I used the same reverb and EQ as i did in the other songs as i felt i understood it at a decent level.
I then added a bass amp to the bass as we had previously used a guitar amp when we plugged it into the interface without realising.
I then added compression because i felt the bass was very hidden in the track because of how quiet it was.
After playing the track i realised the vocals were very loud so i went bach onto the vocal compressor and turned the Make-up down slightly along with the threshold which brought the vocals down quite a bit which suited it better.
I then added EQ to the bass, using the same EQ as the rest of the songs. I tried balancing things out and turning the high gain up slightly more than the rest.
The last thing i did was drums. I started with panning them the same way i did before, i then added reverb to the snare since it sounded too dry and quick.
I then added Noise Gate to the snare, since i could hear the toms and cymbals bleeding into the audio and I wanted to remove that.
All i did was turn the threshold down to -73 and the reduction right up to -20 and i didn't touch the rest as i thought what i had done fixed the issue.
I then finished mixing Come Alive and uploaded it to soundcloud
May 2nd: I began adding to my research portfolio where my drum beats for the songs on the track were inspired from.
Over half term, Kai began designing and making our EP CD. His girlfriend began designing the CD cover and this was here idea which stuck.
Once Kai had mixed all of the tracks he began making the CD's
Once he'd put the tracks onto the CD's, Lacey had finished designing the cover. Kai then printed the cover pictures out and placing them in each CD case.
We were al very pleased with how the CD's turned out, especially how on the cover there was referencing to each song.
Kai then started making posters to spread awareness of our CD, he posted it on social media and brought the CD's into Derrick's music shop and Swansea Bay Records for them to sell.
6th of May: a student in the year above us in college had offered us a gig in the bunkhouse on the 21st of May to open for her new band, after she heard we were looking for a gig. This was the poster that Flat Cat had designed to share.
May 6th: Mixing Wind and Rain
First i began mixing the vocals, I began with using the vintage console EQ like i had used before.
I mainly focused on bringing up the high and low gains and seeing where the middle gain would sound best afterwards.
I then multi tracked the vocals splitting them into two tracks, one being the verses and one being the choruses. I found this helped a lot, since i could turn the vocals on the choruses down without affecting the vocals on the verses.
I then mixed the vocals the same way i did for the other tracks, by adding a De-esser, tape delay, Reverb and compression. With the tape delay, i changed the notation to 1/8 dotted, which I found sounded so much better and suited the vocals perfectly without making the echo two obvious.
On this track, we had used an acoustic guitar for the rhythm which we hadn't done before.
I started by panning both guitars, the rhythm to the left and the lead to the right.
All i did with the rhythm guitar was add compression and EQ, since i didn't think it needed reverb because i tried it out and it didn't work very well, it made the acoustic guitar a lot brighter than the rhythm which i didn't like. With the EQ, i focused on reducing the low gain since it started very loud, and i mainly focused on having the guitar in a mid frequency since it sounded better than it did with a lot of high frequency..
Next, I mixed the Lead guitar.
The amp was already on there, and i felt the Lead was quite quiet so i added compression and EQ the same thing i did with the acoustic guitar.
Since the Lead guitar was using the E string for the riff, i turned the low gain down a lot and the high gain down a bit to balance out the mid gain. And i used the compressor the exact same as i did in the other songs.
I then panned the drums the same way as the other songs and added compression to make them louder and brighter.
This time i used a different compressor since the lecturer had recommended this one for the drums.
For the solo guitar pedals, amp and noise gate had already been added and i thought it sounded perfect as it was so i decided to keep it as it was.
May 21st: Bunkhouse gig
We performed 7 songs including 4 from our EQ, another original we had written a while back and 2 originals which were She's electric by Oasis and Lucky Man by the verve.
Unfortunately we weren't able to get a gig before the 12th of May like we had planned to in the project plan.
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