Started at: 10:30
Finished at: 14:38

Writing took a bit longer this time so I had to make a trade off, mediocre record + vocals or decent song with no vocals. I chose the latter for hopefully obvious reasons.

It was a slow start as I didn't have any idea what I was going to write. Had a conversation with my old drummer last night about some things that inspired me and I tried to put that into this song which meant finding a fairly different head space.

Started by jamming a little and finding a tempo + chorus I liked. Then layed out a verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, outro pattern. Filled in the choruses (copy paste) and started jamming stuff for the verse.

I'm not massively happy with the verse, it's a little too happy for me. I managed to tame that a little by adding some other layers but given time constraints, I needed to record something.

The bridges came naturally, I love jamming those post hardcore breaks and it fits fairly well with the verse (better with the harmonics layered on top).

Originally the outro was considerably more in key but for some reason, exceptionally jarring. It sounds considerably less jarring then it does now and I only changes the main guitar and bass (the lead and drums are exactly the same).

Vocals and Lyrics are hard to manage in such a short space of time. Next time I think I will focus on sticking with here ever my head is at the time without trying to coerce my writing into something else. This should let me get a bit more done in the time frame.

Urgency

This song is so short because it was the first time I tried to fit everything into the 4 hour time slot. I didn't get time to figure out how it should end.

Originally it had vocals on but unfortunately they were terrible and given that I want the stuff I finish in 4 hours to sound good (because anyone could record crap in 4 hours) I decided to cut them. You can't just bang out a full track of vocals in < an hour if you don't practice often enough (which I do not).

This started with a progression I had written ages ago  which turned into the chorus. The verses were just jams that I came up with after playing through the chorus a few times and imagining how I would like the feel of the song to progress after or preceding it.

Brittle

This song took about 8 hours over 4 sessions. It is from before I attempted to fit the whole writing->recording->mixing->mastering process into sub 4 hours sessions.

It's from this track that I worked out the general balance and mix that I've used on the rest of the tracks. This allowed me to massively drop the mixing and mastering time. I can do this because I know that I will always be using the same instruments for each part. If that were not the case I wouldn't be able to take that short cut as succinctly.

In the future I will figure out how to make it work if I have no Idea what the instruments will be, if I can find people to lend me them!

AntiFragile

InTheFlow

I went on a business trip to Riga, Latvia. While there I thought I would pick up a cheap Epiphone Special II and record some stuff. This is what I came out with.

Guitar: Ignite Amps Emisary, Epiphone Special II
Bass: Ignite Amps SB-1, Epiphone Special II (One octave down)
Drums: Steven Slate

It took me about 6 hours to write and record (not including setting up the guitar which required changing strings and intonating). I tried an entirely new mix this time though I think I ended up with a very similar mix to my others.

MakeMeWait

Songs written/recorded and published in < 4 hours.

SongIn4Hours