Stormcellar Band Home Page

Soo I dropped into the studio tonight to have a chat with Pete about some notes that Mike had made when they were editing recently. I wanted to hear Hard Times with the vocals in along with a solo I’d apparently recorded but had no recollection of!

After listening back to it I can still confirm no recollection of having played what I’m listening to but hey if the credit is out there for the taking … I’ll take it!

The vocals and lyrics might have taken a long time to come to life but now that they’re here boy do I like ‘em.

Took the opportunity to hear one of the new ones – South of the Border – with the backing vocals added in – and yep – sounding alright too!

On to Texas Rosie – the main reason for the visit – seems I’m going have to re do the rhythm part to sit better with the drums – but hey I’m up for it!

Til next time,

Rosie

Our very own Mr Wizard (Paul Read) will be on stage tonight doing his arrangement of a Willie Dixon number as part of the Willies Blues CD Launch.

Produced by local godfather of the blues, Jim Finn and featuring the cast of Sydney's homegrown Blues talent, tonight will be a grand celebration of the songs of Willie Dixon by some of our top local performers.

from 6:30pm, at the Bald Faced Stag on Parramatta Road Leichhardt, $15 entry.

Howdy Folks.

Well, that's another unexpected milestone today as we completed the editing sessions.

What does that mean?

Ok, if you cast your mind back...(oooh...dream sequence music plays)...

The first stage was the recording on location. Ah the good old days. Good times.

The next stage was adding/overdubbing additional parts.

Sometimes that meant fixing location recordings,  sometimes it meant trying other ideas, sometimes adding instrumentation or participants who were unavailable during the location recording.

As you work on the captured material, it starts to take on a life of it's own. Despite what you hear, think or write, the recording process will yield its own version of your target song. Good luck, may the force be with you.

Yesterday and today were a quality control process for ideas and performance; Did that idea work? Can it be fixed, redone, re-treated or edited? Does it add anything?

This is just the start of the "hmm' sessions. Walking around, listening to the songs and going 'hmmm'.

With the edits done, Pete is moving into mixing, from there we review, tweak, rinse, repeat and then....and then...err..

Um.

oh yeah, we master it and press it. No worries. A snap.

Of course, there are still a list of little tasks to take care of along the way, such as adding in a few last ideas. Paul and Theo were keen on getting some Keyboard type sounds into one song, and for one reason or another, it fell to me today to try and emulate a Hammond Organ using my trusty harmonica. No worries, I have already been posing as a Sax, so why not try another cunning disguise. 

By the time we'd laid down some extra Dobro for Light In The Distance, a few harp chords for Keeps You Moving on and made up a list of final tweaks, we began scheduling the final fix-it-days and the mixing week. That gives us one last chance to get anything else we want on there and then its mixing time.

I have studiously avoided putting a completion date down, oh no, I've been burned before. Nope. I report, you decide. No, hang on, that's Fox News. My bad.

I mean, I'll keep reporting and you'll know its done when you see the final product in your hot little hands.

Reality. Accept no substitutes.

MJEB

A long editing session yesterday as we started thinning out the layers of ideas. If it doesn't add something, it's gotta go. 

Brutal but true. We have added just about all the instrumentation and other things we had in mind and now comes the 'was that really a good idea?' part of the discussion - and this is only Phase 1 - we're not up to mixing yet, we're just working out what should be in the mix.

Ok, so we also then added some ideas. Why not.

This stage should be known as the 'Careful what you wish for' stage. Doubled up harps? 16 harmonies? Yikes, what were we thinking? 4 simultaneous polyrhythms?  

We have one more session on editing this week, then it's onto mixing and fixing the bits that, despite our best brain power, just don't seem to work.

But heck, what does anyone really know? Right?  Right? :-) Could be genius.

Wish us luck.

Yikes, a big saturday night in Bondi.

Dancing started more or less from the get go and went right though until we finished 3 hours later. Check it out.

Shout outs to Ritchie, Naomi, Claudette, Suzanne, Rod, Kevin and the Scottish Contingent.