Daniel Noack still keeps up his Genius Artwork

Daniel sent this nearly a week ago, but I forgot to share it:

Friday - Good to see Daniel in Studio

Started the day with a meeting with our Financial Adviser in the West End, which was helpful and positive!

Then back to the studio for editing and starting to check through the Vince updates. Had a telephone meeting with Vince, but he was on his cellphone somewheer Upstate Maine and reception was awful. We just about understood each other though, after multiple re-dials. I was really happy to have been in Maine where we had some real face to face communication.

I spoke to a helpful guy at Synthax Audio UK about getting a replacement Fireface whilst mine is repaired. (Thanks for the suggestion Guy) . I also disconnected Kore from my setup (I was having communication problems with the Virus TI) - I figured that 2 USB Audio devices might be interfering with each other. The Virus communication seems much better now. Andy came back early from his radio rehearsal and we did a really nice vocal on one of the songs. I had already edited the version from Falmouth, which was good anyway, but Andy felt it was too much "Falmouth Foghorn" :-) So we re-did it in a less "shouted" altogether groovier style. We were both very pleased, and I did the edit on Saturday. Great.

Daniel arrived shortly after and we played him a few tunes and got some comments from him. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic about some of the songs, which was nice. Daniel and I agreed to start the mix session in Mute with a Studio meeting where we go through the Multitracks of some songs together, so he can advise and criticise further. So busy playing him tunes and chatting taht I forgot to take a photograph. :-( In the evening I went to see/hear Maps at the Luminaire. Good gig and nice to meet some of the Mute Team.

Saturday I was up early in the studio listening to vocals and editing. I downloaded UAD version 4.5 software (Thanks Guy!) and am now cautiously optimistic about everything running together (which I really would like to have for the mix - I enjoy the SSL sound of the Duende and the great sounds from the other DSP boxes: The RE201 in the UAD is fantastic , and I like the Plate and the Fairchild. I like the TubeTech and Fairchild and Urei compressors in the Liquid Mix, and the Sony Oxford compressor and Character in the TC Powercore. etc etc. Also downloaded the latest Nomad updates.

Had a great day, feeling very excited and positive about my work with Erasure, and even went for a walk on Hampstead Heath.






Saw a touching film on TV in the evening. Oscar Wilde "An Ideal Husband"

Quick Update

I am getting a bit tired - so much to do, so little time! Andy is singing so much and so well it is hard to keep up with him - in fact I am glad that he has to do a radio show rehearsal tomorrow so I have a chance to sort through the vocals (from London and Falmouth).

Vince is working on the tracks and is sending me updates, new riffs rhythms and sounds. I am also working on the tracks and it is getting hard to easily combine the work that we have done - there is no simple "Merge" function available to make a song that contains the new work of Vince and me. So tedious manual labour! Vince and I are scheduled for a telephone meeting tomorrow, so we can catch up.

Daniel is visiting the studio in the late afternoon so we can catch up

A firewire socket on my Fireface has broken - everything still works, but I need to get it fixed, and I can't work without it! Might have to buy a new one and then sell it when I get mine back from repair. Running costs I guess.

I can get the Duende, the Powercore and the Liquid Mix all working together, but as soon as I try to use the UAD-1, the Liquid Mix crashes. :-( Work in progress.

Having fun with Albino.

Must pump up beats on 2 or 3 tracks! Drum fills!

Backing Vocals still to do - I always really enjoy that with Andy.

Me, admiring my 6176 innards

Vocals - update

As we go through the songs and complete the final vocals with the final lyrics we generally improve upon everything that we have done so far. Andy continues to be in fine voice. Thanks Andy! There are some songs though that had a really good vibe from Falmouth, and so we will be checking through those carefully as well (especially the ones where the lyrics were already complete in Falmouth). It will be nice if we come away with some lead vocals from Falmouth too.

I just had a nice surprise - Vince sent a couple of songs over in eMail, I look forward to hearing what he has done tomorrow.

And now, to bed.

Andy at the Controls

Weekend Work

I "gave" Andy the weekend off, and I did some vocal editing - when a singer (Andy in this case of course) performs a song we usually do about 5 or 6 really good takes and then I go through and select the bits that I like from each take. That is really fun and part of modern vocal production (in my opinion). That process can be very simple (one complete take) or very complicated (lots of edits) depending upon the singer and the song, and over the years Andy and I have voyaged between these extremes. Finally I play the edit back to the vocalist and change anything that they do not like (which is usually just the odd word or phrase here and there).

I also got NI Kore working, which was pretty simple but rather longwinded as Kore needs to scan all my plugins. I had a problem with it before because I tried to go straight to plug-in mode and this time I ran it in Standalone mode first. Anyway - great to have it working, it will help me use Komplete4 which is in the mail to me now. Also downloaded a demo of Massive, which seems like it is going to be a great tool.

This weekend I also went to the movies with my wife, which was very nice. We saw "The Prestige" and "Borat".