The plans?

Well the plan is finishing the record by Februari 1 2008! (Without mastering)
Stick to the plan, cause the plan is right! ;)

Fun fun fun while producing

Lots of vocals recorded at the moment. Sabine went to Luc on sunday to record 4 songs, and I worked my ass off on monday. Well to be honest not all work but also some play... we happened to visit the local tuning show as a sort of "break". Okay, when in Rome do like Romans do (but then projected on Tienen city) ... so we couldn't say no to this great opportunity.

So Jeroen (my friend and Lucs neighbour) drove us to a freakin' tuning show... after arriving there we immediatly heared that there would be a 'sexy-show' in 10min... you can't imagine how happy Luc was! ;) Well, we still had 10 minutes until the grand finale so we decided to check out a collection of the most disgusting cars you've ever seen. Lime green, orange, pink,... even an old Opel Corsa in the same color as the one I'm driving with an enhanced front was showing itself... why???
Oh yes mom?!!? Look at the things you can do with your Twingo below!!!

But hey, then came the famous 'sexy-show'. Happened to be a striptease act with a very troubled 16 year old as the lucky one. I don't have to mention it was funny as hell??

Look for yourselves:
Mom's dreamcar!!!


Oh yes, we are at a tuning show! Jeroen loves it!


Well he had his 10min of luck...


Must say it was a good break. Had a laugh, cars, woman and an ice cream...
Oh yes, and I finished my vocal parts too later on... Didn't lack any inspiration.

On track again!

Howdy! Sooo, goddamit this has been a while. Have we been doing nothing at all? Hell no!!! Have we been recording any further... well, no... There were some troubles with a new preamp and mic that had been ordered for the studio and didn't arrive on time... so we have some small delay. But don't fear. This afternoon we start again. Welll... I start again! ;) So, vocal session in the afternoon, more news to come!
But we have been rehearsing the new album already.

And we've also been playing some really cool shows in the meantime. Riorock, Soccerrock, Rotarock... we'll be adding some pictures soon!

Day 4 and 5: the click track, more guitars, the vocals and mixing time

Okay I skipped a day to blog. Not that it was all my fault, didn't have internet when I woke up day 5 so couldn't blog on day 4... and afterwards I had to sing... But no prob I'll give you an update on what we did these 2 days in the studio.

Day 4 was mostly about the guitars. We Joris, Jimmy and I started early in the morning with setting up the guitars and looking for some cool sounds for our songs. We finetuned Joris his guitar sound and made sure he could bust some balls hitting his rocking chords! When Luc arrived we immediately started with the recording of Jimmy's guitar. Like we were getting used this didn't quite go as easy as planned. But hey, we want to work hard to get it as good as we can! At about 9 in the evening, Joris could start with his first guitar parts. Some songs were recorded but the rest was for our final day...

Day 5 started with Joris his final guitar riffs. Jimmy also did some final tweekings from some riffs and then we had a long listen to the whole tracks. We ended with Sabine and me doing a pilot of our vocals so Luc can start with the mixing of the tracks we have so far.

Looking back: we could say we started recording with not enough rehearsals to actually play our songs without effort. Thanks to Luc we all fell that we were reaching a new level in music playing. That was looking back the most rewarding thing of these first 5 days of studio... we learned how to operate and play as a rocking machine instead of 6 people playing together. Have we arrived at that rocking level? Hell no! But from now on we have an idea how to improve our playing. On both a live rocking but also a recording level.

So for now, Luc is going to mix the tracks and then we hit his studio again for a complete vocal recording session.

Joris recording:

Day 3: More pain, some frustration and a bass

Some days, doesn't matter what you do, it will go wrong! Today was such a day... after recording the last parts of the drum, it was time for Joeri to take up the bass and hit the strings. Unfortunately the mighty Rickenbacker didn't quite agree... after plugging it in we noticed that there was a remarkable volume difference between the low strings and the higher strings... troubles, troubles troubles... after searching and tweaking with everything we could imagine: different cables, batteries, you name it... we decided to start the bass lines with the "Music man" bass. Not that thats not a good bass, it's in fact also a very cool instrument... but once you set you're mind on a type of sound its hard to think differently.

But well, after all the bass was recorded! Tomorrow the guitars...

Here the photo gallery of day 2 and 3! Where you see the last recordings of the drums, the bass troubles and the final recordings of the bass.

Day 1: the buttons, the food and the pilot

Our first day is already over.
10 am we arrived, kinda had troubles getting in but once in, we stay in! Basic thing we did today was record a pilot record so that from tomorrow on, we can one by one record the instruments on that pilot... it's some sort of map if you would like to call it that way. We encountered some troubles on the way... mostly due to some differences in the protools version that is being used and the one Luc is used to. (think prehistoric vs 21century... thats like Fred Flinstone vs Predator, guess who would win?)

But, after some struggling all fell in place and we are on our marks, set and ready to gooooo. We did have some major luck that Tineke and Sara came along to provide us with our last decent meal before starting the junkfood rally... well we will try to eat decent, but picture 8 guys (Matti and Thomas too) in a single house... think they will eat decent? Well yeah, thats what we thought too!!

Here you have some sights on how we worked today... tomorrow the first things on tape so maybe a little video? That if I can get the internet working in the studio! Damn, as an internet junk it isn't easy to live without the precious net for 10 hours... brrrrr...

Expect an update soon.

Hard drive arrived

So we were waiting for our Firewire harddrive to arrive, but today I got it... we'll have 250Gb of Firewire power to record our new album on! Go Lacie go!