I just spent a day at Brendon’s house (who really needs to update his site, by the way) getting the almost final touches done on the studio. The first half of the day was spent running around looking for a cable organizer, or a trough as Brendon calls it. The second half was getting the drum kit tuned, setting up the mics, and then messing around with recording distances and such.

I remember the first recording that Brendon and I did, the Anamnesis Theme, which was recorded at IADT’s studio. One of the big problems we had was time; it was very much against us on that night. Our drummer could only stay for half an hour, and the equipment clerks had given out the XLR cables I’d booked for the session, so one of my project partners had to run out and get more cables. Needless to say, we didn’t have much time to set up and fine tune the mics to record the kit properly.

One of the things that stood out about how bad that recording session turned out, was the sound of the kick drum. It sounded almost like a click. There was literally no bass at all to it. We didn’t have time to set up a metronome to keep perfect time. We only set up one overhead. We were only able to record three takes. The list goes on.

Contrast that recording session with the test session we did today. We spent about 45 minutes trying different positions for the kick drum mic alone. That’s 15 minutes more than we spent setting up and recording our drummer at the school. We got to hear the difference in the mic placements, and we got to choose an optimum one. It felt very, very good.

It seems that the best way to improve the sound that you record is time. We had some of the best equipment money could buy at IADT - a 24 track 2 inch tape machine, acoustically padded rooms, a fucking SSL console(!!!) - and yet, what little recorded at Brendon’s house today is already showing more promise. Mind you, Brendon’s spent a nice chunk of change on his studio, but to put it in perspective, the amount that he spent on his entire recording set up is about the price of a 24 track analogue tape machine. An SSL console runs about 120K; you can buy 5 decent cars for the same amount. What we couldn’t buy in the studio was time, and since Brendon owns a studio, we’ll have all the time we need. Expect something very good; I’m setting the bar high.

Admittedly, I got all of these from the CDM website. It’s a really cool site with tonnes of great info.

The Free Sound Project and SoundSnap are both free sample libraries. So far, from my limited browsing, I like the first link better, as it’s more organized and has options for downloading entire packs.

ccMixter is a very interesting site that allows people to grab free A Capellas from other users, perfect for people who want to make music but have no access vocals. I browsed it and I heard quite a few good singers, and a few bad as well. It has a few copyrighted vocals on there as well, but it’s not supposed to. Overall, it seems like a really cool idea, something I’d use if I didn’t rap and wasn’t intent on learning to sing. I might use it sometime anyways, if I make a dance song in the near future, but that doesn’t seem likely.

So I recently acquired a program called Melodyne. Basically it’s a real time pitch correcter that I can use on singers. The intent with the program isn’t to make people who aren’t singers to magically sound professional (although it probably could), it’s just a time saver. I read somewhere that Frank Sinatra for one of his songs did over 70 full length takes to get the ‘perfect’ version. Most of us don’t really want to wade through 78 takes. I say you get 5 near perfect takes, splice the best parts together, and any part that’s still a bit off can be corrected. It’s just a tool to save time and money.

When I first started sound school, I was quite against the idea of using the computer to “perfect” a vocal line, thinking it was unnatural to do so. My teacher told me that he was against it at first as well, but he changed his mind. His view was, that the music recording and creating process is anything but natural. You record all the instruments one at a time, as opposed to playing them all at once. You don’t search for “the perfect drum kit” or “the perfect guitar”, any instrument will have its faults. Is the kick drum lacking in the 120 Hz range? Beef it up with some EQ. Does the snare sound a little dry? Add some delay and a touch of reverb. Guitar sound too clean? Run it through a distortion unit. Does the amp have a hum? Take out the 60 Hz cycle with EQ. The singer is a bit loud in one part and a bit too quiet in another? Use the volume knob or put some compression on that.

Knowing that we mutilate our music to enhance the good parts and get rid of the bad parts, why should anyone draw an arbitrary line, saying that we shouldn’t do the same to pitch? We shouldn’t. Drums don’t really sound like that when they’re recorded, nor do guitars, nor just about any other instrument, why do we draw this distinction with the voice? We shouldn’t. If we wanted a realistic sounding music, we’d record an entire band at the same time, with two flat response mics, nested inside a device that mimics the human head and ear drums. If anyone wants to record that way, and only records that way (like many classical orchestra recordings), those are the people that have a right to bitch about the use of pitch correction. Anyone else that doesn’t record in that manner and feels that pitch correction is a detriment to the singer is a hypocrite.

I’ve got quite a few things on my mind, and hopefully this post works, as there are features to the Wordpress.org blogging tool that I’ve yet to try. If everything on this site goes wonky, blame wordpress.

UNKLE

I went to UNKLE’s first show in Canada and I thought it was great. They opened with Chemistry, probably my favourite song from them, and it really lends itself well to being an opening song, as the drums are packed with constant snare rolls to hype everyone up, and the general mayhem near the end of the song… also good at amping a crowd. Gavin Clark was a guest vocalist, and I really like his singing on the album, and he sounds nearly identical live, so that was a nice treat.

My only one complaint about the show is that for the album songs that featured guest vocalists other than Gavin, they all used a sample of the vocal track, which they played along to. I don’t mind that some of them did, but I wish either Gavin or their actual singer would have tried singing at least one of the songs, May Day comes to mind. Even though the vocal styling for May Day is very distinct, I think Gavin could have done a really good job with it. Despite that, I thought they were really fun to watch.

Reason 4 and the Thor Synth

Wow wow wow. Reason 4, from a work flow standpoint alone, is a vast upgrade from Reason 3. I won’t get into the improvements much here, they list them on their website, but basically the way that it works now makes me more excited to try different things, rather than thinking “I hate automating things in Reason”.

And when they advertise that “Thor is a very powerful synthesizer”, they’re not just speaking that way for better advertising. There are so many complex routing options are available, it will take me a long time to figure out exactly what it can do. I can run it in it’s most basic form, mimicking what I do with other synths, but the modulation matrix section is a god send. They say on their website that the modulation matrix “gives you complete control over your signal flow, letting you modulate anything within Thor with anything within Thor”. Instead of being stuck in a certain signal flow, where certain things such as an LFO is designed to route to maybe the pitch, volume, mix and other basics, Thor lets you route it to anything else in itself, like maybe the amount of chorus you want, the shaper tool, or a filter knob.

So, in short, I’m having fun.

Sneak Peak ZOMG!

So I was messing around with said synth, and I put a drum loop to what I was doing. Hype came up with the melody, and the rest came up as I was showing him how to automate things, how filters worked, and a bit of the routing options of Thor. So we decided that the tempo was good for one of our songs, called “Feet, Life, and Munchies”. Coming back to my original statement, I’m not sure how I’ll link to the file, so I may have to edit this post a few times.

Okay, so that didn’t work, I’ll link to it the traditional way.

Finally, no hitches in recording a song in our last meet, besides re-installing reason, that is. But after that it was smooth sailing. It was frustrating for the past few times getting together to record, and not being able to. Since we have completely a long awaited task, that means that I get to mix it now. Hopefully I’ll be done in a short while, as there’s not a lot of work left to be done, just to create an effect for the backing vocals, and maybe a bit of EQing to make the vocals pop out a bit more.

We’re also pushing the date of our album back by a month, since there was approximately a month of downtime that we experienced. It makes sense to me, at least. I’m not sure if we’ve stated when the album should be coming out, so if either of us have, you know when to expect it now. If we haven’t, then the seemingly arbitrary and unknown date doesn’t really matter, except that you know it’ll be at least a month.

WeAreTheFounders.com is the new domain that we have forwarded to this place. I’ll probably set it up so that it’s not a forward sometime in the future, but for now, this works. TheFounders.com was taken, even tho there’s no actual website at that address. I’ll buy that shit up too when it’s for sale, but for now, it’s only WeAreTheFounders.com

Fun shirt stuff, I’m in the middle of figuring out the best techniques to print up the shirts that I’ve designed, which is more than likely going to be our album cover as well. I’ve had a few hick ups with the paint so far, one if them is much to thick and it won’t paint properly. The other one is a transparent base which I need to pick up some white ink for. I’ll be busy for the next three day with my brother’s wedding stuff, so I won’t be able to test out the dye until Sunday or Monday. That kinda sucks because I’m anxious to figure this out, but I guess it will just have to wait.

Another sucky thing is that the last two recording sessions I attempted with Hype were for nothing, the program that I love so much started giving me problems again, and I’m not sure of the cause. I was thinking of upgrading, but I don’t want to deal with annoying glitches like the one that I’m dealing with now. I realize that a new version would probably get rid of this glitch, but the one in my face should be gone first, simply as a matter of principal of not being a cruel upgrading trick.

So I was just going over all of the work we’ve done so far while formatting the text and lyrics in our google documents, and it kind of hit me that we’re actually going to finish an album. While going through said documents, I managed to devise a preliminary track order for the album. I’m pretty happy with it, I’ll ask Hype tonight if he likes the order and what changes he’d like to make, if any. He might have a different take on where a few songs should be placed, so I’m looking forward to seeing his input.

I still have to write a single verse, but as soon as I write that, we’re completely done with the writing portion of the album. As well, I’ve completed 8 beats, and I’ve got 3 beats in the works. Combined with Peter’s beat, it brings the total to 12 beats conceptualized, and yes, my spell checker confirms that conceptualized is a real word, not one that I’ve made up, as I tend to do.

Recording the songs shouldn’t be very difficult, not like when we first started. When we initially got back into the whole rapping thing, it took us quite a while to get our flow back. We were having difficulties recording “Rhyme So Tight”, even though we set the song up so we only had four lines maximum to deal with at a time. I figured it’d be like riding a bike, but it’s not. You stop rapping, and your skill diminishes. So for the first few songs we recorded, I think we must’ve recorded and rerecorded them about four times before we were completely satisfied with the takes.

Now, as I have probably mentioned before, we only have to do a single set of scratch vocals, listen to them for any mistakes of in flow that we may not be aware of, and then record the final takes and backing vocals. We’re both much more confident in our abilities, which means we remember the verses faster, pick them up faster, and deliver them in a … faster time frame.

I guess the major hurdle at this point would be the songs that don’t yet have beats in the works. I’ll have to get inspired, somehow, it seems, not that I mind.

I have a few news items to post.

First, we’ve finally come up with a name for another one of our parters in rhyme. Well, when I say we, I mean he came up with it himself. We identify him by the short form of his last name, Nate. So he came up with a great pun in Resin Nate. As soon as he said it, we knew it was going to stick.

We’ve written 4 more tracks, with the following titles:

• Feet, Life and Munchies
• Wheels of Fate
• This Is Total Take Your Soul Music (or affectionately, TITTY SM)
• Braggadocios (featuring Resin Nate)

Feet, Life and Munchies is pretty much self explanatory, just a funny idea to combine a few very different verses into one song. Wheels of Fate is a short solo track from Hype (and I’ll be writing a short solo of my own soon). TITTY SM is a track that I can’t wait to start. It’s going to be very experimental from a production standpoint, and I’ve got the basic idea for it in my head. I kind of want it to be a surprise to everyone, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be unlike any hip hop song I’ve ever heard. Braggadocios is our first track featuring Nate. All I can say is, Nate is ready to rhyme. We wrote it over a few days that spanned a few weeks, but I think the track is going to turn out quite sick. We’re definitely aiming for a Boot Camp Clik styled song, shout out to those guys, some of my favourites are from that crew.

We’ve also recorded a few songs. I’ve been mixing one of them (The Weed I Need) for a while, getting the vocal flavours to my exact liking. I’m done pretty much everything that I have to, we just have to record another set of back up vocals and then we’ll have that under wraps. We’re gearing up to do a long haul of recording sessions.

I’ve appointed Peter to produce the beat on “Tha Chambers”. I swung by his place last week to get a sneak peak of the beat that’s he’s creating on the PC. I don’t know why I did that. In any case, the beat was really nice, very distinct an different from my production style, but it’s a welcome contrast. He’s got a great style on the song and I can’t wait to rap to it.

Masheek has acquired a new microphone for our recording session, so now we can both record at the same time if need be. I might need another stand and pop filter, but it’s all good.

So that’s the update. Look for more frequent updates as we step up our game. peace

Not a lot has been going on as of late, but that’s just because Hype is gone to Amsterdam to get some legal greens. I can’t remember the day that he’s supposed to be back, but we’re going to record as soon as he’s finished his vacation.

At any rate, I’ve completed the T-Shirt design that I’ve been working on for the upcoming album. It’d make a decent cover too, but I’ve got to get the A-OK from Masheek before we go into production with it. I’m sure he’ll like it though, as I’ve shown a few people and they’re really liking it. All that’s left to do is buy the domain name(s) and we’re off to print.

I’m not sure if I should spell it “Thru” or “Through”, as I like the aesthetic look of the former, but I like the fact that the latter is correct. Something that I usually despise is when a title has “1 4 da money” or “Beat Dat Foo”, like purposely spelling things wrong for the sake of looking uneducated, or “cool”. I’m using a lot of quotation marks, so I’ll stop.

Anyways, I’d rather not give away the near obvious influence for the song, or at least I don’t want to talk about the exact method for penning it, I want everyone to come up with their own conclusions. What I will mention is the intention of the song, which is to create a hypnotic rhythm, with fairly trippy and droning lyrics. The beat that I’ve made so far reflects this quite well, and I was kind of in a trance while I wrote the lyrics. When I turned the beat off I felt kind of — empty I guess would be the best word. So I’ll be adding a few more pieces to it, but keeping it very minimal, like most of my stuff.

A few friends of mine, Peter and Nick, are coming over tomorrow to record some rocking guitars. Basically, Hype and I recorded some lyrics over one of my beats, and although it kind of goes together, I think it’d be a lot better for this song to have some hyper-aggressive guitars and some killer rock drums. What we have so far is us rhyming loudly over a dark beat, but it’s not hard enough for my liking. It’s a good beat, but it’d probably be suited better to something else.

This will be the second song on the CD with live guitar work. I think that’ll be it for the guitars on this album, as I wouldn’t want to carve a niche in that particular area. I might do one more if I can get Brendon, another friend of mine, to lay down something for me. He’s got a very different style of playing and it’d probably be a more somber and mellow piece rather than something that ‘bows you in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I love guitars, but it’s just not the overall direction that we want to take our album in, but we don’t mind making a few stops there along the way.