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.
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