13/12/24
Unit 9 - Evaluation of my track Blind
Blind is one of three tracks I wrote with my band for our CD Project. It's definitely the calmest of the three and something different from our usual style. Originally written as an acoustic track, we developed it from a song Amber had written into a clean guitar song suitable for our live sets. I really wanted the lyrics for this song to sound bright and simple to fit the rest of the tracks yet have lyrics that upon a second glance, are slightly different, as Amber stated once hearing them, they're very cult-like. The lyrics seem kind and helpful 'just reach out your hand' as if the person singing only wants the best for you but the reoccurring use of the word sedation shows that not all is what it seems.
Recording wise, this song was by far the easiest, it only took a couple of takes however we did tend to leave this song mostly to last which meant I had limited time to record my vocals, this is one thing I feel I would like to change as I can clearly here mistakes or wobbles in the final take used. Take time, I would like more time to complete all my vocals as I ended up only having about 30-45 minutes for all of them combined.
With mixing, I used this song as I was excited to try something different from what I'm using to mixing with Glass Star. I tried to keep the vocals cleaner and have less effects than they would usually have in our other songs as I prefer them like this also. Mastering was fine I just wanted to ensure the song was a suitable volume so I matched it up to other track and tweaked some other things.
Some things I think went well
Firstly, I think our actual writing of the track went really well. At the beginning of term we were really struggling to find inspiration and work well together but as we kept practicing we managed to get back into the flow of things and we quickly managed to write Blind as it was a smooth process from their where we all added our input. I also think our collaboration within the studio was another great aspect, we all had our own parts and voiced our opinions. I mostly helped with setting microphones up correctly and putting things away but it was amazing to see this year that if I had anything I wnated to add to the tracks, my opinion was listened to and implented. Finally, although the bass is a bit strong in my mix, I think the way I mixed it was pretty good, I hadn't thought before of having two slightly differently EQ-ed tracks but it made all the difference.
Some things to improve
As I stated earlier, some of the recording's timings were messed up due to the drummer not wanting to use a metronome. Whilst I know it can be difficult, it made it extremely hard to record everything else in his time and wwe really struggled when we inevitably had to re-record everything last minute with the guitar playing alongside the drums to keep time. This meant they only left me 30 minutes or s to re-record all my vocals which was rather unfortunate as I didn't have time to add the harmonies I wanted or keep trying to get the best take I could. This could've easily been fixed by just recording with the metronome in the beginning. Additionally, I think I really need to work on mixing vocals, Ed tends to add a lot of vocal effects whilst we're in the studio so when I mix on my own I often have to reset everything and I struggle and it never quite sounds write. Luckily, I've just purchased a microphone so these next couple of months before my final project I'm really going to focus on perfecting my vocal mix.
Next time I want to take a lot more time to perfect my vocals and ensure they're high quality as well as use a metronome no matter what. I really enjoyed making this song and I'm hoping we can make another song similar to this soon for a change of pace.