It's all going too well.....

I'm a born cynicyst and have a bad feeling about saying this but the album is shaping up rather nicely. A most productive recording session last Friday resulted in the completion of 'In the Sea'. If ever there was a track to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat, this was it. The intro classical piano just sounded daft on its own and I was desperately trying to find a way to contemporise it (if thats a word?~) and stop it sounding so dry. The solution was found in messing around with Waves RVerb where I dialled in a supersize cavern effect. Plug in a dry Strat and mess around with some fluttery surf guitar style picking, fading in and out, and it all came together. The overall track is a little 'lightweight' for my tastes but I think it will sit OK with the other material. The vocals were also a lot of fun, and the acquisition of my new 'popper stopper' has done an awful lot to remove those nasty plosives, and allow you to 'get into the mic'.

I'm pretty well through Evolution Railroad too, and have found a route through the song writing process. The song is in three parts. 1st part is a Bluegrass ditty with two steel acoustics panned left and right. 2nd is the Hendrixy, Saxon chord sequence seen on the drumming vid published on Facebook. The 3rd part is a balls out Sabbathesque section., complete with some 'devil like intervals'. Tony Iommi would love it, ....or want royalties. I found a wicked freight train sample that links the sections together and it all sounds great so far.

Vocals and other essentials to come but hopefully not too far away from being in the can.

As a footnote I took the long overdue precaution of backing everything up. The thought of losing everything at this stage is pretty scary.

Status report and cracking Cheeze

Quick progress report. Got a few hours in over the weekend. 'In the Sea' now has all the guide tracks. It took ages getting the right drum sound and eventually settled on a fairly vintage sounding Ludwig kit from the amazing Master Picks expansion for the TD20. I've found some nice keyboard noises to go with the Piano intro, namely 'The Cheeze Machine' which is a classic 70's string synth emulator. It produces nice Richard Wright style ensembles (Think Shine On....). This song started as a Muse style epic, but the vocals have killed the similarity. I'm slightly worried it now sounds a 'musical theatre' which would be an appalling prospect. Lots still to do on this one, so much for getting it finished quickly. The finished track will be over 7mins long though which is prog rock record length for me.

Overall progress so far:

La Iglesia - Complete, bar mixing, mastering
Sins of the Father - complete bar remix and replace lost sample (Cubase ate it!!)
In the Sea - Song written, guide tracks down, needs final performances and mixing.
Evolution Railroad - More song writing to do on this,
Who will you serve - More song writing to do on this

Three new ideas but nothing finished.

After a long lay off seeking inspiration, I seem to have ended up in the middle of writing three tracks at once. I'm not that keen on working this way as the danger is nothing will get finished.

The first, 'Evolution Railroad' is featuring a bluegrass style opening which I've been messing around with months. Then it filters into some hendrix' style chordings. I spent a good few hours trying to get some Hammond on there, loads of problems with MIDI latency in Cubase and it became a real pain. Now it's got ceremoniously stuck and no idea what to do with it. I'll have to come back this track later.

This weekend I've found a lot of time to write, being laid up a bit after my arm operation. After Also Eden's inspiring lesson in 'unusual' time sigs, I promised myself I'd try my hand. I've ended up grafting the choral piece I was working on into a 5/4 time section then into 4/4 bridge. Lots of work still to do on this but the idea is there. It will be entitled 'Who will you serve'.

Yesterday I found a superb Piano modelling VST called Pianoteq which has caused some serious amount of inspiration.

I ended up recording about 4 mins worth of classical piano that quickly morphed into a Matthew Bellamy style neoclassical piece. Lots of fun and even got some vocals down. I'm hoping this will get finished quickly.

One major problem I need to resolve is releasing some CPU power. All my VST's and effects are hogging the PC and there's nothing left to record with. Audio dropouts everywhere. I think I need to run all the VSTS on another machine.