February song is 66% written
Posted on | February 7, 2010 | 3 Comments
Tonight J and I sat down and decided to write the February tune – WOOP! Only 7 days behind schedule – not toooooo bad, right? *shuffleshuffle*
I think saying ‘the heat is on’ is an understatement here, but we like heat. And all heat aside, we bashed out two verses and a chorus in about an hour so here’s hoping this pace will stick, eh?
Then we *shuffled* right into the studio and recorded scratch guitar and vocal tracks.
And then the Ninja Butler went into producer-mode! Fast-forward another couple of hours and I just listened to the result so far. Sha-WING! Another song-crush is born! But is it just a late-night fling? Will I have second thoughts in the morning? Only time will tell, but you bet your bottom dollar that I’m going to stumble back into the studio first thing tomorrow, don some headphones and have another listen 
I think the tune is going to be called ‘Daylight’ and so far we think it’s sounding a little influenced by Fink and Beth Orton. Along, of course, with all the regulars – I’ve been listening to a LOT of Laura Veirs lately, her new album is aaaaaamaaaazing.
New Track January 2010: Easy
Posted on | January 29, 2010 | 20 Comments
Fasten your seatbelts and hold on to your hats – our January installment is here for you to listen to and hopefully enjoy! Just right-click the link below and do ’save as’ to download.
Easy - Exitproject (188) (right-click and choose ’save as’ to download)
We dedicate this track to Jake and Eliza and wish them every happiness together
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic License.
If You’ve Got It, Tweak It
Posted on | January 17, 2010 | 1 Comment
I’m SO rock n’ roll that I’ve spent Sunday evening watching Cold Case and playing Solitaire – that’s right, hard core. The rest of the day was spent being music-ish, I swear. Practising and performing and more practising and a nap somewhere in there.
But J (never the type of Ninja Butler to sit around) just wandered in and confessed to a little late night tweaking…
of the SONG…
Lordy! You have a filthy mind…
Anyway, J went into the studio with his game face on. He listened to it a couple of times, made some quick decisions, took out a couple of tracks that were causing a ruckus, and emerged triumphant and grinning.
WOOHOO!! Mixing awaits!
Final bits and pieces
Posted on | January 10, 2010 | 6 Comments
Emi’s in the studio finishing what should be the last of the recording for January’s installment of our 2010 song-a-month challenge. We cheated a little as we had started recording ‘Easy’ before the New Year – February will be where we’ll start really feeling the heat!
We just did a little tweakage to some of the drums too. Drums drums drums. Drum programming is probably the part of the recording process I struggle with the most – too busy and they’re overwhelming, too sparse and they’re dull, too loud and they’re overpowering, too quiet and they’re lacklustre. It can be tricky to get electronic drums to sit well with the acoustic instruments.
I’ve been listening to Fink alot recently – and the drums are really cut back but fit the music so well. The guitar is very rhythmic so that keeps driving the songs forward. Do give him a listen.
Lyrics – Make It Seem Easy
Posted on | January 8, 2010 | No Comments
Process of the lyrics for 'Make It Seem Easy'
“What about me?” she said, “What about me?”
He said, “I will never go from you.”
He said, “I’ll be steady for you”
You make it seem easy
You make it seem easy
Seamlessly guiding
You make it seem easy
“What about me?” he said. “What about me?”
She said, “I will wait for you.”
She said, “I will anchor you”
You make it seem easy
You make it seem easy
Seamlessly guiding
You make it seem easy
Set to move, to continue (repeat)
Let it rest a coupla days – then listen to it again
Posted on | January 6, 2010 | 2 Comments
After a solid Saturday of writing and recording, our brains were dribbling out of our ears… in a good way… if that’s possible.
Fellow musos will know what I mean when I say that you always reach a point in a day where you’re not really ‘hearing’ any more. There’s been so many ‘try adding this’s and ‘try muting that’s that all you can hear is a kind of muted-through-the-walls-cranium-party of cymbals, strings and vocals.
THIS, my fellow peeps, is when it’s time to leave the studio. So on Saturday, leave we did.
Tonight we went back in and listened to the track twice in a row – it’s amazing how obvious things can become after a couple days of rest. The changes we needed to make were staring us in the face like a lairy punter - woop!
Here’s the list (caution: non-musos might not give a crap about this list)
- Mmmm’s in the verses
- Hand percussion in the verses
- Harmonies above the second verse
- Some kind of metallic sound (or maybe just a pause) to mark the transition between the 4/4 and 5/4 section
- Ridiculously high harmonies towards the end of the outro
- Some kind of other fat-but-floaty vocal sounds in the outro
Then I guess it’ll be on to mixing for the Ninja Butler – BRING IT!!!
Writing bridges and ‘What’s that buzzing noise?’
Posted on | January 3, 2010 | No Comments
We’ve got a fair bit done today and all is well. J is in the studio listening back to my vocal takes even as I’m sitting in the living room typing this (I laid ‘em down while he went out for a stroll to catch some daylight…)
AHA! He’s just come in to say he likes the outtro harmonies – WOOP!
All celebrations aside for a minute and let’s get down to business. What did we do today? Here’s a tidy list:
- Wrote the bridge (C-section, break-down, middle 8, or whatever you want to call it). After working on it for awhile, it turned into the outro (magic!). We decided it should be a little weird compared to the rest of the song. We were discussing adding a loud creaking noise, or the sound a tin-building makes in a storm, or jerky-guitar parts – but we settled on making it 5/4 instead of 4/4 as a start…
- Hunted for a heinous digital buzz for a couple of minutes (it was because we were recording with a large-diaphragm condenser mic and I hadn’t turned on phantom power – SCHOOLGIRL ERROR!)
- Recorded 3 different acoustic guitar parts
- Recorded 3 different electric guitar bits, one of which we scrapped
- Snapped one of the tuning pegs on J’s Les Paul (see below…sadness)
- Changed the lyrics of the chorus – it used to be ‘You make it seem easy’ four times in a row, but it seemed like a lyric cop-out, so (after struggling with this simplest of tasks) I managed to mix it up a little.
- Re-recorded all of the vocals with harmonies and whisper-y whisper tracks
- J’s working on a new drum part for the verses right now…
Also included were drinking coffee, drinking tea, eating biscuits and eating lunch – CRUCIAL in any session. Especially the coffee… and tea… and food…
I’m in a freakin’ good mood because this song is about my brother is his lady-wife and working on this tune reminds me of how awesome they are…
Here’s some session evidence…
I’m luuuurving the bridge… I’ve got a big crush on it. I’m gonna pass it a note in study hall.
Tags: backing vocals > bridge > broken equipment > harmonies > Music > recording > technical difficulties
One Song Per Month in 2010
Posted on | January 2, 2010 | No Comments
So the plan for 2010 is to write and record one song per month! No matter where a song is (in terms of good-ness, cool-ness or complete-ness), we’re going to put it online at the end of the month, no matter what…
New tracks will be uploaded and available to listen to for free from 3 different locations (depending on where you hang out). You’ll be able to find them on our Facebook page, our MySpace page and our Last.fm page (my personal fave – last.fm is awesome..)
We’ll also write a blog post here when the track is out (you can subscribe to get updates via RSS by clicking that little orange square over on the right), and we’ll tweet about it… basically we’ll do everything aside from wearing a sandwich board and walking the streets ringing a bell…
The working title of the first tune is called ‘You Make It Seem Easy’ and we’re a fair way through the process of getting it out there. We wrote the beginnings of this one in Sept and took to the studio just before Christmas.
The verses and chorus are written and arranged, but we still need to work on the bridge and I need to record the final lead vocals (all the backing vox are ready and raring to go).
Release date is 31st January, 2010 – roll on!
Welcome to the new site
Posted on | January 1, 2010 | No Comments
Hello world! Welcome to the new Exitproject website – we’re scheming new things for 2010 so we’ve upgraded the new website for when we break the news…
Subscribe via RSS
Follow us on Twitter
Facebook
Last.fm
MySpace
YouTube
iTunes