Recording is finished.

Recording is officially done as of today. Now, just some last attempts at mixing before it's sent off to Mooncall studios for mastering. It's almost here. In the meantime, you can listen to a rough mix of one of the songs here:

T shirt designs.

As the recording process comes to a close, I thought it would be good to start thinking up designs for shirts and other merchandise. These are the ones I've come up with so far, one being a black shirt design, and the other being white. This may be it for a while, and later I may press shirts with the old album covers as designs.

Recording Guitar and Bass, Day 4

I'm not sure exactly what technical difficulty we ran into today, but whatever it is, it caused the leads to come out way too tinny, even by black metal standards. An otherwise productive day as far as mixing goes, but the leads will have to be redone, which kind of a bummer because they take quite a while to do. I suppose I'll just chalk today's recordings up as practice sessions. More news tomorrow or Saturday.

Recording Guitar and Bass, days 1-3

The recording process for In Hoc Signo Vinces continually proves to be a voyage into uncharted waters for me. With the exception of the very first demo, I have always plugged my guitars and bass directly into my computer, using amp simulators and other plug-ins. Having to deal with all the audio-technological obstacles just seemed completely unattractive for an amateur, minimalistic kid on a budget like me, and it was much more convenient to bypass all that by just running my instruments through a mixer and then into the computer.

This time around I have my good friend Oscar (pictured here doodling around on the guitar) helping me out again. He helped me record drums earlier this year, but he's a guitarist by trade. I wouldn't want anyone else helping me out with this particular task. It's been a bit frustrating at times, with guitar tones ranging from tinny to muddy and hardly a happy medium in between, and bass tones either too round or too sharp. But I think we've achieved a unique sound, and after post production and mastering it should sound pretty decent.

Finished EQ-ing the drums tracks today. Now the long and arduous process of post-production begins, and fixing little mistakes and finding the appropriate levels will be the biggest challenges.

Reflections On Drum Tracking: Looking Backward

After soldiering through technical difficulties and musicianship frustrations, we finished recording drums for the four songs last Thursday. It was a learning experience, more so than I would have liked, but all in all it was fun. This being a solo project, I underestimate the challenges of parceling out ample rehearsal time for each instrument involved in the process, finding a reliable and at-least-somewhat quiet space for practicing, pulling together the funds for adequate gear and hardware, and finding the time to get acquainted with your recording software and interface. Thanks be to God, I have amazing friends who are more than willing to lend their time and resources for this endeavor of mine. Otherwise, this could never happen. I am forever indebted to them for their friendship and their musical camaraderie.

Now that drums are finished, the challenge for this semester is to balance both school and a job, all the while trying to find the time to clean these drum tracks up and practice the guitar parts, some (most) of which are currently beyond my abilities. Until Winter, this blog may be somewhat dormant, with a few posts scattered here and there: but be sure, something is on the horizon.

Recording Drums, Day 1

Today I set out to record drums for the upcoming full length, tentatively entitled "In Hoc Signo Vinces." My friend Oscar, who lent his guitar talents on the song "The Narrow Path", helped me in a whole variety of ways for which I can't thank him enough. I was most afraid of technical difficulties, but those were resolved quite quickly. Instead, performance difficulties were the biggest problems, as I haven't had a chance to actually practice these songs on a kit, ever. I survived the first song, and the next three will be done tomorrow. Embarrassments aside, the day was fun, and any opportunity to combine music and good friends is always worth taking. Hopefully things can be ironed out in post-production, and a quality release will be available to you, the listener. More tomorrow.

Some photos: