Simon Lees of Anubis's Blog

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Current mood:accomplished

The Making of Waking the Dead Part 3....

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At 8.30pm on Tuesday 22^nd December 2009 Kev delivered his finished drum tracks to Simon’s studio to be loaded onto each song and to replace the rough drum tracks that the rest of the band had been working with so far. ....

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On Wednesday Kev visited Simon’s studio to do some last minute editing to the drums on The End Game. To augment and beef up the Kick and Snare drums Kev had produced a sampled version of each drum to sit alongside the original tracks. There were now three Kick drum and 3 Snare drum tracks to play with! On the song My God there is a section where Kev plays the rim of the Snare and he created three separate tracks for this instrument using the same method. ....

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As the sampled tracks were triggered from the original they lagged behind slightly so had to be lined up to the original tracks manually.....

Also on Wednesday 23^rd Dec, Pete delivered Sarah’s backing vocals that she’d recorded in his studio. ....

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During the next 24 hours Simon colour coded the drum tracks to make navigating the mixer easier and quicker. He also began editing Sarah’s backing vocals and copied the drum settings from the finished song Colourful to the other songs.....

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After a break for Christmas, (during which Simon managed to find time to finish editing Sarah’s backing vocals!) Simon fired up the studio on Monday 4^th January. He mixed the songs Abandoned, Above Water, Are We There Yet and Chenevare. He carried out further editing on the drums for Above Water to tighten them up with the rest of the instruments. ....

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As the Tom Tom mics were picking up a lot of the Hi-Hat cymbals Simon reduced some of the Treble from those mics as the Hi-Hats had their own track. ....

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On Tuesday 5^th Simon mixed Colourful (which wasn’t finished after all!), Dawn Will Never Come, Hold Me Now, In Your Mind, Locked In, My God and Stompy which is now called “Til it Hurts”. Some further drum editing was carried out on In Your Mind and Locked In. Simon reset the Low Pass filter on the Tom tracks to around 10kHz to liven them up after reducing the treble the day before.....

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On Wednesday 6^th Kev advised Simon to use a gate on the Toms to eliminate the Hi-Hat which was still bleeding through the Tom mics. This pretty much fixed the problem and allowed the treble to be turned back up to improve the tone of the Toms. Simon applied this procedure to the 78 tracks of toms and then mixed The End Game and Without Anaesthetic. ....

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Now the Toms had been sorted the individual Hi-Hat and Ride Cymbal tracks were much more effective and each cymbal was now in its correct position within the Stereo Spectrum.....

On Thursday 7^th Simon applied a Mastering process to the mixes to get an idea how they would compare to a commercial CD.....

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On Friday 8^th Pete and Simon listened to the Mastered mixes and made notes. The guitars were too loud across the board so more work on the mixes was necessary. ....

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On Monday 11^th, Simon increased the level of the Overhead mics to add some body to the tom sound which was sounding a bit thin and slappy. As this also raised the level of the Snare, more balancing between the tracks was required. To give the Snare more identity Simon increased its Reverb level.....

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On Tuesday 12^th Simon experimented by putting a 10 band graphic equalizer and a 5 band compressor across the overall mix of each track. Kev came to listen to the mixes and was pleased with how things were sounding. ....

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On Wednesday Simon continued mixing with the Graphic and Multiband Compressor. With Kev’s advice ringing in his ears he centred the Overhead mics so that the amount of overhead signal was exactly the same on both mics. ....

He recorded some extra backing vocals on the middle section in Above Water and the distorted “Hated” in Colourful. ....

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On Thursday and Friday Simon produced a Mk2 version of the Mastered mixes.....

Also on Friday Kev produced the finished version of the CD cover artwork.....

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On Saturday 16th, Simon listened to the Mk2 CD on the way to his One Man Rock Show in Northamptonshire and found although the mixes were almost there, there was an overall “Stodginess” to the sound across the 13 tracks and they were generally too bassy. ....

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On Tuesday 19^th Simon set about making the final tweaks to the mixes. He added a solo to Without Anaesthetic during the instrumental section and fixed the things which needed attention. By now, the tweaks were becoming minute as the mixes were verging on perfection. ....

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On Wednesday 20^th Anubis had their first rehearsal since the summer and on Thursday Simon began the final mastering process. ....

On Friday 22^nd January, Pete visited Simon’s studio and Simon completed the mastering; adding text to the tracks and adjusting the gaps between them. Pete and Simon listened to the finished CD and it sounded as though everything was exactly as it should be. Meanwhile, Kev designed and produced the graphics for the entire CD package including the front and rear cover, the booklet, photos, CD on-body printing and the tray design beneath the CD itself. ....

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Pete and Kev took copies of the Master to take to the CD Pressing Company along with Kev’s completed Artwork on Monday 25^th January. ....

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At the time of writing (29^th January) everything is in place for the CDs to be available well in time for the album launch at the Robin 2 in Bilston on Tuesday March 9^th where Anubis will play alongside ex-Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey’s band Gunslinger in a double headliner.....

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