Not so solo project anymore....

Been a while since an update on what I am doing with music at the moment. I have done zero work on guitars for my 8 songs lol, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. Friend Naomi White has come up with a few new songs that I have been able to write guitars for, so I have been working on those back and forth with Tim and her. Won't be showing any samples of these until they are more complete and we are ready to show.  On top of this I actually started writing my own again and have a new song in the works at the moment. Tim has already sent me a demo of some drums for it which I am extremely happy with. No melody or lyrics have been done yet but here is what I have so far anyway

http://soundcloud.com/abna/new-song-draft

Every time I come up with something new that I like it usually results in a snowball effect where I end up writing heaps of new shit so expect more new songs soon.

I have been fairly busy in my life as it is anyway including a new work out regime I have going for myself. Part of this is playing drums hard nearly everyday lol, I have been playing the same songs over and over off my ipod so I decided to record one this week. The song is "The Devil's Den" by Wolfgang Gartner and Skrillex. It has resulted in many snapped sticks and my 16" crash is proper fucked now.

- Abna

Check..

Bass guide tracks are finished, these will be re-recorded later with better equipment but I came up with some pretty cool new riffs on bass for some of my songs. The question will be do they fit with the current guitar riffs. I was going to set up some amps and stuff in a room out at my mums house that has a cool walk in wardrobe that I could have used as an iso booth, unfortunately the time I have left until somebody moves into that room has now become short, it may not be an option now. Exploring other options this week.

Meanwhile on the song writing front, Tim and his partner Naomi have been getting right back into it. They have written some melodies and lyrics for that song I wrote with Tim via the Internet as well as a whole new song that I am yet to fiddle with. When we have a working demo I might post a preview of one of these. As a group we have pretty much decided to write more music together so expect more new things to come of this (it also gives us somewhere to play the few songs I have dropped off my album).

The live recording of the 'Awakening' event Tim and I did last weekend went well considering the difficult situation (36 channels of audio coming from the stage with only 24 channels to split and record). I am going to do one last check on the mix tonight on my car stereo and that will be ready to pass on to the video guy, will post a link to a vid once that's done.

Anyway, will post updates on the guitar recording process as I can.

- Abna

It's been a while...

Yeah, it's been ages. I have been both slack and undecided about where to go next with this project. I went through the paces and ended up not 100% happy with the outcome of my drum tracks.. which was a pretty big downer on the whole thing considering how much time I spent on it. Turns out all I needed was a bit of time. Months down the track I found some motivation and played along to my drum tracks and laid down some rough instruments to see what it'd sound like. It sounded great, I probably just needed a break and to come back and listen to the tracks fresh. So I am back into it and laying down bass guide tracks so that I can start the guitars. I have also decided to drop 3 songs, the album will only have 8 songs now.

In the meantime, i am finding other ways to hone my skills. I am going to be helping Tim record a live band this saturday and then in March I will be recording and then post mixing a live event at the shoalhaven entertainment center. The final mix will be going onto a dvd or onto some videos or something. But a more recent feat was last weekend just gone. I went away for a weekend to kangaroo valley, recorded and produced a song for which I also played drums for. Here's a rough mix of the song:

Pretty happy with how everything turned out in that bar the drums. They were very quickly miced and I pretty much learnt the song as I recorded it since it was freshly written.

Also, I videoed some stuff along the way, it's kind of long. If you want the short version: I record some shit, talk allot, change my mind allot and in the end I get the girl. (ps: the songs in the backround are all old pre-production versions and do not have real drum tracks in them). It's me waffling on and you'll only find it interesting if you care how or why I did/do certain things. The second vid is me recording "My Mistake" on day 2 of recording, plus a tour of my mic setup.

50% through drums

That's right, I'm probably about 50% (or less) complete with the drums. I have finished recording the 8 songs that I will be playing on the album. There are still 3 songs left to play that my mate Tim will be playing for me. Why only 50% then? Because now comes all the post production work. Mixing mainly.

 I hijacked my parents house for the week and converted their poor lounge room into my studio. Monday - Tuesday I recorded the 8 songs but only miced up the snare, bass drum and toms. It was only rough micing aswell since I have every intention on replacing the sounds with better drum samples. So essentially every hit i made on the drums was just acting as a trigger for the sample I will add later on.
Then starting Tuesday afternoon and finishing up Wednesday arvo I recorded all 8 songs again, but this time I played along with the beats I had recorded previously and I didnt have any drums on the kit, just Cymbals, which I used 5 mics on. I Basically just air drummed all the bits that wern't cymbal hits.
Recording this way allows me to have zero bleed into the cymbal mics from the drums which gives me more control over volumes and sounds when I EQ the cymbals and drums.
 I have recorded numerous times in the past but this is the 1st time I have ever done it this way, not to mention the 1st time I've ever recorded myself.

So, I packed up my gear back to my house and have converted my own lounge room into a make shift temporary studio for the mixing process and the recording of guitars and vocals. Which means I can go back to work and do this after hours now.

Not going to bother uploading anything right now as I have been taking pics and videoing allot of this as I go, I will continue to do this right through and make post some shit at the end.

- Abna

Nothing to see here

I think I have hundreds of pages of information over the past 2 weeks. As a result I have gotten my self a decent reverb plug in (Lexicon) and a guitar plug in called Amplitube. I actually have heaps of new stuff as far as plug ins go but these are the 2 that have changed everything. I did some tests with the audio from the demos and I can make vocals and any instrument sound 10X better now as well as an array of effects and pedals I can now put over the bass and guitar using amplitube. Really looking forward to recording the album now.

Unfortunately this is still bit off. I know where I am doing drums now. My parents have let me hijack their home again for an entire week this time. I got such a good sound out of a room there last time that I was actually pretty happy with this outcome. So I will be going out to their 10acre block to record drums on the 28th of August and spending 5-7 days out there. One of the main things I want to do properly this time around compared to every other time I have recorded my drums in studios is tune my drums properly. Got myself a drum dial, and I will spend all day if I have to.

After that I am going to convert my lounge room into a studio for a month or 2 (whatever it takes really) to do guitar, bass, vocals and finally mixing. So that leaves me a month now (about) of rehearsing and other preparations. This includes building myself an isolation box for my amp. Going to start working on that next week hopefully. I'll post progression on this as I can, other then that the updates might be scarce for a month. But I am going to be videoing allot of the actual album recording though so don't worry there will be heaps when it starts. Cheerio

- Abna

Patience

Why patience? Because now things slow down on the album for a bit. My part of the pre-production is done for now. I have mixed all the songs to some extent for reviewing. I have listened extensively to each song (to the point of... I'm sick of hearing them) and I have written down every change that I think should or could be made to each song. Rather then make the changes and re-record demos, I am just going to keep a note of all changes I want to make and apply them when I do the proper recording. I have sent the song "Trees" to Tim so that he can record Naomi White doing some female vocals for me, the song is intended to be a both male and female song and I am yet to hear it with both so this is the only song that hasn't been reviewed yet. As well as this Tim will be reviewing the rest of the songs for me as well.

So the next part for me now is to try and figure out where and when I am going to record the drums for the album. I want to use my own setup to record this so I need a space that I can leave my gear setup in for a week (give or take depending on the circumstance), that has appropriate acoustics for recording and that I can play drums in at all hours of the night. Pretty difficult criteria to be honest. Until the day I start recording it'll just be rehearsing the songs every week on drums and guitar.

In the mean time I have a couple of other projects in the works that are keeping me busy.
One is Lachlan's song which I have helped him finish writing as far as guitar parts go. Virtually all I have done is made some riffs out of what he described to me and sung for me. I'm going to go record all the instruments for him and record Lachlan singing it. In response to an offer made Lachlan has decided that he would like Tim (Robinson) to come produce it for him. When this song is finished we will post it up somewhere for all to hear.

The other project I am about to start is a completely different style of music to what the album is. I recently acquired a couple of plug ins that have on board oscillators and filters usually used for electronic music. I'm going to try my hand at making an industrial style rock song. Guitars, Drums and electronics mixed together. I will probably come out the end with two versions... a pure electronic version and the industrial version.

By the way, Scott put up a couple of clips from recording the 'Bottles' Demo the other week that you can check out. I also put up a very short very rough sample from the Pre-Chorus of Lachlan's song "Broken Peace"

Demoing 'Bottles'

Demoing 'Bottles'

Sample of Lachlan's song

- Abna

Lachlan's Song

Lachlan (my 10 year old son), has been watching me write and play music his whole life. My recent deep dive back into music has seen him also get right into it. Apparently him and a mate at school are going to start a band (I don't think the other kid even owns an instrument lol). Weather that endeavour comes to fruition or not is one thing, but the upside is it means Lachlan wanted to write a song. So he wrote one. To be honest I don't know what to make of the lyrics, I don't know what the influence is haha. We asked him and he said it just came to him. Hopefully nothing to worry about but I'm just over the moon to see him create something. AFI style lyrics :P

Here is he's work he did. Translation below

Broken Peace

Verse 1

I see a man with knifes, and an arsenal of guns

He cut the rope of the chandelier of peace

The broken bits lay on the evil filed floor

Pre Chorus

This wonderful thing has been reduced to bits

This wonderful thing has been reduced to bits

Chorus

The evil things are named

The soldiers of the evil world

The remains are sad, the remains

The broken bits of happiness are named broken peace

Verse 2

I lay on the floor with my family

I believe the bits, the broken peace

Will remake it’s original form

The soldier bursts through the door, got his gun

Shot everywhere inside my house

Bridge

Is hope still here, Because it does not look like it

Is hope still here, Because it does not look like it

Is hope still here, Because it does not look like it

Is hope still here, Because it does not look like it

So yeah I just wanted to share that.

As for Abna stuff... nothing much has changed since my last post. Still mixing demos. One thing that is probably worth mentioning, the song 'Bottles' has and is changing allot. It was a song written by myself with the help of the band I was in at the time 'Nevertheless'. It was played by 'Nevertheless' and to be honest, the song suited the band and went well in our set. Now, it just doesn't suit the rest of the album but I really want to use it. So Scott Deakes (good friend and the bass player from nevertheless) and myself are in the process of changing and producing the song so that it suits the album without losing it's original feel.

Also I have 2 songs that require lead breaks and I am rubbish at lead breaks. One is a old style punk song and the other is a more steady epic rock song. I have some people in mind to ask, BUT if you are interested in contributing hit me up.

- Abna