Scratch Track, Run the nails down the BLACK Board, please. (week 3 Blog 1)

In the last couple of blogs about project DRAX, l have been chin wagging about how the project was going. l talked about the song we are doing called, Blood Sucker and showed a pic with the groups project name in it. DRAX and single release.

Also discussed was about the genre styles that we wanted to create. Theatrical Heavy EDM.

A mix of Gothic / Hard Rock / Metal with EDM and it had to have a theatrical presence.

How the DRAX Song Blood Sucker was Scratch Tracked

Just a little about the group DRAX formation, along with song creation.

In class we were asked to team up into small groups of three to four members, per group. We then had to talk about what we as a group where going to do about creating a song for a scratch track demo. None of us in our team wanted to be group leader of the project, and I am still wondering how l couldn't have wiggled my way out of being picked for the role, as our group leader. Anyhow; now locked in, l suggested that l wanted to experiment with a tiny bit of a heavy metal guitar riff as l had just seen an artist playing it on a video, but l wanted to modify it a little, so it would take on a new life for our project.

Because of the style of the guitar riff, l thought it would be cool to create a theatrical gothic feel about a vampire. l suggested to the group about a Dracula theme and, about myself writing a song about Dracula, (just something simple that we could have some fun with and exploring EDM with Heavy Metal). So as we were discussing what we were going to do with sounds and instruments, l wrote the lyrics on my pad.

As we were talking through different ideas and at the same time l was structuring our song with the guitar work and melody playing in my mind, l suggested we call our little band a theatrical name and suggested 'Dracs', then Tom suggest we spell it DRAX as he felt it looked 'cooler'. (sometimes l'm a little too old school) So now all the group members agreed with what our pitch and direction was going to be, along with the groups name 'DRAX', and l had also written a little tune that would be a lot of fun for us to experiment with, including the styles and sounds that the group were happy with.

The song Blood Sucker was ready to rock and roll. We then gave ourselves fictitious titles to get into character, Myself - 'King Drac', Dec - 'Egor', Phil - 'Voodoo', and Tom - 'Nym' (anonymous)

It's been 2 weeks since we had a full group meeting. The drums seemed to be the major issue with our strategy plan. Egor (Dec) seemed to have trouble getting the drums to sound and feel the way he wanted them to, and Voodoo (Phil) was waiting on the drums to feed off for his keyboard parts, and since l could be playing bass guitar which is not my strong point, l was 'on hold' also.

*note - I started to feel like l was sitting in my car, in peak hour traffic waiting on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne, and getting flashbacks of me sitting waiting for someone in the car in front to make a move. (Melbournians call the Monash freeway, the Monash car park especially when a car accident occurs, and everything is at a standstill) when l was working in Mulgrave and driving home to Werribee, ( a normally 1 hour drive) I had the hard decision to sit in traffic for 3 hours, or go to the pub, after work to curb any frustration that was out of my control.

In today's session the 14 June 2019

Egor (Dec) explained he had completed the drums but he was not really happy with the outcome of the recording session so we needed to redo the drums in the Neve studio (which l was not excepting to do, as the drums where suppose to have already been completed).

So now the pressure was really on, as we had only used the Neve studio once, and now we were under further pressure as we needed to quickly redo the drums as soon as possible. As a leader I realise challenges do happen and requires the ability to have the skill of flexibility and spontaneity, so it's was now a 'bums rush' to get the drum kit and microphones organised, and setup the signal flow quickly. As such, we only used 4 microphones,( Kick, Snare and two overheads) and got the drum tracks down as quick as possible along with getting my vocals down also in this session. Nym (Tom) had his EDM tracks ready to go, but as he had his tempo at 128bpm and the original track (that l had recorded for him) was at 120bpm, Nym (Tom) had to adjust his tempo tracks to fit the song.

All this tested my role as the 'volunteer' leader of DRAX, (and, should I say my personal growth, as I found all this a little frustrating at times and maybe expecting a little too much from my fellow DRAX). Anyway, all in all, we managed to get the drums recorded, but with the loss of 3 of our 4 hour booked recording session. I had to 'cram' since l planned this with plenty of time to record my vocals and additionally do a mix to present as a scratch track.

Now it was my turn to put down some sort of vocal in a style unfamiliar to me, that required l had to put down as quick as possible. I put down the main vocals then l doubled it by repeating the main vocal again. Recorded harmony vocals for the intro and guitar solo. The other DRAX members were in the control room record all of my vocal parts for me.

I returned home and brought up the recording session, only to find some of my vocals parts were missing, so todays session had ended up a little different, and we had to adapt to a new strategy quickly. The original plan of just putting down the vocals and sort out the mix of the DRAX song Blood Suckers. Unfortunately this session went slightly belly up a little bit, to say the least.

The lesson for me today?

Being the leader of DRAX has been such a great experience and what l'm learning through SAE, i.e. Learning to overcome the challenges that get presented to you enabled me to grow as a person from this experience.

Another lesson, always have a 'Back Up plan' and since our scratch track didn't get finished, we neeed a couple of backup plans.

The first one was my scratch track (guitar and vocals) and the second is the EDM version of it.

l personaly thought we should submit the EDM version. DRAX wants to create a kick ass Gothic / Hard Rock Metal / EDM with a lot of theatrical presence as that is the direction we want the group DRAX to go.

Here are some picks of todays session.

Egor (Dec) - redoing the Drums to the right

Nym (Tom) adjusting tempo of his EDM Above

Voodoo (Phil) - business as usual and contribute to the drums. (Multi talented - keyboard and drums)

And me - King Drac or KD for short. (if you can't see me in the pics, then like the devil I don't exist.)