Moving Forward

I hope everyone has had a good Christmas and looking forward to an enjoyable new year.

Things here have started to come together again, the studio has been back up and running for a little while now with brand new computers installed with Windows 7. I must say using Windows 7 really seems to make everything else run very smoothly, although it did take a little tweaking. Sorry to all those Apple fanboys, but having used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7, I have to admit that the latter is everything Apple wishes it could be but isn't in so many ways. I am very happy with my decision.

As for the album, I have been reorganizing the songs and at this stage it looks like there will be 12 songs in total for the Virtual World album. Which is great because I originally only intended for there to be 10, but sometimes you have stuff you like so much that you just don't want to let it go. Of course anything could happen and maybe something may still be dropped after we have played the songs to a select few for feedback.

Another update will be soon!

Keep on Rocking.

It Never Rains But It Pours

Sometimes I feel like I am recording Chinese Democracy (that's right, the album that took 15yrs to make). A few weeks ago all of the inputs into my desk seemed to stop working, so after spending a lot of time fault finding, re-installing things, changing cables and computers etc. (the desk controls the computer) nothing seemed to fix it. I also have a removable drive system, so I replaced the current drive with the older one that was running my Cubase SX3 system and the problem was still there. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the problem was my firewire interface card.

So I ordered a new one, which took two weeks to get here, only to install it and discover that firstly the new replacement card uses a different chip set to the old one which my system really doesn't like (thanks Adaptec!). For more information on why this can be a problem just do a Google search for "Tascam FW 1884 firewire adaptec 4300".

So after a little bit of tweaking I got it up and running again but my input problem still exists. So now I believe there is a problem possibly on the motherboard as everything worked fine when connected to my Macbook Pro. Which means I have to now go out and totally rebuild my computer as I can't buy a replacement for my motherboard anymore (it is a few years old now) and all of the internal connections/configs have changed in the last few years.

Just to add salt into the wounds I came down with laryngitis last week and I couldn't speak for 3 days! Maybe in 14yrs time I might be able to finish this album :(

Hopefully next post I will have some good news.

Keep on Rocking!

Cubase 5 and More Delays

I have been extremely busy of late and unfortunately very little of my time has been in the studio. With the small amount of time I have spent in the studio, I have been getting used to some of the new features in Cubase 5 which arrived a few weeks ago after many delays. Overall I am very impressed with it and hopefully things should work a lot smoother now between the two studios.

I have also written a couple of new songs for the album whilst at the same time discarding a couple of others. Sometimes a song can sound good at first but eventually it doesn't have that lasting quality. To me this is important, and if I am not enjoying the song anymore then I can't imagine anyone else enjoying it. That said, Mick Jagger never liked Satisfaction when they first recorded it and look what happened. However in the end decisions need to be made and you just hope that they are the right ones.

Unfortunately all of this also means that finishing the album will be delayed a little. Primary recording is nearly complete and we have been working on rough mixes as we go, including entirely re-recording the longest and most complex song on the album (about 10mins long), which should help speed up the final mixing stages, at least I hope so. So at this stage We are looking towards a release date around Feb - March 2010 but this could change.

Of course there is a silver lining to all of these delays. That is: Considering this is the first album to be written, recorded, produced, mixed and engineered etc. in our own studios hopefully we will have ironed out all the bugs and pitfalls so that the next album can be produced with a process like a well oiled machine.

I will try to provide some more updates soon.

Keep on Rocking!

Studio Upgrade

Things are going to slow down a little, music wise, over the next two months as I have made the decision to upgrade the studio software to Cubase 5.

Currently I am using Cubase SX 3 but Murray has recently moved to version 5 in his studio and it is now becoming a little awkward going back and forth between the two studios. So the logical solution is for me to also upgrade.

This should provide many advantages, as the new software is far superior to the one we have been using. Also it will allow Murray to record the drums in his studio and bring the recordings back without any issues.

The down side is that I will have to learn how the new software works and I may need to re-sort some of my workflow, and this will take time.

In the end it will be a great benefit for the album.

Rock on!

Bit by Bit

Bit by bit over the last couple of weeks things are slowly coming together. As mentioned in my last post, with my wife having a baby I have been kept quite busy and haven't been able to dedicate too much time to working in the studio.

But we have managed to do some work on the album. I finished the vocals for the latest song and yesterday Paul came down to the studio and recorded a couple of tracks.