Mixing + Mastering Session and Future Prospects

Last Thursday me, Honza and Petr from LightHouse revisited Dubrek studios to mix and master all the tracks for our CD. Additionally, I would rerecord the verse bass parts for the song "Stay With Me" because the bass guitar was out of tune when Roman originally recorded it. Honza would also record his vocals for the song "Breathe 4 U".

Jay the producer/engineer did most of the mastering since he had the expertise of what would make it sound best - the main idea being to make it sound big and full. Honza and I would decide what was best mixing-wise due to our extensive musical experience, as well as suggesting potential use of effects.

We were very pleased with the end result of the songs, acheiving better recording quality than we could have ever expected from a demo session.

[3 hours 30 minutes]

I also produced a paragraph for the band website to describe the us and our sound - combined with Anna's fantasy story idea to make us more distinct. The web address is www.myspace.com/thelighthouse which also showcases not only some the recordings we made but also a couple of the images from our photoshoot in January.

On Sunday I got together with the band with Ragnar and Dominic for a long-awaited rehearsal. I had already been having doubts about the progress of this project. Initially I had joined up purely for enjoyment, hoping some potential would come out of it but sadly this was not the case. I had been growing weary not only of the style we were playing (Iron Maiden/Megadeth and pretty much nothing else) but also of their dependence on me as a musician. Without meaning to sound conceited, they were far behind me in terms of musicianship and stylistic variety and this formed a band relationship that meant they needed me to function at all even with two other guitarists (me being the most competent guitarist and only experienced vocalist).
In spite of this, I had little choice in what we played and they were not interested in learning any of my songs - the only original material we learned was written by Ragnar which I found to be fairly generic and uninteresting.

This session on Sunday finally clinched the decision for me. Ragnar proposed (surprise surprise) we learn yet another Maiden song and when I protested that not only was I bored of Maiden covers, the song in question ("Brave New World") was also not at all suited to my vocal range - I was completely ignored. Plus the drummer seemed to mess it up everytime we tried to run it through. I therefore decided to myself that I would call Ragnar before the week was out to let him know I had no more desire to be in this band.

On a more positive note, this means I can spend more time working with LightHouse for when Anna comes back to visit. Also, I hope to get the other members of The Falling Ashes to Derby for a weekend to learn some new songs and possibly record using the university facilities.
In addition, me and my housemates can finally begin work on a our potential band now that Ryan's finger has healed to the extent that he can play guitar again. In fact, me and Ryan did a couple of acoustic covers at The Brewery Tap yesterday evening (including "Remedy" by Seether, "Hell and High Water" by Black Stone Cherry and "Stranger Things Have Happened" by Foo Fighters) to great response. We also have several songs we wrote last year that we can start learning with Simon on drums. All we need now is a bass player, which we hope to find soon.

Recording Session and Sunday Gig

Friday 30th LightHouse rehearsed between 9:30pm - 1:00am for our recording session the next day. We ran through all our original songs to make sure we had them fresh in our mind. Also, we carried out my idea to add a new section to "Sleeping Walkers II" that would relate it to the "Sleeping Walkers I". That is to use the original chord progression in part I as the basis for a new section in part II to bring it full circle. We all agreed this new idea greatly improved the song.

[3 hours 30 minutes]

We all met at 11am at the Polish Club to pack all our equipment into the car to take to Dubrek studios, to arrive at roughly 11:30. Although we only planned to be there for nine hours, we ended up working until 2:30am. We had originally decided to only record some live takes andc take the best of them. The producer Jay advised us to only keep the drums and bass tracks from the live takes and overdub everything else. This was because we were using an electric drumkit and therefore saved us a lot of time (than if we'd been using an acoustic one) to produce a much higher quality recording.It took roughly six hours to finish tracking the drums and bass in the live takes, and then about two hours for mine and Honza's guitars each. The setup for the guitars included a 70s Marshall head in the control room linked to a speaker stack in the live room with two microphones on the speaker and one ambient omnidirectional microphone to catch the spacious room's ambience.The acoustic guitars were recorded using one condenser microphone and only took about an hour and a half altogether.The rest of the time we spent recording Anna's vocals, many takes being done since she was very self-critical but eventually we reached a stage where we were all satisfied with the result. The mixing stage would take place on Thursday 5th along with recording mine and Honza's vocals. Altogether the session cost £250, meaning £50 each.

Here is a link to an initial rough mix of one of the songs - http://www.esnips.com/doc/52c2aa3b-1e5c-41c3-afb1-30f7d4e293e2/03-AudioTrack-03

[14 hours]

Sunday evening we hosted a party at the Polish Club to celebrate the recording of this EP combined as a leaving party for Anna since she is going away on Wednesday to Spain for several months, meaning Lighthouse will be on temporary hiatus until the Live and Unsigned Regionals in March.We played two sets, one where we played the EP in its entireity and after a break we played a few cover versions. In between and after we had other acts included an accordion player and the JJ dancers. I also did an acoustic set compiled mainly of easily accessible covers. A good time was had by all and when most people had gone me, Anna and few a guys from the open mic scene jammed for a while before going home.

[5 hours]

Total: 22 hours 30 minutes