So we did the demos and realised lots of things were far too slow, so we’ve decided to sort all that jazz out and FINALLY get on and do this thing properly. Work starts on Thursday and I’ll be treating it like it’s my full time job until it is finished! The words ‘labour of love’ don’t quite cut it. We will finish this.
For now, here is a video of us playing one of the tracks, ‘Something, Something, Moscow’, live at The Flapper in Birmingham, supporting the mighty Brontide.
Hello all. Bit of a fork in our road to finishing this record. We’re trying to book up some gigs for the autumn, and in doing so have had requests for new material, so what we decided to do was turn the guide drums and bass into ‘album demos’. So now we have cds that so far have 8 tracks totalling over 56mins. The plan is to use these to work out absolutely what tempo everything should be, double check everyone is playing the best possible thing and to familiarise Joe with the songs, since he is tasked with helping us making them sound awesome. Check out http://zedface.co.uk/ out for behind the scenes pics and his general musings.
I would write ‘hopefully this next stage wont take too long’ but that’s not how we do things here at Blooms HQ. Hopefully this next stage wont take too long.
Here are a few pics of what’s been going on, and the previous Carnage Club @ Temple of Boom, at which we played.
Hello 3 or 4 peoples. We’re at it again. Mitch has been in to do his guide guitars, and Tim is currently gurning his way through a particularly painful looking solo! So far we’ve managed to find a guitar noise that sound like Sweep from Sooty getting touched up. A productive day!
By sticking some guitars on, we’ve noticed various bits being too slow or fast again. Argh.
Hello all. We’ve been busy, but busy doing other things. Running a working recording studio and rehearsal rooms can mean we’re fully booked up and can’t get in at our own place! Since we’ve done the drums we’ve had Stourbridge’s own Drop The Ball in doing Guitars and Vocals for their forthcoming EP, a drum mixing session for Nottingham’s Colonies and then local supergroup History of The Hawk in doing a vocal session.
We managed to get a couple of tracks down on bass during the small bouts of downtime between recordings and the usual weeks rehearsals. Hopefully we can get back to it on Tuesday, if Mondays mix sessions go according to plan.
Working it out, we reckon it’ll be 28 days of tracking, split over where and when we can get in. Just a bit of an inside to why this album is taking us so long!
Or at least know people who will lend us theirs. Day One. We forgot that the last time we played Betts smashed his skin’s back door in, so we had to borrow one from the Boom’s house rock kit.
Somehow we didn’t notice this until the kit was already set up behind the drum wall.
Talking of the drum wall, this is it. It rolls out from the wall in room one, and creates a booth which is helping us get a much tighter drum sound. If we get a lull in activity I’ll find the pictures of us building it for those who are interested in studio things. Here’s a terrible camera phone picture of it anyway!
Looks like the kit could do with a dusting! Also, this is the subkick we built. It’s made from a child’s drumkit kick drum, and works like a bloody treat.
Bit of a tune up on the undersnare skin.
The drum booth is a bit further away than we used to set the kit up from the inputs on the wall. Luckily Joe has a loom with him so some of our shorter leads can still be of use!
Move all the mics around a bit, and then it’s test and record time. We’re taking guide tracks for the drums, putting all the bass and guitar over them, and then re-doing the drums to the rest of the band. We reckon that’s the best way to get a big energetic drum sound. It’s difficult to get the energy up with a soul destroying click click click click click click click click click
To drum mic setup. We used an SE Electronics Titan for a stereo image above the kit, Rode NT5′s over the hat and ride, a subkick & AKG D112 on the front of the kick and a Shure SM57 on the beater, a Sennheiser e609 and Shure SM57 on top of the snare with another SM57 on the undersnare. On the Hi, Hi-Mid and Low-Mid we went with AKG D-220′s. The Sennheiser e609′s we’re just picking up far too much wumpb. Yeah wumpb is a word. What of it? We used another AKG D112 on the Low tom (floor). Plenty of big low end.
So this is the control room of the boom. This is the hub of our operations. We’re running Windows 7 on dual screens with Pro Tools 9, Waves Gold, a couple of MOTU 896HD’s, a Behringer ADA800 and headphone amp. Oh and a bajillion guitars.
So this is me laying down some bass. I use a Fender Aerodyne Jazz, and we ran it through a sansamp di box since they are only guide tracks. Some time next week I’d imagine we will get round to recording sounds that will actually end up on the album and I’ll go through amps and gear properly then.
Well this is already long enough. I’ll give you guys a run through of all the tracks we’ve worked on so far tomorrow while I’m sitting round listening to Betts playing through the last of the drum takes. FUN!