Hey peeps,

If you get one of those messages on your myspace page about a tracker letting you find out who's veiwed your page, whatever you do, don't follow the links, its a phishing scam to get hold of your login details. Stay well clear!!

Cheers,

The PCB's

hi space cadets!

it's a long, hot summer as jimi once said and as you all probably know and we have been in the everglades of Heston busily gathering our nuts for the winter. we are recording an album for your aural pleasure and we hope you guys are half as excited as us (er-that would mean we were twice as excited as you-which would be impossible as we are often heavily sedated). 4 tracks are finished and 6 more have the basic tracks recorded. we are trying to squeeze as much ju-ju on to our long-player as we can and summon as much rock power as ten tigers, whilst sprinkling the beast with hundreds and thousands.

if you are interested in geting a copy (release date TBC) act like a cylops and keep an eye out on our myspace site. we have a new tune on here at the mo-which is a bit of new direction for us-a place we have often been scared to roam-the 3 minute pop ditty. written by Rob the words seem more relevant than ever...

love-peace-empathy

john x

We have set up a new online store at www.cafepress.com

The direct link to our page is: www.cafepress.com/pcbshop

On our page you'll be able to purchase t-shirts, caps, a mug and even a thong with our images on. They'll be changed from time to time so please keep checking back for new items.

Enjoy

Steve, Pete, John, Rob and SJ

Yes! It's done! In fact it has been for a number of weeks, but I've been quite slack with my chronicles of late.

Mixing Where The Angel Dust Settles has been enormous fun, if not a wee bit of a challenge. Its amazing: as soon as the vocals are there everything seems to fall into place. But this can also bring more difficulties.

I like to mix as I go, and, as mentioned earlier, I had already done an initial mix, purely instrumental. However, the vocals have their own frequencies, which can sometimes interfere with the other parts (especially guitars), so it can at times feel like you have to go back to the drawing board with the other instruments.

Fortunately, it wasnt too bad for Angel Dust; only a couple of alterations were required.

Getting the balance of the mix is crucial; if the vocals are too loud or quiet you can really tell its a demo. I always like to aim for as professional a sound as possible, and I hope I've done OK with this one. But it's not only volume thats important- the stereo image can also have a massive impact on the overall sound of the song.

By stereo image I mean where various parts sit from left to right (panning) through a pair of speakers. I have tried to emulate the sound you'd get if you watched us on stage, that is my guitar on the left, Rob's guitar slightly left of centre, Bass in the centre, John's guitar on the right, and the drums spread evenly across the mix. The main vocal is then also central, with the backing vocals panned hard left and hard right (the only major departure from reality).

The thing is, just by moving an instrument a few degrees to the side the vocals suddenly have more space, thus sounding clearer without having to increase the volume. This space between the parts is aided by the mastering process.

Mastering is essentially a final tweak of the overall song to add sparkle. I have used a graphic EQ and a multiband compressor to finish off Angel Dust. The compressor in particular is fantastic. Basically, you split the mix into four frequency ranges and compress them individually. The compression kind of streamlines the sounds within the chosen range, squeezing them between a low- and high threshold of volume. This has the effect of separating that range from the others, thus allowing individual parts to stand out, akin to putting it in a bubble.

I think that the finished product is pretty good; not a bad job for my first attempt. As I am writing this I can tell you that S.P.I.T. is also finished, and Im currently in the process of mixing three more songs. My, we have been busy.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sure I'll find something else to bang on about shortly!

Adios

Pete

As promised, we have finally recorded the vocals for Where The Angel Dust Settles, and also managed to get Rob's guitar parts down as well. By the end of the session I had a pretty good mix, or at least a pretty good idea of how the finished product would sound.

 

Rob had not long been back from his holiday and hadn't heard anything that we'd recorded, so the first order of the day was for him to listen to the song a few times to get the feel of it. While he did this, John and I set up all the equipment, once again using the Marshall head as a preamp through which to record the guitars.

 

As I have mentioned in one of my previous ramblings: Rob is a good guitarist. But the thing is -and he'll be the first to admit it- when the song is one that he has not written, he spends rehearsals mostly concentrating on the vocals while playing a basic rhythm guitar part.  This means that sometimes in a studio situation he isn't quite sure what he should be playing, or more pointedly, he knows what he'd like to play but hasnt quite written the part yet. But, naturally, Rob rose to the challenge beautifully, and laid down some tracks that really fill out the song.

 

SJ turned up just as we were finishing the guitars and Rob was warming up his voice. We set up another mic to SJ could also warm up, and off they went.

 

When Rob and SJ sing together it can be quite magical. Given half the chance, any time Rob has a guitar in his hand he will launch into Wake Up In New York by Craig Armstrong. And SJ will always join in, singing the Evan Dando harmony. This is generally quite affecting; its a beautiful song and their voices work really well together. And true to form, this is exactly what they did.

 

Now, I can't imagine many things more difficult than being a singer recording vocals. The main reason for this is that I dont have a particularly good voice (not even a slightly good voice), and more to the point, I get embarrassed.  With a guitar its easy- you just sit there and play your parts, relying on amplifiers and effects to get the desired sound. The vocalist, however, must not only do all the musical stuff (remember the lyrics, sing in tune), but also emote, injecting their part with the necessary nuance/despair/passion/pain/love/hate et cetera. I find this impossible to a degree. Rob, on the other hand, can turn it on and off like a light.

 

His first couple of takes were quite subdued; they generally are. John and I buggered off to the off license, leaving SJ to man the controls (as John likes to put it, "Set the controls for the heart of the sun"). We returned to find Rob still at it; I could hear him through the door so he must have really been belting it out. Once he was done, I knocked up a quick mix for SJ, and once again, we left her to it.

 

Sarah-Jane is remarkable. She will come up with these vocal harmonies during rehearsal and sing them exactly the same every time, but as soon as she's in a studio situation, it all goes out of the window and she'll simply improvise something. Twice. And suddenly we have these amazing two-part backing vocals, which transform the song completely. We are, in fact, calling it the Patented SJ Two Take. Genius.

 

To be continued.

 

 

Pete

Hi space cadets!

Due to elements completely out of the bands control "Baby Spider" will not be released just yet. We are looking into either finding another label to release it through or attempting to release it ourselves.

However, "When you fall" will be available to download until 20th May.

Rock on!

John

ps get the new Tool record it's fucking great!

 

I have spent the last week mixing Where The Angel Dust Settles, even though we havent recorded any vocals or Robs guitar parts. The main reason for doing this is to save time later on, though it also serves the purpose of giving Rob the best possible sound to sing over.

 

Now, I dont know what you know about mixing a song. I studied it a bit at college (about a decade ago), and things have really moved on. Back in those days, hard-disk recording was but a twinkle in the recording industrys eye; we had a couple of Soundscape hard drives at college, between them about half a gigabyte of memory. The RAM on my laptop is more than. Everything was done on either reel-to-reel tape or ADAT recorders. Editing a track meant cutting the tape with a razor blade, the angle of the cut defining the length of the fade. These days you can copy-and-paste digitally, alter the tempo and key, and add any effect you want without the need for a mixing desk or any outboard equipment.

 

I have already extolled the virtues of GarageBand as a simple recording tool, so I wont bother going into it again. Suffice it to say I have been having a great time.

 

You always start with the drums. The limitation of using one microphone meant that the recording had a very prominent kick drum, so I have done my best to bring out the click of the beater rather than the boom of the bass. There is also quite a heavy noise gate (a device that allows only sounds over a certain volume to be heard), so one can distinguish the sound of each part of the kit. Unfortunately the toms are at times nearly inaudible, because they werent micd up. The end result resembles an early Smashing Pumpkins kind of drum sound, like on Gish or Siamese Dream. Or maybe Nirvanas Nevermind. (Butch Vig produced these last two). This is quite fitting since the beginning of the song is almost in homage to Smells Like Teen Spirit.

 

I did the bass next, so I would have a solid rhythm section upon which to layer the guitars. All it took was a spot of EQ, compression, and an amp simulator to get it sounding pretty damn good.

 

The guitars had been recorded in such a way as to aid the mixing process; because each section of the song had been done separately it meant that once I was happy with the sound (again using EQ and compression), all I had to worry about was the volume of each part. And, of course, ensure each fades into the next satisfactorily. It is also important to pan the guitars in order to get a good stereo image of the various parts.

 

Its actually quite weird, because when mixing you become somewhat divorced from the actual music. You are so busy thinking about the balance of all the instruments that it all becomes just a load of noises.

 

[Edit: Im currently listening to Loving The Alien by Velvet Revolver, and the guitar sound on Slashs lead riff is pretty close to the second half of the solo on Where The Angel Dust Settles. Ill settle for that, especially considering I used neither a Gibson Les Paul nor a Marshall amplifier]

 

So heres a piece of free advice: After youve completed a mix that youre happy with, leave it overnight then listen to it somewhere else. I usually favour my car, since I listen to loads of music while Im driving, and am therefore used to the sound in there.

 

And heres the thing: I was listening to my latest mix and I started noticing things in the performances to which I had previously been oblivious. Like the way SJs bass playing can go from hard to subtle in a heartbeat, or the way that John adds vibrato whenever hes sustaining a note. Probably most impressive to me is that Steve recorded the drums before SJ had even turned up, yet their chemistry as a rhythm section meant that she was able to record her part as if she had been playing along with him. I find myself suddenly filled with pride to be making music with these guys. I cant wait to get Robs parts done.

 

To be continued

 

 

Pete