Sorting... mixing... tidying..

I had a day of sorting out audio.. the session with Tamira... the open mike... the Jam at melody line.... today I could have saved about 3 hours if I had double the RAM I had... I'm not much of a technology junkie, but if I had the room, I'd have a new computer by now.

Day 1 - recording with Tamira

Fresh off my recent recording prowess that I developed with the help of Sandra, I'm going to record Tamira. Day 1 was spent getting a rough recording of each of her songs so that I can have a listen and work out what to do with them.

Starting as we mean to go on....

In an attempt to start as we mean to go on. Fraser Javier and I went Jam Studios(MUZYQ was booked) to make some noise. I forgot how much of a slog it was to carry guitars and cables to the studio

Wi' (not) Jammin'

After 6 months of oscillating between playing rockstar and playing grumpy-organiser-man - the Coco's Jam Sessions are no more. It seems that the Jam Session was the only night that was a guaranteed success, and the bar is going to replace it's stage with a DJ booth.

It was a great experience while it lasted, and I learned a lot, but there is a part of me is glad for a break. As the nerves and worry of managing to get through the night with unknown musicians gave way, it became an organizational chore. How do we plug in 3 guitars in with 2 guitar cables? How long do you give the drunk guy a shot on the drums before you ask him politely to leave? How do you explain to the Reggae enthusiasts that reggae sounds terrible if their timing is terrible? And also is all this shit your responsibility?

Through the Jam Sessions I have met loads of new musicians and contacts and built a lot of confidence in playing and even singing. Thank you to everyone that put up with it and thank you to everyone that participate; we did ourselves proud. Onwards and upwards to the next adventure.

Tamira and Neil - Live @ Mollys

With Sandra off on an Iberian adventure, I needed some help for this Month's Open Mike. Tamira willingly obliged. Preferably we would have had more time to practice, but I got held back with finishing Sandra's album. It's interesting how the mood changes when you add something else to the mix. We were able to rely on stuff we had prepared from the jam Session’s a little, and they were tried and tested so we knew that we could knock them out no problem with Stephen and Javier as well:

We did an excellent version of These Boots were made for walking… we had monitor issues on Crazy train, and we had chord-forgetation problems on Paranoid by Black Sabbath.. then I sang a few of my regulars…

and then Kevin took the stage for a set:


He’s a human juke box with much more capacity to entertain a crowd than I have.
After that – we had a first for the Open Mike’s at Mollys – a guy got up to give some poetry readings:

In times gone past, I’d like to think that poetry sat side by side with music in Irish bars… but alas times have changed and he was faced with a tough audience… still he gave a good ten minutes of various poems that he had come across on his travels, before I got up again and sang Lola by the kinks cos Katy had requested it.
Tamira sang some of her own songs, then I did some… then Kevin finished us off.. It was one of the better open mikes - - a good packed bar and a happy crowd.





Audio from the show here and here

Art work and packaging

We've not had the luxury of time during this project. Sandra and I messed around with recording for a long time, but we needed the deadline of her going on a trip to really get our arses in gear. As a result we're working to the last minute, so for printing of CD's and artwork, we can't take advantage of the myriad of offers out there that will pakcage up your stuff. After spending a lot of google-time and even telephone time talking to companies about costs lead times etc. I realised that I was trying to rush job 500 CD's when there is no way Sandra was going to travel round Europe carrying 500 Cd's in cases with her. I decided 100 Cd's we're burnable by hand and then focused on the art work. 

As always the art work is by kenneth for www.keep-it-creative.com It's excellent being in the position to offer him "professional"  projects, cos normally I'm badgering him for last minute changes to open mike posters etc. 

The art work is based on Sandra's guitar. We had "creative differences" as to how it should look. Kenneth and I wanted simplicity, Sandra wanted complexity. After long video conferences on skype,  we eventually settled on this:

We had solved the issue of CD burning, but we still needed album covers/cases. For this we opted for bulk printer drukland.nl. They had a 3 day delivery and it all looked good. I didn't read the small print though and by 3 in drukland counting is 12 in normal counting. Great prices, great online service, great product variety. DO NOT use if you are in a hurry. In an attempt to run my music endeavours like a business I didn't lay down and take it and after 40 emails back and forward in a mixture of Dutch and English that contained such temporal gems as "Friday IS 3 working days after Monday. Sir!"  I have 10% off my next order. The drawback is that Sandra left Amsterdam with spindle of 100 CD's and the covers are in the post to Madrid where she'll pick them up.

Other than an afternoon loading a CD drive and an afternoon folding and pasting covers, 625 CD's cost:

625 blank CD's - EUR187.50(These are off the high street and could be much cheaper)

625 album covers - EUR178(www.drukland.nl)

Price per CD -  58 euro cents...

If we charge my recording, engineering and mixing time, the price obviously goes up and then you have Kenneth's graphic design time... but 58 cents is a lot less than it used to cost me to make copies of CD's with covers...

Mastering the Mastering

Some of the tracks for Sandra's album have ben last minute specials, but I'm not ready to do the mastering.

Mastering is super deluxe highly specialist process of preparing a track for public consumption. We're strapped for cash and time, so I'm doing it on a pair of hifi speakers in a living room using Garageband, some free plugins and Audacity.

Sandra's tracks are pretty simple, there are no drums and usually very few instruments taking up space on the track, so I think I get away with my meagre setup. It's also a home/lo-fi recording so I don't think it benefits from unrealistic reverb and a lot of effects. I mix the track down and separate the stereo and non-stereo material so that I have two tracks. Then with each of these tracks I do a little light peak limiting, normalisation and multiband compressing until I'm quite happy with the signal. I give the stereo file a little bit of stereo enhancement. This I do in audacity, cos I can see the wave better etc. Then they both go back into garageband and I mix them together, maybe adding some more compression across the track or some really light EQ. I found a really nice plugin called Pro-Q from fabfilter. It costs, but I used he 30 day free trial. You can see what oyu are doing and drag a tight band filter across the EQ spectrum till you find a sweets pot and then mess around with the Q setting till you add some subtlety.

Once I've got it sounding good, I take it back into audacity to top and tail it, sort any clips and then max out the volume as much as I can while retaining some dynamics.

While there is no doubt that a professional would do a better job if I paid him a grand or so, I think the process has been a great learning experience, and the results fit the bill given the lo-fi nature of the project.