................
The Making
of Waking the Dead – Part 2....
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During the
first phase of recording, Simon’s mom went into hospital suffering from heart
and kidney failure. She moved into a nursing home early in September where she
died on September 23rd. Working around his job, visits to the
hospital, meetings with doctors and social workers Simon managed to complete
the recording and editing of the guitars and vocals to the first 7 songs by
September 18th. ....
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On Friday
25th September Kev emailed Simon a rough mix of the edited drum
tracks to “The End Game” and “Above Water”. Simon began work on both tracks the
following Monday, and by the end of the week all the guitar parts had been
recorded.....
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Margaret
Lees’ funeral was on the following Tuesday (6th Oct) and a rough mix
of “The End Game” was played at the end of the Service which was held at Gornal
Wood Crematorium. ....
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Simon took
a break from recording between October 6th and November 3rd
as he took his annual 2 week holiday and work on Sarah’s solo EP “Wish” was
completed. During this time Kev edited the drum tracks to the final four songs
and emailed rough mixes of each to Simon so that the guitars and vocals could
be added. The remaining songs were: Dawn Will Never Come, In Your Mind, Locked
In and My God.....
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Simon took
up the baton again on Tuesday 3rd November and on Monday 16th
all of his guitars and vocals were complete. The following day Simon produced a
spreadsheet showing all the tracks for each song and began colour coding each
type of track to make mixing less daunting. ....
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On
Wednesday 18th Sarah recorded the lead vocal tracks for Abandoned,
Above Water, Colourful, Locked In and My God in Pete’s ..Shropshire..
studio.....
Also on
Wednesday, Simon began setting the EQ, gating, Compression and Panning for each
of the 240 tracks he’d laid down for the 13 songs/instrumentals. This odious
task took him until Monday 23rd. Just in time for his PC to start
crashing!! ....
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On Tuesday
24th November Kev took two songs worth of finished drum tracks to
load onto Simon’s PC. All day was spent on Colourful and templates were created
for each drum and cymbal which could easily be applied to the other 12 songs.
There are 18 tracks of drums on each song and Kev had checked every hit of
every drum to make sure it was right. ....
.. ..
Later that
night Simon’s PC crashed again and the following day Simon downloaded updates
for his hardware drivers and recording software which seemed to fix the
problem. He also ordered a new digital cable to connect his guitar processor to
his soundcard in case his old one had caused his PC to crash. On Wednesday
afternoon Simon loaded Kev’s finished drum tracks onto “Hold Me Now” and
applied the templates that were created the day before. ....
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On Thursday
Simon re-set his 49 vocal tracks (lead and backing vocals) to lower the volume
as it looked as though some distortion had occurred due to levels being too
high.....
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On Friday
27th Simon produced a CD of rough mixes of all 13 tracks to play in
the car on the way to his gig in Cambridgeshire. Pete accompanied Simon to the
gig and made notes while Simon drove.....
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After a
long weekend, Simon started again on Tuesday 1st December. The CD
had revealed there was too much bass on most of the guitar tracks so two days
were spent fixing this. During the two days Simon selected reverbs to suit his
vocals and guitars on each track.....
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On Thursday
3rd Pete gave Simon Sarah’s vocal tracks and his own bass parts.
Sarah had recorded each song several times so Simon sifted through each take,
choosing all the best bits. It is the same process he carried out on his own
vocal parts back in September – a process known as “Compiling” or “Comping”. ....
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On Thursday
10th December the bass and lead vocals were complete. ....
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Simon spent
the following week tweaking and fine tuning various bits and pieces, adding
backing vocals here and there and on December 18th produced another
CD of the 13 tracks to play in his car.....
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At present
(22nd December) The Making of Waking the Dead is approaching “The
End Game”. The following tasks remain:-....
- Replacing the rough mixes of
drums for the remaining 11 songs with the finished tracks. ....
- Recording Sarah’s backing
vocals.....
- Final Mixing....
- Mastering....
- Artwork....
- Pressing....
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Hopefully
“The Making of Waking the Dead Part Three” will be shorter!!....
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