The End of DRAX Project One

The time has come to do a blog on the end of Blood Sucker (Week 6 Blog 2)

From the time that we had started to record Blood Sucker, to the presentation at week 6.

I will give you the good, bad and ugly details. (Gotta love Clint Eastwood)

For the amount of time that we spent on the song, l thought it wasn't too bad, even though l got disappointed at the very end. So l will just do a little history recap.

Recap on The Pitch

The beginning pitch presentation was done at the last minute. It was left up to Phil and myself to cobble up a pitch quickly and do the best we could. Tom was suppose to do it, but he had problems with his internet (Yep these things happen) So it ended up with Phil and l quickly sorting it out and communicating through 'slack' app and emails (l was the reluctant leader, mainly because the last time l went to school we used paper, pen, whiteout and a dictionary). We got the job done and that's what matters. we worked from 10am Sunday morning till 11.30pm as we were trying to find all the bits and pieces and information on the internet. l had to learn pretty quick.

Past the Pitching

So as we now pasted that stage we were allowed to continue on with our project. The next step was about the song we were going to do. l quickly wrote a simple song that l thought would be easy to do and put a scratch track down, just with guitar and vocals. I was thinking we would have it done in a couple of weeks. How wrong was l. Dec had trouble getting the electronic parts down to seperate so we could mix the drums properly and by this time we are at the end of week 3. We booked the Neve Studio to start mixing the song a little and start putting down the vocals. Phil's keyboard parts were down but there was a problem with plug-in Expand!2. He had the plug-in on all of his tracks, but it would only play on one track.

So we altered the sessions priority from doing a little mix down and vocals to quickly recorded the drums quickly and l had less than half an hour to do the vocals. To top it off, from this whole exasperating experience, when l got home some of the vocals were missing.

Start of week 4

Time for an update in class and retrieve the vocals from the computer bin in the Neve Studio. We were very lucky that the bin in the computer still had the vocals there. I found plug-ins that l could use for the guitar solo, and for the vocals.

Still having a lot of problems with different parts of the song. Drum timing was one and we still had not worked out about the plug-in Expand!2. It's now Friday night of week 4. I decided l would work out the midi problems and fix up the timing on the drums just a little. The solo which l was suppose to do, l still hadn't put down. l was determine to get our song back on track. So the weekend l working the midi out, looked at the drums and put down some midi parts as well as look for some horror foley samples. Next thing l know its Sunday night and thinking we were back on track.

Week 5

I gave the other members a listen to the work l did, and asked them if we need to make any changes. I put down a guitar solo Monday night at home and had it edited for Tuesday. The DRAX went to a studio Tuesday arvo to listen to the song, and get some advice on what needed to be done. Everyone agree on the direction of the song. Starting with the 'old school' stuff and change into EDM after the solo.

Presentation Time Week 6

Now on the weekend prior to presentation, l asked if the team could all do a couple of sides each and email them to me by lunchtime Sunday so l can put the presentation together. I got Phil's slides about 1pm, Dec's was between 6 or 7pm and l didn't receive anything from Tom. Now we still hadn't heard from Tom or what he had done to the song as he didn't mention any changes which he had planned to do. All l can say is what a surprise we got at the presentation as he had changed the song completely. So now we are going back to the Neve studio to work out a compromise for the Blood Sucker song. This is going to be interesting to hear the final result.

Conclusion of the project DRAX

Really disappointed when people can't be honest with in a team about their thoughts. The next DRAX project as there is a new team leader (as l really want to give someone else a go). The good point is that l have learnt more about the DAW and how to use it better. Now if you are wondering who is writing the next songs for project 2 of DRAX? Well you will have to wait and see. OK l have already written one called King Drac Lullaby - 'Oh Now l Can Feel' and because we know have five members, (as Tegan has now joined the Motley Crew) l will write another little didley. This Blog is a couple of weeks late due to life is a rush.