We completed our February challenge and the track is up at http://lumus.bandcamp.com/track/challenge
We uploaded one day late, so we didn't make the challenge criteria, but I think we're all pretty happy with the track. I'll want to talk with everyone at next rehearsal about ways to improve the quality for next time, as well as streamline the production process. The biggest thing for me was the idea of tracking multiple string parts in recording. Listening back I'm hearing some things I need to improve personally in my execution. But what we got that I like...I reeeally like! I've added 2 additional staves to my notation program so future songs will have some additional strings planned out from the beginning.
Violin, Metal, Music, Theater, Travels and Goings On
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Business and Practice
This month I've been learning and paying attention to a lot of social networking sites and strategies. There are certainly a lot of benefits to geting your name out into the world, and I think it's good to be business minded about making friends and contacts. But I realized today that I've been doing that more than I've actually been practicing violin. I propose that a balance must be struck between the two, or the 'what' that people discover when they find me won't be quite as good!
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Band wants some New Material
So we've got an awesome new singer. That's great! She completes a lineup that has been incomplete for several months, and we all are taking a collective sigh of releif. Not only that but she's awesome!
Anyway...It was pointed out to me that since all our songs are written for another singer, and wouldn't it be nice to have some written for/with our new singer? To which I respond an emphatic yes, while simultaneously feeling a little bit of panic. To date I have been the primary writer for our band, and while I can churn out music at the drop of a hat, I am much slower to come up with good lyrics. Our first singer and I worked together on a lot of the lyrics, perhaps I can get the same kind of input from our new? Regardless I suspect that to keep everyone happy (which is always goal 1) I will need to get some help writing new lyrics, and probably some new music as well.
Anyway...It was pointed out to me that since all our songs are written for another singer, and wouldn't it be nice to have some written for/with our new singer? To which I respond an emphatic yes, while simultaneously feeling a little bit of panic. To date I have been the primary writer for our band, and while I can churn out music at the drop of a hat, I am much slower to come up with good lyrics. Our first singer and I worked together on a lot of the lyrics, perhaps I can get the same kind of input from our new? Regardless I suspect that to keep everyone happy (which is always goal 1) I will need to get some help writing new lyrics, and probably some new music as well.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Song Challenge Recording
So to recap breifly, February's challenge was laid out to give us a strict 3 week time frame to produce within. We're now a week and a half in, and we're finished with writing, and recording! That puts us about a week ahead of schedule- maybe more depending on how long mixing takes! There are some caveats though.
1. Since we had no group reheasal of the song before recording, recording itself was very time consuming. Most of us needed to record our parts section by section.
2. There are a couple parts that, now listening back to the rough mix, may need to be re-recorded before this gets released.
Fortunately the spots I'm hearing are in the violin, and my recording setup is relatively simple.
There were also a huge positive that came out of this recording session, and that is multi-tracking the bowed strings (violin and bass). Regardless of how it's mixed this track will sound like a metal band playing with a string orchestra, which now that I've heard it, I'm going to incorporate some layered multitracking into how I write Lumus songs at the get go. It's a much more symphonic sound and I really enjoy it. The planner in me would have liked the extra tracks to have been planned out though so that I wasn't songwriting in the studio.
In studio songwriting isn't time effecient. It's not money efficient either for those of you not lucky enough to have a sound engineer in your band. It should be noted that without Joe's willingness to be both drummer and recording engineer, we wouldn't have had the money to make this happen at all.
1. Since we had no group reheasal of the song before recording, recording itself was very time consuming. Most of us needed to record our parts section by section.
2. There are a couple parts that, now listening back to the rough mix, may need to be re-recorded before this gets released.
Fortunately the spots I'm hearing are in the violin, and my recording setup is relatively simple.
There were also a huge positive that came out of this recording session, and that is multi-tracking the bowed strings (violin and bass). Regardless of how it's mixed this track will sound like a metal band playing with a string orchestra, which now that I've heard it, I'm going to incorporate some layered multitracking into how I write Lumus songs at the get go. It's a much more symphonic sound and I really enjoy it. The planner in me would have liked the extra tracks to have been planned out though so that I wasn't songwriting in the studio.
In studio songwriting isn't time effecient. It's not money efficient either for those of you not lucky enough to have a sound engineer in your band. It should be noted that without Joe's willingness to be both drummer and recording engineer, we wouldn't have had the money to make this happen at all.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Feb Song Challenge
This month Lumus is giving a challenge to ourselves. The rules of the challenge are
-Write, Record, Mix, and Publish a new instrumental in 3 weeks time.
We started Saturday February 5 (or I did as songwriter), and by monday night I had sheet music and rehearsal tracks for everyone. The end result we intend to use as a demo to prospect some video game soundtrack work, so I had some additional criteria in mind when composing:
-Each section of the song should be able to loop to any other section.
-No section should directly repeat any other section
-overall song length should be about 5 minutes
The first two I nailed. The song is in Em with no key changes. The sections all flow well into each other, and some of the sections have some accidentals. It all sounds related, but not quite the same- which is exactly what I was going for. I only managed to get 3:20 though, so I failed in my personal goal of 5 mins. But I'm happy with what I've written and console myself with a couple thoughts- first that for a demo, 5 mins is probably too long anyway. Second that to perform the song live my band will repeat one or more sections, and throw in probably 2 solo breaks, so the performed song will probably exceed 5 min.
Overall I'm happy with the outcome. When I'm excited enough about a song that I can listen to my midi version over and over pre-recording I know I've done alright! Now I'm eager to learn it with the band, and get on to recording!
-Write, Record, Mix, and Publish a new instrumental in 3 weeks time.
We started Saturday February 5 (or I did as songwriter), and by monday night I had sheet music and rehearsal tracks for everyone. The end result we intend to use as a demo to prospect some video game soundtrack work, so I had some additional criteria in mind when composing:
-Each section of the song should be able to loop to any other section.
-No section should directly repeat any other section
-overall song length should be about 5 minutes
The first two I nailed. The song is in Em with no key changes. The sections all flow well into each other, and some of the sections have some accidentals. It all sounds related, but not quite the same- which is exactly what I was going for. I only managed to get 3:20 though, so I failed in my personal goal of 5 mins. But I'm happy with what I've written and console myself with a couple thoughts- first that for a demo, 5 mins is probably too long anyway. Second that to perform the song live my band will repeat one or more sections, and throw in probably 2 solo breaks, so the performed song will probably exceed 5 min.
Overall I'm happy with the outcome. When I'm excited enough about a song that I can listen to my midi version over and over pre-recording I know I've done alright! Now I'm eager to learn it with the band, and get on to recording!
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