Studio Fever

We're midway through recording our two new songs, and about four weeks behind schedule. We've taken a different attitude to recording these songs; we're striving to record the elusive perfect take that does not need to be edited in post production. We reckon this approach will a produce a more natural sound, should save a lot of time in editing, and should makes us better musicians. It will also be a boost to our pride so when we eventually come to play our finished record we know that what we hear will be a result of our hard work and technical skills, and not a result of clever editing, or a classic Pete bodge job.

Recording provides the opportunity to hear an instrument part to a level of detail not normally heard when practising or performing. You suddenly discover a plethora of mistakes that you've been making when playing the song. It's slightly worrying when you realise that you would have been making all these mistakes at gigs. On the bright side, the monumental psychological struggle for the perfect take forces these mistakes to get ironed out, and you get the opportunity to experiment with subtle changes to the instrument part. I spent three days recording the electric guitar part for Where He Never Was, a three minute track, and it has really improved my guitar playing. I've also just finished two weeks of playing the pan loco and djembe for the 5/4 song. My hands are wrecked; they're literally splitting apart along the fingerprint lines.

Over the last 6 months, since the start of our endeavour, we've been pushing ourselves in terms of the music we write, and the quality of the recordings we make. Occasionally we arrive at a challenge which really tests our abilities. This happened just the other day. Pete suggested I record a ridiculously fast roll at the end of the djembe solo in 5/4. After much practice, patience, and frustration, I got a good take of it. It felt amazing, and is a reminder that tasks which at first seem impossible, can be achieved with a lot or hard work (and luck).

All the long hours alone in the darkened room that we call our studio have resulted in many a case of 'studio fever'. All senses, including common and humour, disappear and leave behind a rambling mess of a human who can't speak, eat or communicate effectively. Occasionally mics have been unwittingly left on to capture these moments that showcase the fragility of the human mind. I've posted some of these below, they include our bassist friend Barney's take on post-modernist abstract comedy.

Barney's Joke

Kazoo

Muffin

Pete

Phoco-what?

£25 a week from each of us is trickling into an account to buy a van. We plan to buy a 17-seater minibus and remove all but 5 seats to leave enough space for the gear, the band and five beds. Dave will have to go on a more stringent diet.

November's recordings have been going well but slowly. It took 70 hours to get 7 minutes of drums to put in the final mix, resulting in a 0.017% success rate. It seemed to be like developing the perfect golf swing without seeing where the balls goes.

We had a band from Southampton, the Blue Screen of Death, here to record one of their latest songs. The session was very nearly cancelled when they had a punch-up a few weeks ago and luckily they kissed and made up. As the drums are played I hear how loud they are elsewhere in the house – next stop Homebase sound-insulation department.

Our Facebook group has exceeded the 200-fans mark and to celebrate we each had a spoonful of my homemade fudge-sludge. Mmm... camel diarrhoea. Talking of food, we each have to produce a meal in every month that tastes as good as Dave's mum coated in jam. They are each rated out of five and the person with the most points at the end of the month has a party held in their name (the most important part is that they don't have to buy the booze).

Dave is recording the electric guitar for Where He Never Was, time for him to discover his mental barriers and cast them into the void of oblivion. Or, at least to stop playing like a phocomelus twatbag.

One Says Ribbit...

Part 1

Tonight is our last gig for a month, at a small pub in Walton. It's local so we can pack it out and have a billboard time! We are also going to attempt to add a little bit of a performance art/social experiment to the set. It should be pretty exciting. Adverts were printed and blu-tacked all around Walton and Weybridge.

We have kept the whole of November free so that we can record a couple more songs to add to the First Tapes EP. The two contenders are 'Where He Never Was' and '5/4 (working title)'. We are all really chuffed with '5/4' and can't wait to get it recorded and out in the big wide world. When we have performed it live we capture the attention of the audience. Even if they are loud-mouthed, drunken monkey boys. We have only had to play to one of those audiences so far. I won't name where it was (the Native Tongue in Epsom). The stage was tiny and as a result Dave had to have his piano right next to the bar. This meant that every time some drunken so-and-so wanted to get another vodka Red Bull he would have to prop himself up on the piano and their lapse of self-control meant they couldn't resist to press keys while Dave is soloing. In fact they couldn't stop themselves from pressing any shiny button they could see and we heard the chiming of a 4/4 metronome come through really loud just at the end of the 5/4 song. Great! That must have been going through the whole song.

Part 2

A week later and we are in the process of actually recording the 5/4 song. Whooppeeee! It's great but I can't help worrying that we won't be able to capture the magic of the song when it's played live. Endless nights in bed thinking about why it seems to work so well. We spent one recording day tuning new drum skins and getting the perfect mic positions. The other day was the first time I really got to see Pete looking fragile. After spending a day locked in darkened drum room he emerged like Bambi after the hibernation scene. He needed a hug. So far he has got an awesome take for the outro/drum solo. We've been working him hard but we are all confident that he can get the perfect take so that we can record the other instruments around it.

This Thursday we have an interview in The Surrey Herald. So if you live nearby make sure you get your copy. Take care all... Sorry for the loooooooooongggggg time for this blog to surface.

Marc

Last week we played our third gig. It was at the Watershed in Wimbledon, supporting Chik Budo and Acoustic Ladyland, and it was an experience.

We found out about the gig through the Watershed's mailing list; here was a great opportunity to support a really good band in a decent music venue. We replied to the Watershed and were put in touch with the promoter, Hamish Macbeth, who explained the deal to us. We would have to buy the first 20 tickets at £10 each, essentially guaranteeing to sell them on to our friends/fans. It was a gamble, paying a £200 deposit to play a gig was not something we had ever considered before. We weighed up the potential loss and gain, and decided it was worth it. An aggressive online guilt campaign thus followed, with Marc and Pete convincing everyone they'd ever known and everyone they'd never known, to come to the gig.

Meanwhile, deep underground in the Flags studio (whose secret location cannot be revealed), I was slaving away at the mixes of our three tracks, with no company other than the whiteboard caricatures and the occasional constructive criticism from Pete when popping his head around the door; "The snare sounds like a wet fart.", "Make the cymbals stand out.", "It doesn't sound good. It sounds bad.". The aim was to get a three-track version of our EP made in time for the gig, and after copious amounts of caffeine, despair, and hope, we did it. However we had one awful moment just hours before the gig. Marc and Pete had been burning and packing the discs, and had got up to the fiftieth, when they sold the first one to Kim, Marc's Mum. Eager to hear the culmination of months of hard work, she rushed the CD over to the HiFi, loaded it up, hit play, and heard absolutely nothing. "Marc it's not working!" - "Mummy You need to press play!" - "I did!". It was at that point they realised no music had been burnt onto the disc, and that potentially none of the 50 discs had been properly written to. With no time left to burn any more discs, the situation seemed grave. Fortunately, it turned out that only the last eight discs had been wasted, and the rest were fine. We learnt a valuable lesson from this; don't remove the USB key containing the files you're writing to CD during the burning process, or in other words, don't let Pete near computers.

So with our 50 CDs, we drove our overloaded cars to Wimbledon, and got there just in time for the sound check. We were at last at the gig we had been preparing for for so long.

After the sound check there is always an awkward period of waiting around, where there is nothing to do other than worry that we haven't practiced enough. Marc and I tend to go through a particular thought process, where in the build up to the gig, we wonder why are we putting ourselves under the pressure of performing, and whether or not we really want to do it for the rest of our lives. This concern is then destroyed in the instant we start performing on stage in front of a room full of people. It is thrilling, exciting, and it makes us feel really alive.

I had a weird unearthly moment when playing a piano solo in the final song of our set. I was so in the zone that my body started doing strange things. My feet started to mirror my hands, and seemed to have a life of their own, tapping, stamping away at ridiculous speeds. I think I looked like a some sort of puppet where my feet were attached to my hands by invisible wire. In fact, I later found out that people thought I looked like a thunderbird. Despite that, the whole gig went really well, and the crowd seemed to really like our stuff which was reflected in our EP sales.

The agreement with Hamish was that the cash for the first 20 tickets sold would go to him, the next 10 would go to the venue, and any tickets sold after the first 30 would go to us. We were quite shocked when he approached us after the gig, demanding another £40 as we had only sold 26 tickets. We had just performed, had produced £260 in ticket sales for the venue, as well as drinks sales, and here he was demanding that we pay him! Pete politely told him where to shove it, and Macbeth quickly backed down.

We got a lot out of the gig. We supported some really good bands, got to play in front of a large crowd, won over some new fans, and got some good publicity in the local press. However, we won't play at the Watershed again, at least not on those terms. There are venues out there where you don't have to pay to play, and that are willing to support unsigned bands, not rip them off. It's just a case of finding them.

Thanks to everyone that came out that night to support us, we had a great time, and we hope you did too.

Poor Man's War

After a fair amount of blagging and pestering, 7 gigs have been confirmed before Christmas. We’ve reserved November to write and record, and even to remix our debut tunes Tracks and Daylight Robbery. In the process of finding venues and booking gigs, I have started to make ties with other bands in the hope we will be offered to play gigs with them in the future. I have included in the e-mails that either Dave or Marc are prepared do unspeakable sexual acts in exchange.

Money issues haven’t improved, with little money coming in from our Sun to Tue jobs. Marc still owes Dave and I hundreds of pounds and I have signed back on to the dole with no business tutoring maths over the summer. Dave’s the only one who seems to be doing all right, but his credit card’s been maxed out after buying equipment and £200 of tickets for the Watershed gig.

When they're not too busy scaring my pants full, Marc and Dave have been competing to get the larger fanbase on Facebook and MySpace respectively, although Marc has since been blocked from sending messages in Facebook due to spamming friends of other bands to become our fans, despite being warned 7 times in a row.

The moment Gypo Jack was mastered, and after Marc and I had finished Face-raping each other, all the sites were updated and large music venues were contacted to try to get gigs. The second after we get the other tunes mixed to the same standard, we’ll start contacting BBC and NME unsigned bands correspondences with hope we will be played on the radio. We found the biggest improvement in the processing of Gypo Jack was the effect of stereo imaging, which can make a chosen instrument appear to come from behind you. If you’re interested in the rough physics, here it is:

Sound is produced by pulses of compressed air, like an explosion underwater would create a shock wave. In a stereo system, a sound can become louder if it comes from both speakers at the same time, because the compression waves from both speakers will double the pressure when they meet. If the wave from the left speaker is released a bit later than the wave from the right, the pressure waves will interfere and the sound will change. If a compression is released from the left at the time a rarefaction (low pressure, opposite to compression) is released from the right, the air will be equally compressed throughout and the sound will deaden. This means you can hear only the sound that is outside the interference region, which makes your ears think the source of the sound is coming from a point further round, even behind from behind. This effect makes the sound feel much fuller, as though you’re within the source of music rather than outside it. It also creates space, which allows you to hear every instrument clearer.

Or as Derren Brown would say, “It’s just a trick”.

Summer holiday

It's late... Very late. Tomorrow I am up early for a meeting about the website design, CD cover design for our EP, and music video ideas. I look forward to finding out what Amy and her gang of design scientists have invented. My week off has made me feel recharged like you wouldn't believe.

The last time I was with the guys was at the Grey Horse gig at the end of last month. I did bump into them whilst they were coming out the studio, Dave was straining as he attempted to slide his piano into the back of his car. For a tiny moment I thought 'oh shit. They've quite. They are packing their stuff and have quit the band'. Luckily that thought was soon squashed but replaced by the even darker thought 'oh shit. They are doing a gig without me!!' As it so happens neither of those paranoid ideas were true and to be honest I can't quite remember where it was that they said they were going, mainly because I was distracted by their bragging of how much work they had done while I was away.

Encouraged by their enthusiasm I have since been working a fair bit myself. The last two days I have been trying to build up our Facebook page and making it even easier for us to update. In the next day or so it will be set up so that we can upload our gig dates on one page and it will instantly update on Myspace, Last.fm, etc. This could, however, potentially lead to us being lazy with our promotion of gigs. It would be very easy to fall into the trap of spending two minutes adding the new dates on one place and assume that is all we have to do.

Pete has been badgering the local printed press to try to get our faces slapped into a few newspapers, so we can promote our supporting slot for the Acoustic Ladyland gig. Also, I contacted a couple of county radio-stations. Fingers crossed but not holding my breath at the chances of us gazing into the eyes of Chris Moyles in the morning... now there's a sweet image!

Where did you come from, Sweary Joe?

We’ve got ourselves another couple of gigs, including a live music night we’re hosting in the Wellington in Walton-on-Thames, featuring, so far, Elissa Franceschi with her piano ballads and funk-rockers Stone Soul.

While Marc’s been off on his break, Dave and I have been busy working on Gypo Jack, or Gypsy Jack as PC Joyson calls it. Joe Reeves, my lifelong friend, has recorded some magnificent acoustic guitar for us. After a few hours of sifting through the takes, I decided to make ‘The Sweary Joe Song’ out of all the profanities. Check it out:

Giggedy Giggedy

The gig at the Grey Horse, Kingston was awesome. The three bands we supported gave their all and the night flew by. 6 Rounds at Sundown, a band from the ACM, were armed with a fistful of AC/DC guitar hooks played by the guitarist with a 12'' Mohawk and sung by the front-man with an Axl Rose bandana. Hayloft followed them, with their set of simple catchy teen rockers. They are a two-piece with the look of the White Stripes (if Jack and Meg White had swapped places). Magnatone headlined, although the audience had since diminished. The band comprises pleasant-looking young men who closed their eyes and immersed themselves in an interesting orgy of guitar symphonies that echoed Pink Floyd (shit pun intended). Good stuff. Thanks to our fans for attending, you made it brilliant.

I have assumed the role of band manager, to find and book the gigs. Every month we plan to play one gig that is just within our reach, in attempt to expand our horizons as quickly as possible without tripping over ourselves. We were offered a big one at the Watershed in Wimbledon on 23rd September, where we will support Acoustic Ladyland (who's second album was the Jazzwise album of the year) and Chik Budo.

As a part of my duties, I have made a list of all the music venues stretching from London to the South coast and started a catalogue of contacts from newspapers and radio stations. I have never drunk so much coffee. Especially not the lethal strength that the Joysons brew – I may have to staple my eyes closed to get any sleep tonight. But that all depends on how engaging Steve's stag do will be this evening (shit pun intended).

Flags The Plan...

Why do so many people live their lives, happy to be unhappy, to spend it doing a job that they either hate, dislike, or think is okay? I would guess the main answers are money, responsibility and commitment. Fortunately for us, we have neither responsibility nor commitment (unfortunately we have no money). We are wild young things that are willing to grasp life by the lapels, swing it over our heads and shout 'Freedom' at the top of our lungs. We want to live life for the fun of it, we want to enjoy every day, and when we're old, deaf and secrete the associated unpleasant odour, we want to look back on life without regrets. Naïve? Idealistic? Perhaps, but then again, there are some people out there who've found their happiness. We want to be like them.

So, about two years ago, when we were all still stuck at university, we hatched a plan to pursue our dream to make it in the music industry. The plan was simple enough; once we'd finished our courses, we would spend four days a week working in the band, and spend the rest of the time supporting ourselves with part-time jobs.

Over the last year we've written some great tunes, built a studio to record them in, and have finally managed to get our heads around producing a decent mix. The date that we’d been waiting for finally came at the end of May when I finished uni. Since then it’s been non-stop; we’ve played and booked some awesome gigs, have got some innovative ideas for promotion, and are just putting the finishing touches on our EP.

Our time is now here; we’re at the start of the rest of our lives. Here we either fight our way up the ladder to successful happy blissfulness, or slide down into a cesspool of miserable despair working the 9-5 rat race of unhappy yet secure gloom.

Time will tell...


(Apologies for the OTT clichés and metaphors in this one.)

Hair, Wear and Vanity Fair

Working on a band image. Tight T-shirts in black and dark trousers with a gleaming belt. As we all have weedy little arms, we've gone for the long-sleeved. To picture Dave with a new hair-style, we used the faithful Photoshop to bodge one on from the Internet (see picture). Cool dude.

The deadline to finish the songs and have them up on the net is approaching us like a piano dropped from the tenth floor. 7am starts (actually just one) and working through the nights, we may just do it.

Thinking about means of advertising. Having our band plastered on plectrums, pens, diaries, mp3 players, balloons, Frisbees, T-shirts, bottle openers, beermats and even condoms. Need to get the bass drum skin done, too.

Finally finished mixing and mastering our first tune Tracks, which has been stewing through Cubase for over a year. It's changed more times than Muhammed Ali's radio station. Kieran from fellow band Stone Soul has come in for an evening to play about with some ideas for Gypo Jack, the second of three songs we need to finish by tomorrow. I wonder if I can get hold of Bernard's watch on eBay...

Music of the Night

This week we have had a number of late night sessions. I put pen to paper and written some decent lyrics for the currently named '5/4 song idea'. Catchy title? No. As well as lyric and melody ideas Pete and Dave have been trying to work on some simple harmonies (see video below). Work on Tracks continues. We have set ourselves until Saturday to complete the mixes.

In the mad rush to get the songs sounding great we took a bit of time off on Saturday to work with a musician called John H. He's got a song called 'Feelin' It.' It's a great song so we are doing our best to not ruin it in the recording. I've decided to take a real back seat on this one and just steer the project from behind the computer. Dave is on piano and Pete on drums. We will be doing some more work to this song tomorrow.

Barn the Bass

Barney, an old maths tutee, has agreed to fill in the bass-shaped hole for our gigs over the summer until he starts his A-Levels. It's only when we try to teach our songs that we realise how bloody weird they are. He's come up with some funky funky lines that we'll be recording over the next few days.

I've spent a couple of days on my own re-recording some drums for the hellish mess of a project that is Tracks. Out with the synthetic snare, in with the real deal.

It has become clear that my memory is comparable to that of an Alzheimic goldfish. After forgetting tonight's plans, Dave asked me to look up at the ceiling and to tell everyone what T-shirt I put on this morning. I knew it had long sleeves, the rest was pure guesswork. Got it wrong. It didn't help that I had also worn it for a few days in a row. Omega 3, anybody? Or is it 4..

Wasp extermination

A steadily growing swarm of wasps developed outside the studio window, so we got a ladder and sprayed a jet of water into the gateway hole in the soffit. No change. We threw balls at it, which flew over the house. I went to collect them and got talking to a 'well fit' primary school teacher called Sonya. By the time I got back, Dave and Marc had Sellotaped a wasp spray to a pole and, while up the ladder, used a broom to spray it. They fell out of the sky like Icarus - HAVE IT!

You're So Vain... Happy Birthday Dave!

This week we had our pictures taken, as part of the ongoing work to build our website. This was the first time we have had someone in to take photos of us. I found it hard not to feel awkward with a camera pressed up against my face. I could sense the feeling in my facial expression, similar to that of a dog's when it's aware its owner is watching while it takes a dump. I digress.



















Our initial first draft of the website was Flash-based. After spending endless hours learning what Flash was and how to use it we managed to build a rudimentary site, which... sort of worked. However, after lengthy discussions and ideas we decided to avoid using the format of other bands' website designs. Instead we came to the conclusion that we should steer clear of over-the-top, Flash-based consumer propaganda. Re-inventing the standard 'official band website' design was an atypical Flags challenge. So we had our logo redesigned and Dave and Amy Ricketts (from MoreGood Design) began working on a much more simple HTML site.

Getting tight for live performances is one, if not THE most important target for us to reach. To be able to do this we need to be able to hear each other through our headphones. So far Dave and I have hidden away in the control room, away from Pete's dangerously loud drums. This allowed us to have individually tailored mixes at comfortable levels. There are two down sides to this set up:

• We can't see each other or communicate properly. Dave has to use a major or minor chord to express his positive or negative feelings. Pete has to go through a lengthy process of yes/no questions using a snare to answer 'yes' and the kick for 'no'. As you may gather setting up this way is crap.

• Pete gets lonely and depressed.
  

A set of headphones with high attenuation (blocking out a lot of sound) would allow us to play in the same room by cutting out the drums. We tried out a pair of Direct Sound Extreme Isolation headphones. £80 later, we found the only extreme these registered on was the crap-scale. They had the same attenuation as our £25 Sony headphones. Back to the shop with them. The Beyerdynamics Dt150s have been recommended globally by music shops and studios.

On Wednesday it was Dave's 22nd birthday. Unfortunately his present from Pete and I still hasn't arrived. Fingers crossed that it will arrive tomorrow.

After Pete's phenomenal cock-up frying fish fingers, we hope tonight's chicken fajitas will have less of a carbon aftertaste. Then poker with Palo Nutini's iTunes festival gig in the background, which I went to see last week.

Slave to the Master

So we finished writing and recording Daylight Robbery. We spent absolutely ages mixing it on our brand new Genelec 8020a studio monitors, potentially some of the best monitors money can buy for a control room as small as ours. When we first got them a couple of weeks ago, we were amazed with the detail and brightness of the sound, even hearing the breath on some Mraz tracks that were previously inaudible. Having worked on a pair of bog-standard Sony Hifi monitors for the last year, the difference was huge.

We got to the mastering stage last week, and spent a couple of hours playing around with T-Racks3, Izotope and the Oxford plugins to produce a brilliant sounding master. So brilliant in fact that when we compared it to Karma Police and Violet Hill, it sounded richer, warmer, fuller and generally better. How had we, with limited equipment and experience, produced a track that sounded better than Radiohead?

Well our sense of achievement rapidly dissolved into a pitiful mess or sorrow and depression when we listened to our master on a normal Hifi. It sounded muddy, over-compressed and had a stereo image as wide as our punctured egos. It was at that point that we realised why the Coldplay and Radiohead tracks sounded worse than ours; their tracks were mixed and mastered for the Hifi, whereas ours was done for the high-end studio monitors, a listening environment experienced by almost nobody.

The moral of the story? Always listen to a mixdown on the track you're working on on different systems throughout the mixing process. Don't wait until you've spent weeks mixing and mastering it, otherwise you'll be in for a nasty surprise.

Daylight Robbery

Into the second week of recording our new song 'Daylight Robbery'. We've just escaped a loop of despair trying to fix a broken intro. We had decided we wanted some ambience of people in a bar mixed into the intro, so last week we went to a local pub with this laptop, a usb audio interface, an SM58, and set up a conspicuous recording booth in the corner. We looked like a squad of budget private investigators, or even a group of amateur ghost-hunters, holding a microphone at slightly different angles, with the pale glow of the laptop providing eerie uplighting to Marc, our singer's, face. We had some problems with hum but managed to make a decent recording.

After having spent about 3 full 12-hour days on working this ambience into the intro, a moment of utter horror and humour dawned on us with the realisation that it sounded crap. Why had we yet again poured hours into such a fruitless idea? I guess it's all part of the creative process; sometimes you won't know if an idea will work until you try.