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

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline – 290411

Sponsored by the letters W and no letter at all.

Edited the guitar parts in CE5. Again, like yesterday, it took rather more time than the simplicity of the parts merited, but I got it sorted eventually. And then, having done all that, I took out huge swathes of guitar for a bit of variety.

Tweaked some of yesterday’s bass parts and edited the snare MIDI part.

The track is fine for a B-side. Time to move on…

Regards,

djp

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/King Fidget/Modernista – 280411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Edited the bass parts in CE5. Considering the parts are relatively simple, there was rather a lot of editing required. But it got sorted eventually. I’m reluctant to mess around with the EQ on the bass, as I seem to have captured a fairly accurate facsimile of Roger Glover’s Rickenbacker 4003 bass tone from the classic Deep Purple Mk. II lineup…

…which is all the more remarkable when you consider that Glover’s Ric apparently had Fender Jazz Bass pickups…

I have now decided that the track will not feature on the finished album (no surprise…), but I plan to release a version of KING FIDGET as a promo EP, and I will use …LAKE…as one of the tracks. So you will get to hear it, folks.

I also plan to release some non-album material very shortly under the title MODERNISTA, as a kind of taster for the album. Details shortly…

Regards,

djp

The Cop Car Hand Heel Wheel Turn/No Position To Argue/On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/King Fidget/A Truth You Can Happily Accept – 040411

Sponsored by the letter S.

Did audio cleanup  on the relevant wavs in Cool Edit Pro. Should be finished this stage tomorrow.

Regards,

djp

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline/Fly Me To Hecuba/Perp Walk

Sponsored by the letter S.

…LAKE…

Programmed two solo sections in  CE5, using the 4Front Rhodes VST plugin. Chucked a bit of tremolo on top and things now sound pretty good.

Attempted to sort out the Strat solo for the middle section. I had 6 working parts to work with (a seventh part was just buzzing). I started sliding the various parts around and, completely by accident, came up with a solo that sounds reasonably accurate. The finished version resembles, in no way, what it was I was attempting to achieve. So that’s alright then…;-)

The track sounds much better now, but probably won’t make the album. It depends on what the competition is like…

…HECUBA…

This track will  definitely make the cut. Sounds wonderful, even in unfinished form. Put together a rough mix for recording guitar parts next week.

…PERP…

Started re-arranging the various bass parts. Nearly there but not quite. More work required tomorrow.

Regards,

djp

On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline – 220211

Sponsored by the letter R.

Difficult day today.

There are three areas of the track where guitar solos are suggested. I was working my way slowly through these and got a half-decent (for me) set of parts down for the first section. I was starting the second section when I lost all sound from the Strat. All sound, that is, other than fearful buzzing and screaming feedback. I was dreading that there might be something wrong with the electrics on the Strat, but after much time and trail-and-error, I found that the lead from the Strat to the Pod 2.0 was knackered. I was able to plug the Strat directly into the Tascam 2488 using the lead out from the Pod, which proved that the Strat was OK. This unfortunately brought my recording session to a premature end…

…and probably no harm too. I had just about reached the limits of my inability with the first solo section. Two further sections would’ve seen me running out of ideas (and fingertips) bigtime.

So what I’m going to do is use the parts I’d recorded for the first solo as a second solo, and then program keyboards solos for the first and third sections. There’s always a workaround.

I’m really getting the sense that I’m working on The Track That Doesn’t Want To Be Recorded. There’s usually at least one per album, and it may well be an indication of the track’s eventual fate. We’ll see…

Regards,

djp

Whatever Happened To The Citizens Of My Abandoned Evony City?/The Tree Of Idleness/On The Lake Beneath The Shoreline – 210211

Sponsored by the letters O and P.

Time for another piece of kit. Fender Stratocaster, step forward…

A Strat - Monday morning...

…EVONY…

Recorded 6 parts of Strat on the Tascam 2488 using the Pod 2.0. And an Ebow. I’d last used the Ebow on Raw Mesh a few years back. It seemed much easier to use back then. Today I was having great difficulty in coming up with anything jaw-droppingly exciting. But I think I have enough bits and pieces here to fade in and out of the mix. Not a problem.

…IDLENESS…

Recorded 3 nice Strat arpeggios. Tasty, if I do say so myself.

Although the track is rather short, I reckon it’s going to be a highlight of the album.

…LAKE…

Recorded 3 Strat parts. Essentially “twinned” single-string riffs, which again I will mix in and out of the track. Still not sure if the track is going to make the final cut. But I’ll persevere with it for another while (as in, tomorrow, where I will attempt to record some lead parts on the Strat. Gawdelups…).

Regards,

djp