You hurt me inside

Don’t worry, I’m not really hurting inside.  It’s just a lyric from Tortured Soul, the latest and last song to be recorded for our Heavy Mind Owls project.  We recorded it last night – still need to mix it though, so you don’t get to hear it just yet.  I have spotted that we’ve all been a bit lax though.  We recorded Pretty Sun and didn’t shout enough about it.  It’s also a song for Heavy Mind Owls and it’s on SoundCloud

Day 2 status report:

Here we are at the mixing stage. All recording done. Little bits and overdubs added. Started the day with me adding other guitar tracks. Rob then added some guitar and percussion parts with Pete. Pete has been mostly ears today helping steer the good ship HMD. By the end of today we should have a product. Something for us to promote some how.

Day 1: Good times had by all!

Well, day one is over and done with and it was brilliant! I couldn’t have imagined how easy and enjoyable today could have been! Rob the engineer is an amazingly approachable chap with so much in common with ourselves we couldn’t have chosen a better guy to record our little songs! We managed to get the five tracks down, a run of overdubs done and the vocal tracks down. All the vocals are first time takes. We listened through to the tracks and I think they are sounding very good indeed. (all the practice certainly paid off). Tomorrow will be adding good anything else we need to the tracks and final mix. Can’t wait to hear the final results!

Flesh Reunion 19 – Drummy, drum drum

World In Flames, A Different Breed, Icepick Lunatic.  These are the HowManyDevils songs that got some more drums today.  Who played drums? Me.  Whose fault is it? Mine.  I’m not a drummer…  There’s a tom fill that I can do pretty well now, and I’m pretty close to being in time.  Not really selling you on it there though am I?  Intensive editing will happen and you’ll think the drums were played by a professional. We have got a much tighter drum sound out of this session though.  How? By covering the drums with plushy dog toys.

A band marches on its drummers stomach

I’m not sure if that’s strictly true, a band marches on its drummers stomach.  In fact it sounds painful, especially since it may be me that is the drummer today – or it might be Simon.  Either way, today is another drum track laying day.  If it is me drumming I expect to expend a lot of energy, so I want a lot of food.  So I’ve just made sandwiches: Ham & Mustard on Sourdough.  I can’t remember if we’d declared sandwiches as Rock n Roll or not, but I’m sure Simon will let me know in a few minutes.

Pete will be engineering today, and I don’t expect we’ll play much guitar or bass but I’m taking ‘Little Brian’ just in case.

More later…

Flesh Reunion 14 – Bass Week

Ok, bass week, it sounds like it belongs on the X-Factor.  At least we gave it reasonable separation from drum week.
Pete did all the hard work, we just observed (and pressed buttons).  And for added studio Rock ‘n ‘ Rollness we did most of the session putting the bass through a Marshall pre-amp stage before Pete’s favoured Hartke rig.
Christmas break now, except for all the in-the-box editing and submixing, then it’s back for a couple if weeks of guitars.

Flesh Reunion 11 and 12

The HowManyDevils Flesh Reunion recording sessions are happening so fast I can’t keep up with blogging about them.  Two weeks ago we finnished putting down the basic live takes for the album.  Last week Simon laid down drums tracks for everything.  I (Rob) also put drums on a few songs, but I get to do the rest next week.  I need more practice too. 
Once the drums are done we’ll be re-recording the vocals.  Then… we may have something to release. 

Flesh Reunion 10 – Recording

HowManyDevils’ Flesh Reunion moved on from songwriting to recording on Sunday.  About half the day was spent building our new home, the “medieval bog”.  Not sure how medieval mikes, cables, and computers are though. 
No monument to ill health was built out of convinience store food this week despite it being another chippy-closed Sunday.  Pies and soup were brought in advance. 
We got the live takes for four songs laid down.  Insomniac, Carolyn, Set Him Free, and Halfway There.  So nine more for next week… then drums, then overdubs.