13 June 2014

Today I have finished my flayer for the show. I have used Photoshop CS6 to design the leaflet. the design is simple, it has to pictures and information about the show. The colours are contrasting and are catching people's attention.

We have give away the leaflets in Croydon college and next to shopping center in Croydon. We decided that more people will arrive to the show from the collage than from the outside college. Alternatively we wanted to go to Croydon Clock Tower, but there is never a lot of people durring that time.

From production I have finished my mixing and we all started mastering. Mastering should be done at the time of releasing the album which is 17th June.

10 June 2014

Today I have decided that recording a drumkit would be a good idea for my track and it will create even better feel of 1960s. I had used 'audio-technica' microphones set used to record drumkit. I have one microphone for a kick drum (dynamic), four other dynamic microphones for toms and two overhead condenser microphones.

For the first session I did set up the microphones in position:
- Kick drum - one microphone on the back of the drum (MB 5k kick drum designed microphone).
- Floor Tom - one microphone on the top (MB 5k )
- Small Tom - one microphone on the top (MB 5k)
- Snare - Two microphones one on the top and second on the bottom (2x MB 5k)
- Overhead - Two condenser microphones above the drumkit (2x MB 4k condenser microphone)


I have also taped the cables to the floor so no one trip over them walking around the room.

For the second lesson i have tried to connect the microphones to pro-tolls software. It have taken a  long time so I was ready to record on the third lesson. I have taken two recording over my track.

Today i did everything what I wanted apart from editing my drums. On the next lesson I will put recorded sounds into logic-pro 9 and I will use effects on each drum to make it sound good.

07 June 2014

3rd June 2014

Today I spent most of my time on finishing 60s song. I have created the breakdown part and I have added flanger effect on the mix output. I have automated it and the flanger effect is increasing its output mix durring the breakdown and stops on the chorus. That gave my song very 60s psychedelic feeling.

There was however one problem with the flanger. When i applied it onto the whole track, when it rises the output mix, the sound gets bit more squashed and quiet. I was thinking how to resolve this problem. I am planning to do parallel track. On the other hand if the squashed sound gives that 60's unperfected sound that was often created in that era due to the limitations of equipment.

23rd May 2014

Today I have start extension of my 2000's track and I was focused on the drumkit. I am using Redrum multichannel sampler.

I have decided that I will use EQ on every single channel to give character to every single sound. Than i connected EQs to a mixer from which I will be able to control which sound will go through effects. I have also set up line mixer at the end.

 I have set up 3 auxiliary channels:

- First one is connected straight to the  line mixer

- Auxiliary 2 goes to the compressor and than to the line mixer

- Auxiliary 3 goes through reverb effect and goes to channel 3 on line mixer.

On the mixer I let all the sounds to be send from AUX 1 and AUX 2 (compressor). Similarly i done with AUX 3 (reverb) apart from a kick sound. I have decided that kick on the reverb did not sound good, whereas the rest of the sounds got more powerful and fat. From line mixer I sent 3 outputs into the main output.

That helped me in creating good sounding drum kit which sounds more fat and original on the track.

20th May 2014

Today i have started my 2000s track. For this song I am using Reason 7. I saved it as an starting point and soon I will be working on extension. I have also borrowed samples from my friend who did finish song. I will use samples of her voice into my composition. Plan for today went well and I have done everything what I wanted. However I will need work on the drumkit. Samples from Reason does not sound good for me due to the sampler.

 This is my Starting Point

16th May 2014

Today I have done recording of the vocalist on my 60's track. I had only to do 2 takes from which second one was exactly what I needed for the track. I have used Behringer B-2 Pro with omnidirectional polar pattern, in order to record the reverb of the room. I have also done initial mixing and added it to the folders: 'Final Mix', 'Extension' and 'Different Structure'.

There were no problems with the recordings whatsoever. First I have set up the mike and I have connected it to Logic using MOTU. Than I checked if everything was working and I asked vocalist to sing on my track. I was surprised that I get exactly what I needed on the second take. The whole recording session didn't took longer than 10 minutes.

After listening to the recorded track again I discovered some issues with beginning of the vocals. First part was bit out of tune, but I have fixed the problem quickly using autotune in logic. I am quiet happy with the track as it is now, but I want do add some harmonies to the track using the first recording.That will make the sound even bigger.

13th May 2014

Today I have restructured the song.I have also added choir and cathedral organ to the chorus of the song. Restructured song have a pre chorus in the middle. For the recording of the vocal I am planing to  use first structure and that i will add edited vocal to the 'Restructure' folder later on.

The day went very good for me and I did everything as I had planned. I had some problem with deciding if I should use cathedral organ or maybe normal organ. I think that cathedral organ gives that power to the song and makes it more powerful and it goes better with choir.

9th May 2014

Today I have finished my extension of the starting point. Now i have main structure of the song wchich is:Intro, Chorus, Verse, Chorus Verse, Chorus, Outro. On the next lesson I will try to restructure the song.

Today I have decided that I will not to the breakdown yet,  therefore the structure is simpler than i have planned before.

6th May 2014

Today I have started work on my 60's song. I have created four folders: Starting Point, Extension, Restructure and Final Mix. I will save my work to those folders at different moment of complition, therefore I can show my progress. My starting point have two sitars playing, drums, bass and piano.

I am planing that the song will have also vocals. the structure will be simple: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Breakdown, Chorus and Outro, but I am not sure if I will keep it in  that structure.

Todays session went really well and everything that i have planned for today went according to the plan.

29th April 2014

Today we were thinking about adding piano riff. We were preparing audio for recording , and we were organising previously recorded harmonies. We also were trying to put together new structure of the song.

Bu the end of the session we decided that sequenced piano didn't give 50s feeling to the song, therefore we come back to our initial idea. Harmonies now sound better and the whole track is ready for recording, because we have mixed it. Our structure now is bit different but we are not sure if we leave the song with the new structure.

25th April 2014

Today we have recorded bass and backing vocals. I have connected bass guitar to audio interface and than connected it to the computer. To record backing vocals we used AKG c3000b on omnidirectional polar pattern. I have created 3 tracks on the song for backing vocal harmonies and one extra track for talk back. The backing vocals were recorded in the same room as guitar an bass, therefore the reverb of the room will match the track. The position of the microphone were also the same as on the previous recordings of the vocals.

Recording session today went very well, specially the backing vocals were amazing. Personally I would add some EQ to the bass, but because we are doing track that will have to sound like made in 1950s, I will have to leave it until final mix. The reason for that is that back in that era there was no equalization available, therefore we will try to keep the original sound that we recorded.

22nd April 2014

Today we have planned to record drums, guitar, bass and vocal together. By the end of the day we had recorded only drums and guitar with one take. . We have used one Microphone AKG C3000B and we placed in one part of the room.
Here is a simple graph of the setup:

The recording session went allright today. We did multiple takes of Guitar drums and vocals. After the session we decided that we will record vocal and bass separately just to have more control over the sound. The main problem was that the vocalist had sing very loud in the same room with drums.