finishing the double EP 

Especially focuses on finishing the EPs, but also talks about the gig at the Cronos.

 more tech stuff 

Let's talk about guitar sound. In real life, a guitar's sound gets out from a cabinet. Choosing a good one is key for obtaining a good sound.

I was using Ableton's default 4x12 cab plugin. And verdict: it sounds absolutely terrible, sucks malevolent ass. Instead, I started using IRs (Impulse Responses), which can simulate cabinets. I used Ignite Amps' NadIR plugin for loading the IRs.

Finding good IRs truly is an adventure. I started by downloading Jens Bogren's IR pack (huge sound engineer who worked with Trivium), but then I found Diego's IR pack somewhere (literally a random guy) and I ended up using his instead.

 finishing the songs 

Song facts are available in this other diary entry.

I clearly spent too much time verifying that every track was good. Even though it was necessary to work on the sound, try different IRs and really work on the mix, I want to do better next time. Spend less time on stitching tracks together, and record a few good tracks rather than a lot of bad ones.

Though, I don't feel like wasting time when I discard 2 hours of vocal takes. These 2 hours were spent practicing.

save me: about 45 minutes of sorting tracks (session 2)

I ended up only rerecording the pre-chorus riff in Save Me. I also wanted to rerecord the last solo, but I figured i could just Frankenstein the tracks and call it a day. I really didn't want to get back into recording.

 vocals mess (yet again) 

SONG	VOCALS	SORTING VOCALS	[ TOTAL ]
DIE ANYWAY	0:40	1:10
SACRIFICE	0:40	1:10
MORUE	1:15	1:15
LUCKY	0:40	1:10
CHAMBER	0:40	1:10
SAVE ME	0:40	1:10
WHEN YOU DIE	0:40	1:10
SARDENED	0:40	1:10
[ TOTAL ]	0:40	1:10

Here are the recording times of the vocal sessions that lasted from January 6 to (AAAA). In total, every song had vocal takes from about five separate days.

Compared to this summer, I did not bother listening to every take. I only worked with the most recent ones, and made sure that I was happy with them while I was recording them. Listening back was helpful. It makes mistakes stand out, and then it's easier to work on them.

Sessions lasted up to 2 hours, a bit longer than last time. I started by doing about 15 minutes of warmups, then sang a few songs, mostly from the set. Then, I repeated this until I felt like the takes weren't good anymore: I did one or two takes, then rested for two to three minutes, taking deep breaths to give my lungs some oxygen. Takes were better when I did that.

I wasted quite some time just scrolling between takes. At some point, I started replacing that with reading manga, which was better. I'm thinking that booking could be done during this rest period.

I chose to focus on the lower part of Morue separately from the higher one.

listened to lucky and tbh takes are great but i felt like they were better while recording and also innocence

 Cronos concert 

 booking gigs 

 thoughts for next time 

As my dad says, "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" (better is the enemy of good).

· Disable dithering when exporting stems from Ableton.

· Spend more time on getting the right guitar sound so that I don't waste time fixing takes.

· Play bass more aggressively.

· Record bass with more treble. Frequencies can be removed later if I want a different tone, but they cannot be added to a track that is lacking.

· Maybe less gain and/or distortion on the guitar. Notes on Save Me are not well defined and maybe this could have helped.