back in sainté 

Back in my hometown! Especially focuses on finishing the rerecordings, but also on the gig at Cronos.

 the local scene 

I'm genuinely so proud and happy to be part of such a community.

So grateful for the people who attend shows, make music, connect with other people and make more music, have cool projects that are getting somewhere, people who take pictures, people who run venues and bars where shows take place, people promoting music...

There is honestly such a rich local scene here in Saint-Etienne. We have tons of punk shows, jams (from jazz to hip-hop to metal).. The strength is in the community. Some people call this city a "village" because of how much everyone knows each other.

However, I actually think it's a very approachable scene. It's relatively easy to integrate it. A few bars allow bands who are starting out to play their very first concerts, and that is so valuable. Places that provide such a space are extremely useful. I started like that {...}. Even now, after a year abroad, I managed to get a gig early (lucky af)

We have a few places that host regular jams: the Soggy Bottom and Cronos (rock/metal and all-styles), le Solar and la Bodega (mostly jazz)..

On February 26th, they even hosted an all-styles jam at la Zøne. People jammed on an actual stage with good sound. I played Die Anyway with MPAM's drummer and Marceau, which is technically the first time an AKJ song was played with a full band.

This year, a new page called La Scène Libre ("The Free Scene") started relaying infos about musical events in town. They showcase weekly programmes (shows, releases..) Soon, there were 3 events every day of the week.

 Cronos concert 

Cronos (24/01)

First show in Saint-Etienne in almost a year! Genuinely so happy to be part of such a community.

This bar used to be called the Thunderbird before it closed and reopened under this name.

Very happy about this one- it had been more than a year since I hadn't played in my hometown, and a few people from before still showed up. It felt nice to finally reconnect with the scene.

I played a new song called A Long Way, which I started writing in Finland and finished when I came back.

I rerecorded all the live bass tracks to have a cleaner sound.

Merci à Dan pour les photos had guitar backing track?

The two following acts were Dans Ta Face, french punk band, and Penser Saboter, a one-man techno trance punk project with acoustic drums.

I had to rehearse quite a bit since it had been more than a month without practicing. A good thing about being solo is that I can rehearse whenever I want, without having to coordinate multiple people's schedules.

 working on the 8 songs 

Being back in my hometown, I finally had time to focus on finishing the songs I recorded over the summer, a few months ago.

I clearly spent too much time checking every track. Even though it was necessary to work on the sound, I want to go faster next time and spend less time on stitching tracks together. I need to record a few good tracks instead of a lot of okayish ones.

With that being said, I don't feel like I waste time when I discard 2 hours of vocal takes in favour of better ones. These 2 hours were spent practicing, in actual recording conditions. That's not time lost to me.

I only ended up 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 guitars.

Song facts can be found in this other diary entry.

 vocals mess (yet again) 

SONG	VOCALS	SORTING VOCALS	[ TOTAL ]
DIE ANYWAY	1:45	0:45	2:30
SACRIFICE	1:05 + 1:40	0:45	3:30
MORUE	2:00 + 2:00 + 0:45	0:40	5:25
LUCKY	2:15	0:50	3:05
CHAMBER	0:45 + 1:50	-	2:35
SAVE ME	0:30 + 1:10	0:45	2:25
WHEN YOU DIE	1:00 + 1:30	-	2:30
SARDENED	0:50	-	0:50
[ TOTAL ]	19:05	3:45	22:50

+ means a different session / - means I hadn't sorted them at that point

Of course I'd just record all the vocals again... Here are the recording times of the vocal sessions that lasted from January 6th to February 10th. CHECK THAT 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. Listening back was helpful. It makes mistakes stand out, which makes them easier to work on.

Compared to this summer, I recorded vocals earlier, around ~1 PM instead of 10 PM. and did longer warmups.

Sessions lasted up to 2 hours, starting with about 15 minutes of warmups. I then sang a few songs to keep getting into it, mostly from the set, and repeated this until I felt like the takes weren't good anymore: I did 1-2 takes then rested for 2-3 minutes, taking deep breaths to give my lungs some oxygen.

Resting between takes effectively made them better, compared to recording multiple sections back to back without pause. It also prevents burning out too quickly.

GRAPH??

Maybe I wasted some time by 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.

Compared to this summer, I recorded vocals ealier (around 1 PM instead of 10 PM) and did longer warmups

PIC

I chose to record the lower part of Morue separately from the higher one. Since it's high intensity, I couldn't go on for hours. There's a sweet spot between "not warmed up enough" and "too exhausted", and it took a few sessions to get it right. I ended up recording the final take right after a rehearsal: I was just about to leave the studio, but I told myself "okay, just 2 one-shot takes", and they turned out better than all the previous ones.

I used a piano track mimicking the vocal melody for Chamber this time. It's helpful for pitch matching.

found grain in finland, extremely grateful that I got to keep practicing singing there.

I don't believe that spending 1 hour on vocals that I will not end up using is a waste of time, because it makes me work and become better. However, I spent way too much time on small details. I spent two hours just on the first part of Morue (4 lines, not even 1 minute).

I could have recorded the Die Anyway vocals again, but they honestly work fine like this. I sound kinda french but eeehhhh

There was a clear improvement compared to this summer. Vocals are more engaged, have more raspiness, are projected better... I feel like I could have still done better, but I also needed to stop trying to find perfection and just finish the songs, put them out and start working on something else.

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

 more tech stuff 

Let's talk about guitar sound. In real life, a guitar's sound is emitted from a cabinet, and is then recorded using one or multiple microphones. Choosing the right gear is key for obtaining the right sound.

I was using Ableton's default 4x12 cab simulation plugin. Verdict: it sucks malevolent ass. Instead, I started using IRs (Impulse Responses), which can simulate different cabinets. I used Ignite Amps' NadIR plugin for that.

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

I thought that writing down every single setting of the guitar tone would be overkill. Well.. They would have been helpful for re-recording specific parts later on. I'm particularly thinking about Sardened or Save Me, which have a few technical sections I would have liked making tighter.

A modern alternative would be to use amp simulations like NeuralDSP. Only the raw guitar sound is recorded, and amp settings can be changed directly in the DAW. Though, I think I prefer my pedals and whatever authenticity attached to them.

img here

As said previously, I doubled tracked the guitars this time. This introduced a few phasing problems, where the tracks lose volume and fullness when they are panned due to phase opposition. It's not much of a problem when listening with headphones, though.

Bass was recorded in E standard tuning, which means that I had to transpose it in Ableton (since the songs are in C). The problem with detuning is that it deteriorates the sound. Notably, it's a little less bright. Logic's detuner seems to preserve the tone a little better. A better alternative would be to use a detuner pedal while recording.

 booking gigs 

This was the first time I actually looked for gigs outside of Saint-Etienne. I'd really like to thank Jaune from Menace Pâte à Modeler for taking the time to teach me stuff they learned related to booking. Here are a few things I've learned that can hopefully be helpful:

· Networking is super important. Other bands should become friends, not rivals. Then you can play on the same bill, invite them or get invited. Looking at their tours is also helpful for finding venues.

· Invite media people (TV, zines, newspapers, radios), promoters and other bands to your release party. It's supposed to act as a showcase.

· Have different email addresses for booking and communicating (I still only use one). Use labels for organization (refused, ongoing, confirmed..) and keep sending follow-ups.

· Minimize the amount of clicks before a promoter can get to your live session (maximum 2). They have 1000 mails to read, and they read fast. Put your band name, genre, origin and the dates you want in bold, and only include the necessary info. Having an EPK helps.

· Scheduling mails to a weekday morning at 8:00 is better than sending them at 20:00 (promoters read them in the morning). Customize them and include the venue/promoter's name to make them personal.

· Know the venue you want to book. On which days do they host shows? What genre? What's already booked? Try multiple ways of contacting them if they don't reply to your single mail: Give a call, Instagram DM, go ask in person if you can...

· First tours usually don't look perfect and might include 8 hours on the road between two shows.

· Put your next shows on Bandsintown. It makes them appear on YouTube and Spotify.

Studio VNR on Instagram has good tips regarding booking (in french).

 thoughts for next time 

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

· Practice vocals separately too when rehearsing, instead of always singing and playing at the same time.

· Disable dithering when exporting stems from Ableton.

· Spend more time on getting the right guitar sound first so that I don't waste time fixing takes. Maybe less gain and/or distortion. Notes on Save Me are not defined enough, and maybe that could have helped tighten the sound.

· Play bass more aggressively. I tend to play too soft at the beginning. Also record with more treble. Frequencies can be removed later if I want a different tone, but they cannot be added to a track that lacks them.

· Record vocals during a rehearsal period. Either right after rehearsing (leaving a bit in the tank) or on days when there is no rehearsal. Coming back to singing after 2 weeks of not doing it regularly is doable, but produces worse takes and takes a bit of time before getting back to the base level.

· Only keep 8-10 good takes from each vocals session. Sorting vocals is not fun and takes too much time. It's better to have 8 perfect takes than 20 bad ones.