The Guitars

Hello

Its my turn to be a geek about Guitars, so here we go. Guitar-wise things have been going well, we've tracked all the main guitars and we just have little bits to touch up. Me and Matt have done one main guitar track each, no guitar overdubs or anything apart from on a couple of songs just to thicken the sound up slightly but most of the time the songs haven't needed it.

We've both managed to get a great sound from the start. I've used a two channel Marshall JCM 800 from the 1980's which is the studio's, into a knackered Marshall cab with some special speakers that sound amazing (Pete informs me that they're Celestion heritage 20 watt greenback reissue speakers, just in case any guitar nerds wanted to know, haha!) Matt's been playing through his Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier from the 1990's, (Older amps always sound better) through the same cab. Matt's also used Pete's Diezel VH4 on a couple of songs too.

In a bid to keep it sounding consistent we've stuck to using only these amps and not gone crazy using loads of different amps for different songs. Instead we've used a few different guitars to suit different songs. I've used mostly my own guitar, my trusty Fender Cyclone which ive used practically my whole gigging life and Matt used his recently purchased Fender Telecaster. We also used Pete's Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul Custom.

We also used this box which is a magic box and you'll hear it all over the album...


...and heres some sexy pics of us playing through all this sexy gear

Rock!

The Bass..

Hey everyone,

This is me, Andy...

So for the Bass, we got off to a great start. Even better than we could have hoped, as soon as I plugged in and played, it sounded great! I've been using all my own gear, and got the exact sound I was aiming for. I've been using my Ampeg 8x10 and Ampeg Classic Series Head. The Cabinet has had a Mic in front of one speaker, and we've been mixing that signal with one taken from a Sansamp. I've also been using my American Fender Jazz which has been awesome, here's some photos of my stuff...

Me and Rob have been recording Drums and Bass together which is giving the album a great vibe, because we feel the energy and live sound, mixed with the great overall instrument sound is being captured perfectly, and is laying down the perfect foundations for the guitars and vocals to record onto.

So the feel of the songs is perfect for me, as the bass sound is just like I'm used to, so the songs are sounding the same to me as when we wrote them so it's all feeling natural. Me and Rob have only one song left to record, and are so happy with what we've done so far!

So for now, thanks for reading and keep coming back!

Andy

Rob Speaks

Alright team, I've never done this before, but i thought id relieve Si from his duties for once. I guess this post will be mainly about the drums because thats all i know really, so i hope it doesn't bore you non drummers too much.

We've been here a week now and we still have 10 days left, but we are quite ahead of schedule. Theres only 2 more songs for drums and bass too do, we've already punished 10. Me and Andy are recording the drums and bass together and its sounding amazing, it means we can both just go for it without the restriction of headphones and feeling a bit stiff. Its giving the record a great Vibe, an energy that was possibly missing from 'What We Are Today'. The Kit is sounding awesome, although the bass drum and cymbals are the only things of mine that I'm using. Pete (Miles) is a wizard on eBay so he now has a selection of beautiful DW toms which he got for stupidly cheap, so I'm using them, they sound huge. Non of the toms are from the same kit though, thats why the kit might look a bit weird on the photos. The snare I'm using is a Mapex, its solid bronze and weighs heavier than me, it sounds so phat, its got the exact sound i was after so im a happy bunny!


Thats about all for now i think, so I'm off to get a little stir crazy and play more Pro Evo than my eyes can handle

take it easy, catch you on the A Wilhelm Scream tour hopefully

Rob x

Recording Part 1

Hello, so its been at least two months since the last post which is longer than usual but there really didn't seem like anything worth writing really. We played in Europe for a while which was fun although it felt a little more like we were playing to no one, but you cant win 'em all. Anyway we got to do some fun stuff like go sledging in a mountain village in Austria so all in all it was another good experience. Then we came back home and finished one last song, spent our Christmas and New Year working and seeing Family before arriving at Sandhill Studios in Liverpool to finally begin recording our second album....

Now its the end of day 4 and its late but we said that we'd do a sort of recording diary thing but its proving a bit difficult without internet access at the studio so my entries will probably be a bit sparrodic. We drive there every morning, set off at 10 get there by 11, then work until 11 or 12 at night and then come back home. So usually by the time we get home all we wanna do is go to bed! Even though all we're doing is sitting around and picking up our instruments every so often it can get quite intense and exhausting just being in one room for the whole day. Add to that the feeling of cabin fever as well (the studio is based sort of underground with no natural light). However things are going really well, you can see this by the look on Jims face

The way we're recording so far is by recording the Drums and Bass together live, making a solid and natural foundation for everything else to build on top of. Then recording the guitars and vocals after that, we've been managing about a song a day doing this. On the last album Rob recorded all the Drums parts for the songs one after the other in a block of about 4 days and then we added all the bass to the songs and then the guitars and then vocals. This meant that one person would be busy all the time for a few days and then not really have anything to do for the rest of the time recording and it meant Jim and Matt had to sing for days on end which really strained their voices. This time we've done all the parts to one song each day for 4 days, so that we'll all have something to do every day and also Jim and Matt and now Andy can rest their vocals for a little while between each song.

The other difference to this recording which is a slight change from the first album is the way in which we've decided to go with Drums and Bass playing live first. For the first album, we recorded everything completely separately but this time we really wanted to achieve more in the way of our live dynamic and get it sounding more live. We thought about recording totally live in a room together but for a few reasons we didnt do that. For one we knew that with some of the albums we've heard that are recorded live, they had an amazing feel but sounded a bit thin and weak and we wanted ours to still sound powerful but more 'live'. So we went for the inbetween option really, and its so far sounding exactly like we wanted it to. We've not gone over the top with using different amps and equipment but so far we've made selective choices about using amps and instruments that arent our own and its makes a subtle but great difference to the songs and enhances them while still sounding like us and the sound you hear live.

Anyway, that all I'll write for now. I'll see if I can get Jim to write out anything about the lyrical side of things and we'll get some more photos and possibly some videos of us too, and a few more points about how things are going as time goes on. We're making good progress so we might have some time to dick around in the studio and come up with some surprises (even surprises for us)

Till next time

Ciao x