Recording Science Vs Romance

Its been a while, I need to post more often really but uni is starting to get really busy now. my dissertation is well and truly under way, I've had a fair bit of work recently, and Mass Effect 2 came out which may well be the best game I have ever played (although thats probably a tie between it, the original, Metal Gear Solid and Psychonauts).
On top of that I've been in the studio with Science Vs Romance, which was my first time in the studio in about a year, and my first real experience with Pro Tools 8 (despite me buying it months ago, as I said, it's been busy).
SvR have had a slight change in direction with their new material, it's much less pop-punk meets Minus The Bear and much more indie rock meets At The Drive In. 
We've had two weekends so far of tracking and most of the editing has been done at home on my LE system. The first weekend was split between pre-production and tracking drums, bass and rhythm guitars. We've been fortunate in being able to get a band made up of such great players that we could blast through all of that in two days, I certainly wasn't expecting to get so much done. Tracking at the university's new studios has given me my first experience with an Icon desk, which is beautiful, and much less daunting than the three interfaces I've previously used (the C24, Digi 002, and the Control 24) and yet far more powerful.
Comping afterwards was made infinitely quicker by PT8's new playlist track view, which if you haven't seen it yet allows you to see all your playlists for one track at once, solo them one by one, and send sections to a new playlist at the top. This is pretty similar to the way logic takes care of it, except that it doesn't necessarily insert auto-cross fades for you.
On the second weekend, we recorded all of the vocals and Stu's twiddley guitars which is now the bulk of the session recorded down.
I'd love to show you some of the stuff we've recorded but you'll have to wait until it's all mixed I'm afraid. This is definitely the best recordings I have produced to date and I wish SvR all the luck in the world, they could do great things.
In other news, I got a new phone the other day to replace the atrocious Inq1 I've been struggling with for what seems like an age. Its great, I'll give you a run through some time this week.

Happy new year!

Holy crap, its 2010! If anyone is interested, my resolution is to remember more birthdays this year because last year, I was terrible.
2010 is also the year that I get back into the studio, this time with Stourbridge based alt-rockers Science Vs. Romance. Scott, Darren and I are hoping to get some great stuff out of them, they sound fantastic live.
I'm preparing to start my primary research for my dissertation now, it's going to be about work-flow issues in digital consoles when moving from analogue mixing desks. Should mean I get to talk to some really interesting people and learn some useful stuff

It's Been a While

It's been a pretty long while since I wrote anything on this, which is a shame as I've been pretty super busy. Since I've last written I've gone back to uni for my final year which is getting pretty hectic now, but lots of exciting projects coming up. I've also gone back to work at Bucks Student Union as one of their in house engineers, which is pretty fun.
So far as projects go, I've got a big studio project coming up. My group is still going through the tail end of the A+R section of it, but I'm pretty enthused about working with Darwin and the Dinosaur. I got introduced to them by my good friend Sunny from In An Emergency Dial. They're basically pop-punk, but that I enjoy somehow. Anyone who's spoken to me about music for any length of time about music will know that I'm not a lover of most pop-punk, I guess I just don't get it, something to do with whiny American voices and simplistic song structures. Probably a direct result of me spending most of my late high school/college years listening almost exclusively to prog-rock.

But I love these guys, and I'm really enthusiastic about working with them, especially as they seem so dead on and professional. Anyway, go to their MySpace and check out the cheerfully titled "And Hope To Die" and I'll keep you all posted on how the recording goes.

I've got an excuse (as if I needed one) to re-do my website again, I'd link you to the old one but it's pretty god-awful, as I need to write an essay and a presentation on marketing something for my Applied Content Distribution class, I figure I may as well do it on the wishy washy topic of marketing myself as an audio engineer. So that should be coming along in the next few months as a hub for all of my online presence that's currently scattered all over the interwebs.

Work's going pretty great. Scott and I have now officially taken over as the in house audio engineers. It's lots of work, lots of fun, and I'm lots of grateful for this opportunity. We've already had some truly awesome bands, artists, and comedy come to the venue, including Lethal Bizzle, Dinosaur Pile Up, Bleach, The Pharaohs, Kid British, Little Boots, Pulled Apart By Horses, Chew Lips, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Master Shortie, Ebony Bones, King Blues and Flamboyant Bella to name but a few.

Last night was a fantastic night, unfortunately left virtually punterless due to Guy Fawkes night. The openers Wojtek Godzisz were awesome, totally the kind of music I've always been utterly in love with since high school. It was a mixture of grungy sounds and more progressive arrangements and they were an utter joy to work with. I'd never listened to them except for a brief checking out session before the gig, but I would thoroughly recommend people check them out if they come to a venue near you. The Bookhouse Boys headlined and were also pretty spectacular. I've always had a thing for trumpets and weird instruments, and this was my first encounter of an omnichord. There were two lead singers, a woman and a man, the man sounded an awful lot like Nick Cave, and the woman reminded me of Beth Gibbons (of Portishead fame). They sounded pretty spectacular and I would thoroughly advise anyone who is into that kind of americana/folk-rock to check them out.

Stuff has calmed down a lot now, schedule wise and I'm gonna keep updating my blog more often, at least weekly, at least until stuff gets hectic.