What's happening on the new EPs?!

[Rob]

Well Tom was going to start this but as he's off recording with Curb I'll kick it off.

We went in to record some drums on Saturday. James of Curb arranged it so we could set up where he works. It's like a carpet showroom which is possibly good for damping. We think anyway. Me and James set up the mics, was the first time I'd ever been involved in micing up a kit, but I will spare you the details. I took me pc down and recorded onto that. It seemed to go really well on the technical front. Everything seemed to work first time, no technical issues, a bit confusing really

Tom said he still felt tense and stuff but I think he did pretty darn well all in all. We went through the songs we wanted to get done pretty quickly. Got six tracks down, exactly as planned.

Chips was a bit of a nightmare, it's that bloody time change at the Chorus. Damn you Matt Pimm!!

I'm messing with chips at the moment to get the best drum sound on my pc, trying to strike a balance between sounding raw and not soudning crap. Think it's sounding pretty good. I'm impressed with how it's going.

Tracks recorded:
Chips
Fireworks
I Am About To Forget
My Girl Wants To F**k My Best Friend
Volatile
Kelly, You're The Teacher

Seriously many thanks to James for arranging it, helping lugging stuff, and generally being patient with us.

Supplies used : 1 scotch egg bar and 3 550ml bottles of coke

[Tom]

Sorry i was going to start this but coming second will do (oo-er) Anyhoo as Rob was saying we have started work on the new meg ep's so i thought for those of you who are intrested i'm going to try and keep an up to date diary of how we get on and im gonna try and get some pics up as well. So here we go.

MEG had being talking about starting a new demo for a while now and it actually seemed like it would happen, one problem we had nowhere to start the recording of the drums, which are what you record 1st when recording a band. Some of you may know i play drums for another kiddy band called CURB and the singer James has access to a carpet showroom where CURB practise and record. I told him about MEGS problem of finding somewhere to lay down the drum tracks and him being the nice bloke he is said we could record them at his works.
So after a very hectic week of playing for me we went in saturday. We got to james works and rob set up his PC and i set up the kit. Now to be honest i am not comfortable recording, playing live and playing along to a click track is very different, live has a more open feel to it as playing to a click track is very strict and has to be spot on and to be fair my playing can sometimes speed up and slow down. So once set up we went through the 6 tracks we had picked starting with kelly and finishing with chips which was a fuckin nightmare due to a tempo change, but we got it all done.
On the whole it was lots of fun and listining to Rob mixing the levels now it sounds amazing so well done to him as he's gonna be mixing it all with various members of MEG saying yay or nay at various points. There is also a new song in the 6 tracks which we played live for the 1st time at the Marrs bar last Thursday called "I am about to forget" which is an ace rockin MEG trck ooh yes sir!!!!

Wow ive gone on a bit there, hope i havent bored anybody to much. Will try and get some pics on here asap. Next should be a low down on the recording of keyboard/guitar tracks by that man of mistery Mr Matt Pimm.

Till next time.

Tom

Supplies - malteser's

[Rob]

he's gonna be mixing it all with various members of MEG saying yay or nay at various points.

Ha ha, like I'm gonna listen to you lot

[rich]

If you lot need to borrow any equipment then give me a shout cus we're settin up a studio at school. We've probs got similar stuff to you but it just popped into me head when I was reading this diary

EP sounds like its goin very well so far though

[Rob]

CHeers dude, major problem today though, found out my cab for my guitar amp rattles. Rattles a hell of a lot when I'm playing through the big Muff I am gonna have to get it repaired or buy a new cab I think. Damn and blast.

Other than that I think we are ok equipment wise, I have 1 mic and now we have finsihed with the drums I'll only need one mic anyway. I even bought a pop shield today, from Maplins.

Mr Pimm came round and recorded keyboards on Kelly and My Girl before Sarah dragged him off for food.

Supples used :
1 glass of water (Sarah)
3 cups of tea (Matt, Rom and Tom)
1 bottle of Dr Pepper (zero added sugar) - (Rob)
1 can of coke (Rob)

Chinese after doesn't count

[Tom]

So we have now moved on from the drums and Matt came round today and put down 2 keyboard tracks. Was a bit cramped in rob's room with all of us in there and matts keyboards and i only got there halfway thorough as i had been at work but it sounds really good and rob has started mixing and adding effects here and there "my girl" is really standing out at the moment and thats with just the drums and a ghost guitar and matts keyboards, Should have all keyboard tracks done by next weekend i think and then if allans bad hand is up to it it will be time to do some bass tracks. Well its a short report but hey its a report. Till next time.

Tom

[OctopusQueen]

Wow it all sounds v technologically advanced and a bit confusin g to me. But there again, I know what the 4 quadrants of operant conditioning are - I bet you don't lol!

No seriously, congrats guys I hope the recording continues to go well, expect to hear sneak previews soon (being the die-hard Meg fan I am!) and expect to be impressed.

Maybe you could try and bluff off your rattly amp as being SFX or summat lol?

[Rob]

So, you come here with your animal knowledge huh?

What is the time signature if one bar has 4 beats and the next bar 5 beats? Is that 4/5??? We don't know but we play it anyway. If it helps you figure it out you can pretend it's squirrels playing it.

I did a test record of some guitar with my Mega Distortion pedal, turned up the amp really loud, it has such a grind to it it sounds like a Mesa. I like it anyway. Have yet to figure out what I'm doing about the cab. Alas it won't sound like effects it'll just sound cack so something must be done.

When Tom says that MGWTFMBF is standing out what he actually means is that it's the only one he has heard with keyboards tweaked on it. They will all stand out damn it.

[rich]

maybe instead of using a big cab u could just use a little amp as it doens't really matter how loud it is live, just how loud on the track. if ur ok with having a bit of a "unlive" sound then u could connect your guitar to the cab then cab to the pc instead of micing the amp up. it comes through very clean which can be good and bad.

enough of my boringness anyway...

[Matty Jetman]

What is the time signature if one bar has 4 beats and the next bar 5 beats? Is that 4/5??? We don't know but we play it anyway. If it helps you figure it out you can pretend it's squirrels playing it.

[muso mode on]

Well the first bar is 4/4 time and the 2nd bar is 5/4 time so there is a change in time signatures.

[muso mode off]

Meg will do anything to earn avant garde points!

[Rob]

Well me amp head has got a line/record out so I could use that but really wanna capture it live. The test I did growled man. I like a good growl. On all the ghosts guitar tracks I did for Tom to record over I just plugged direct into the pc and used a amp simulator VST plug-in to make it sound more ear friendly. There is some great free plugin bundles out there oh yes. It sounds pretty good like that but nooooooo... gotta do it live man. I am considering buying a little speaker cab just for recording purposes though cos mine gets really quite loud. Wanna use my amp head either way.

Ok so it's 4/4 then 5/4 but what does the second 4 stand for in the notation?

[allan]

can't wait till i can actually start playing bass on it after cutting my fingers open?! still not able to practice yet which is slightly pissing me off loads,but hopefully in the next week everything should be ok to at least do something,really can't wait for it though,hope i don't piss the neighbours or anyone off with loud bass noises hehe,loud is good though it drives the amp more for a better sound hehe mwahahhaaaaa

yes i'm bored so i thought i would post random crap

[Sarah]

Oooh, well doesnt this sound all fancy prancy fun Icant wait to hear the finished thing. as rich said if you need any equipment or help then just scream... between us i think we nearly have a studio and two mildly inteligent techies heehee

Ok so it's 4/4 then 5/4 but what does the second 4 stand for in the notation?

this is the bit where i sound mildly inteligent: the fisrt number is how many beats and the second number is the type of beat it is...so 4/4 would mean 4 crotchet beats (a crotchet being 1 beat)...i think tha makes sense?...
xxxx

[Rob]

The main problem now is we need to record the guitar and bass while no one is in the house. And my step dad is off work for the foreseeable future so it's a bit difficult cos I'm sure he doesn't wanna listen to hyper loud bass or guitar for hours on end.

So, if you could take my step dad out for a drink or twelve that would be great....

So the second number is the type of beat eh? Hmmmm. so ours is def 4/4 one bar and 5/4 the next cos the type of beat doesn't change just the number of beats.

Cheers duda. Maybe you can confirm for sure when you hear it!

[allan]

The top number tells us how many of the specified notes are in a bar and the bottom number tells us what duration (ie: how long) that specified note is. For example in 4/4 Time the top number tells us there are 4 notes in a bar and the bottom number tells us that each note is 1/4 of the length of the bar, or more simply put a quarter note. Therefore, we can tell that a song written with a 4/4 time signature is made up of bars (musical units a song is divided up into) which contain 4 quarter note long beats.

hope that clears it up,i just stole it from another site hahahahahaaaaa

why are sundays so boring,and i can't practice today either