King Fidget EP – 310711

Sponsored by the letters B and C.

Chuffed to announce the release of the King Fidget EP!

King Fidget EP artwork

Featuring 4 tracks in all – King Fidget (EP Version)/Braille For The Feet/On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/King Fidget (Early Rough Mix).

The EP is available for streaming/download from a number of sites:-

Reverbnation – http://www.reverbnation.com/store/view_item_album/artist_35604?item_id=1160570

Bandcamp – http://danielprendiville.bandcamp.com/album/king-fidget-ep

Tunebreaker – http://www.tunebreaker.com/profiles.php?id=657

The EP will be added to more sites (hopefully) during the week.

Hope you enjoy it!

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet/On The Lake Between The Shoreline – 220511

Sponsored by the letters B and C.

In what must surely be an unprecedented burst of feverish activity, I mixed both BRAILLE… and …LAKE today in CE5.

Both tracks sound somewhat better than I’d thought from the rough mixes, but neither are really good enough to pass muster on the album. Nonetheless, they’ll provide a nice bit of auditory stimulation on the EP.

I came up with a neat little wheeze to fill a few gaps in BRAILLE… – flicking a tight delay on the beats on and off at various points through the mix. Works fine – I’ll use that again at some stage in the future.

..LAKE was tough to mix, as there were a lot of instruments fighting for the same frequencies, and it wouldn’t be possible to tweak them radically, but I think I achieved a pretty decent compromise. The mix sounds remarkably “rockin’”. Overall, the track sounds like what I imagine the classic Deep Purple Mark II  would have been like the first time they might have got together in rehearsal after all the members had got a stroke. No Ritchie Blackmore I…:-).

Compression/limiting in Cubase VST/24 and tidying up in AA3.

More mixing and mastering  next week.

Regards,

djp

King Fidget – 210511

Sponsored by the letter A.

Now that all that MODERNISTA nonsense is out of the way (how are you enjoying it, by the way?), it’s time to get back on track with the project.

I spent most of the day mixing two versions of KING FIDGET in CE5 - the album version has a lot of business going on at the start of the track and this is edited out from the single version. Other than that, the mixes are identical.

The mixes were based on a rough headphone mix I did recently, which wasn’t too bad at all – just needed some tweaking. I had fun with setting pre-fader delay volumes – got that sorted eventually. I also had to patch up a bit of a hole in the middle of the track. I had originally proposed muting/unmuting the JV880 (JP Heaven) part, but I couldn’t do that precisely using the mouse, so I ended up slicing up part of the part (if you have me) and muting/unmuting by deleting every other slice. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it works effectively enough.

The two versions were compressed/limited in Cubase VST/24 and the wavs were tidied up in AA3.

The next tracks I intend mixing/mastering are …LAKE and BRAILLE…. I’ll chuck the three tracks out on an EP around August time in advance of a September album release date. I might even include the rough headphone mix of KING FIDGET mentioned above in the EP.

Oh, well, onwards and upwards!

Regards,

djp

Rough mixing – 050511

Sponsored by the letter R.

Did very rough MP3 mixes of the following tracks:-

1. A Truth You Can Happily Accept
2. Braille For The Feet (sadly, this track ain’t going to make the final cut – destined for B-side “glory”)
3. Flood Plain
4. Fly Me To Hecuba
5. Future Plans For Yesterday
6. Hosanna In The Hiace
7. King Fidget
8. No Position To Argue
9. On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline
10. People Who Look Like Other People
11. Perp Walk

Five more to do after that over the course of the weekend. Then it’s time to make me minds up…;-)

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet – 140411

Sponsored by the letter A.

So I cheated a little bit, and last night programmed up a synth bass line in CE5, using the Native Instruments Kore Player (Evolving Bass). Not quite as fancy as the bass line I’d done with the 4003, but better all round.

This morning, edited the Les Paul parts. Things sounded a lot better than I’d remembered, particularly the 4 parts that make up the guitar solo which sounds really rather good (by my low standards at least). Spent a long time experimenting with moving the various parts around. I think I have it pretty much sussed now.

Time to move on…

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet – 130411

Sponsored by the letters W and no letter at all.

Spent the morning editing the bass parts in CE5, and have come to the conclusion that the parts just aren’t really good enough. A lot of issues with timing and harmonics. I’m going to have a go at programming a synth bass line over the next few days to see if that improves things. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and edit the Les Paul parts and see what falls out of that.

The track may not be a keeper for the album, but we’ll give it a decent chance to prove itself…

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?/Fly Me To Hecuba/Braille For The Feet/Private Sector Weather Forecast Service/Hosanna In The Hiace

Sponsored by the letters I and J.

Did audio cleanup on the wavs in Cool Edit Pro. Tedious work to be sure, but the quicker I get through this part of the process, the quicker I can proceed to the editing stage.

Roadtrip tomorrow and Friday. Catch youze later…

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet – 040311

Sponsored by the letters F, G and H.

As promised, a new toy today…

No home is complete without a Gibson...

It’s a Gibson Les Paul Studio – the cheapest left-handed Gibson I could find. And not a bad little axe at all – if only I could actually play it…;-).

Recorded 10 guitar parts on the Tascam 2488 using the Pod 2.0. 4 of the parts are melodic little (and I mean “little”) licks, while the remaining parts cover an extended solo. Not too sure about the solo, but we’ll see how things pan out in the edit.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Les Paul is the smell. Today was just the second day I’d ever taken it out of the case, and the studio is filled with a bizarre, bitter chocolate-y odour. Presumably from the finish. It’s nice, if a little overpowering, and I’m sure it’ll wear off given time.

Regards,

djp

No Position To Argue/Braille For The Feet/A Truth You Can Happily Accept/The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn – 030311

Sponsored by the letter D.

Hugely productive day today!

Recorded 5 harmonic guitar parts for …ARGUE on the Tascam 2488 using the Telecaster and the Pod 2.0. All came together terribly quickly, which gave me loads of time to work on the other tracks. This was the Telecaster’s final involvement in the project. New toy tomorrow…;-).

For the rest of the tracks, I arranged the various parts in CE5 in order to come up with coherent bass lines. Then I exported rough mixes of the tracks for tracking guitar parts over the next few days.

It is now apparent that there are a number of tracks that are rather similar in style. If I include all of them on the album, it’ll sound boring. So at some stage I will have to group the similar tracks together and pick the best ones to feature on the album. The other tracks might then be additional tracks on an EP, or even a “sister” album. Who knows?

Regards,

djp

Braille For The Feet – 250111

Sponsored by the letter F.

Recorded 7 different bass parts on the Tascam 2488 using the 4003 and the Bass Pod XT. Tough going, but I think I managed enough to be able to edit out a nice comp’d bass line. I also did an unexpected bass solo – don’t quite know where to put it, but it’ll have to fit in somewhere.

I may have to change the MIDI part for the D-110 ElecPiano 3 voice to tie in with the bass line. Or not. Time will tell.

Regards,

djp