Song #1: The Arrival

The first song to be mixed.

Drawing inspiration from by blue-eyed-soul and R&B artists like Amy Winehouse and horn and orchestral arrangements from multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, the Arrival features an arrangement of drums, guitar, vocals and bass, accompanied by trombone and string samples. I wanted to create an opening track of our album that would feel powerful and confrontational. The dynamics of this song are key to it's feeling of power - with sparse but intense strings and horns in the verse, a wash of sound in the chorus, and a squealing guitar solo, The Arrival almost feels like a James Bond theme. With the guitar and bass having noticeable guitar distortion, I decided to almost yell my vocals to give a sense of loudness and strain. It feels a little gritty and a little dirty, but it's just the way I like it.

Week #2 Reflection

Our last week of recording was a good one. With eight songs under our belt, we exceeded our expectations. Though sometimes recording parts seemed mundane or draining, it was necessary to fix little things here and there. We're looking forward to mixing next week and glad that our album is coming along nicely. I'm not exactly sure how our songs will sound in the end, but I'm excited to hear what we're going to cook up real soon.

Day #10

With the clock running out on senior project, we decided as a group that the last possible day to record would be this upcoming Monday on the 16th. We concluded that the only way to give us enough time to mix and master our songs properly was to finish recording promptly, leaving us a week to focus on the editing and organisational parts of music production. We recorded bass, guitar, drum and vocal tracks here and there to fill in certain parts that were not to our liking and spent the rest of our recording sessions fixing small mistakes. I used the bowed guitar technique again on another song with excellent results, and noted that this sound may be a recurring thing in my music in the future. Today wasn't particularly special, but it allowed us to wrap up a few songs, something that is still very important.

Day #9

Some mixing and some bass done today. Though I was not required to fill most aspects of these roles, my opinions and artistic visions were useful to process as a whole. Our group is good at commenting on each other's roles and providing constructive criticism. We have all agreed that it is better to be blunt and tell the truth with recording a particular bass line or guitar riff, than not say anything and let a sub-par track end up in the final product. Our original concepts of a few songs have been altered slightly over the past few days because of a change in opinion, or discovering that a particular technique was effective or a detriment to our music. All of us have similar visions with the final product, yet they differ enough that the three of us can come to compromises regarding certain aspects of some songs. For example, whereas one member may desire a very present and louder bass line, the other two may hope for a softer, lower part. A compromise may result in something that has aspects of both or a discussion that may have some group members changing their minds. In the end, we are all generally happy with what is being produced and glad that our group dynamic is effective.

Day #8

Vocal day.

Normally I wouldn't sing as many vocal takes as I did in one day, but I felt as if I was in the right mental musical zone to do them.

Keeping with our theme of an "older" sound, we decided to utilise compression and delay effects on my vocals. Compression lessens the dynamic range between the louder and quieter parts of a music signal by boosting quieter sounds and attenuating louder signals. Delay records a signal, and plays back the same signal after a short period of time, creating a sound similar to that of an echo. With the two effects put together, it would make a voice sound like something recorded in the 1970's, a rich sound that we have been desperately looking for. Recording was relatively quick an easy. I recorded about 2 - 4 vocal tracks for each song - enough to have at least one take that would be to our liking. Though my voice was a bit sore towards the end of the session, our group found that these takes were more than enough, and we were happy with the results.

Day #7

Today was an interesting day, and we ventured into something that we didn't expect. Unhappy with the results of our samples, I was seriously worried about the state of our album. A few tracks heavily relied on samples, and I feared that with them, the songs would not sound good, and without them the songs would sound empty. For a brief moment I considered scrapping these tracks entirely and was worried that our album would only feature a few songs. However, I decided to try something that I hadn't tried in a while, but realised it was a last ditch effort to save some of our songs. During the previous summer I had spent a considerable amount of time creating music for independent films back home in Australia, and utilised an unusual technique of playing a semi-hollow guitar with a violin or cello bow. With the right guitar rigs, pedals and effects, such a technique could produce a sound similar to that of a cello, but much darker. I resolved to arrange such a setup again and lay down perhaps seven tracks of my bowed guitar playing on one song with the samples still in the mix. The result was astounding. The very bright, high strings contrasted with the darker, richer bowed guitar tone, yet together they melded a sound that was different, yet suitable for our music. On their own, each part did not seem to fit the music to our liking, but together they created an orchestral presence that filled the missing void in one of our songs. I am very pleased with the progress today, and maybe I'll use this bowed guitar technique in some of these songs in the future.

Day #6

Back to recording again. We spent this day mostly correcting little mistakes or tracks that did not work earlier. We found that particular guitar tracks or bass tracks did not compliment each other at some points, and resolved this by re-recording them. We also found that some of the takes were not of substantial quality, and decided to record these again as well. Today was a day of editing of work, and replacing parts that needed fixing. Though tedious, it was an important undertaking that was necessary to produce a quality album.