The Archive Of Everything

2010-04-21T12:15:00.001-07:00

Cheeky alt version of Here lies i found on the HD http://soundcloud.com/archiveofeverything/here-lies-alternative-version

2010-04-15T08:41:00.001-07:00

Microcosm Office, double album available NOW to listen and download! http://the.archiveofeverything.com/page.php?13

2010-04-14T01:29:00.001-07:00

Releasing the full band version of Microcosm Office for Premium Members today to get it today: http://the.archiveofeverything.com/page.php?5

2010-03-17T13:57:00.001-07:00

Someone needs to release an all-you-can-eat download service... I'm fed up with downloading different software for music, movies and games.

The Hit Squad movie - HD teaser trailer

2010-03-02T17:33:00.001-08:00

Click to Play

http://the-hit-squad.com

Teaser trailer for The Hit Squad movie coming late 2010.

The Hit Squad - Bale On Heat - Christian goes crazy

2010-02-23T11:11:00.001-08:00

Click to Play

Christian Bale loses his rag and rants at his gay lover.

This is an edit of Batman star Christian Bale's crazy rant on the set of Terminator: Salvation and starring one of the characters from the upcoming cartoon "The Hit Squad".

For more info on The Hit Squad visit: http://hitsquadcartoon.com

Just to say I completely respect Christian Bale and understand that he was still in character when he went on his rant and he explains himself here: http://bit.ly/DRBg

Media makers: get good or get lost...

2010-01-31T11:24:00.001-08:00

So in our internet age we have become fussy about our media. We have so many people making stuff that its easily lost in all of the noise. Unfortunately artists still live in the era of Hollywood is real and that if we sit on our hands and wait then we'll be spotted eventually because we REALLY want a record deal.

Well you won't, if you sit on your hands and do very little then what are the chances of you being spotted above anyone elses work? If a record producer is trawling the internet and finds a band that is 70% of what he is looking for, mentioned all over so many different sites and sees them investing time and effort in what they are doing, why would they want to take someone who has recorded one song put up on a myspace page vainly waiting for Mr Sony to stumble upon them.
Who would you go with? Someone who works their fingers to the bone and invests in themselves or someone who sits and dreams?

Musicians, artists, media makers, I put this to you: Get good at selling yourself or clear the way for the people that can.

They say that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. There will always be an audience for your music, you just need to use that 99% to find it.

If you're an artist or a musician or a filmmaker, lets make 2010 the year where we double our fans, we finally record that album/film/book, we get ourselves funding and get on the road to success.

Recording an album in 7 Days

2010-01-17T05:04:00.000-08:00

As we all know, making an album isn't anywhere near as difficult as it was 10 years ago. Now anyone with a £300 computer and £100 software is capable of producing a high quality album from conception to CD.

So why do so many of us musicians still have trouble taking the step from writing to releasing?

Why are we so unfocused?
Music making is now so accessable and so easy that we're spoilt for choice. I have around 40 - 50 unfinished tracks lying around, they're probably never going to be finished. Why? because I'm not happy with them. They don't sound exactly like they did in my head. The fact is that its been so long since I started them that they probably did sound like it did in my head but have passed it and turned into something completely different. They've lost the initial focus I had when I started the track.

Making it happen

The technique ahead is a summarised version of the technique I used to create two of my albums. I am currently putting the finishing touches to a book with a more detailed look on how to record an album in 7 days.

The first thing you need to do is commit yourself. Choose your start day and prepare yourself for working 9:00am to 5:00pm for seven days. You're doing this for you. Make the most of it.

The second thing you need to do is have pen and paper next to you, test your equipment to make sure everything works, have spare strings/batteries/cables ready and take at least an hour break in the middle of every working day.

Using this structure you'll learn to move quickly and commit to decisions and finally get to do what you should have done years ago!

Day 1: Writing.

1. Press record on your DAW/4 track/tape recorder and just noodle around with your instrument.
2. Every time you have a great idea, write it down on a piece of paper along with the time on your recorder.
3. Move onto the next idea

The important thing is to keep moving onto new ideas all the time. This keeps them fresh and stops you getting bored of them/overthinking them.

Day 2: Refining.

1. Choose one of your favourite ideas
2. Play around with your idea trying extra melodies with it, harmonies and generally fleshing out the idea
3. Spend 25 minutes for each idea until you have between 12 and 14 fleshed out ideas

Once again, keeping moving is the key. Don't overthink things, don't worry about perfecting it.

Day 3: Recording

1. Fire up your DAW
2. Set your metronome and arm a track
3. Record ONE take of your idea
4. Arm the next track and record the next part, again in ONE TAKE.
5. Repeat the steps until you have a draft of your song.
6. Spend no longer than 25 minutes on the song

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 4: Editing.

1. Pick a song.
2. Choose the first track in the song.
3. Solo the track so that you can hear just the track and the metronome.
4. Listen to the track and split the track up and mark the sections that sound best
5. Ensure that you have enough bars to satisfy your chorus, verse, bridge etc... Basically in total you will have once through of all of your sections
6. Tweak any out of time/out of tune notes in those sections
6. Go back into your song and replace the sloppy/out of time sections with the good sections
7. Move onto the next track and repeat steps 3-6 until you have tidied all of your tracks

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 5: Rerecording / Arranging

1,Choose one of your favourite songs
2. Play it once through and make a note of things that need changing/fixing. This could be moving sections, muting instruments, adding intro/outros, plugin/instrument choices, timing, out of tune notes, incorrect chords.
3. Make the changes
4. Rerecord ONLY the sections that you feel need rerecording.

DO NOT take this time to rerecord everything that you have. This is the point where the self-doubt creeps in, don't listen to it! Commit to your ideas!

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 6: Mixing

1. Fire up your DAW and pick a project
2. Pull the volume faders down for all of your tracks
3. Press play on your DAW
4. Raise the volume of your drums so that they're peaking at around -3db
5. Bring up the volume of your bass track so that the level sounds right with the drums
6. Add EQ the drums and the bass so that they gel together.
6. If you have any vocal tracks, nows the time to bring up the levels and tweak the EQ and compression so that they fit with the drums and bass.
7. Bring up the volume of the rest of the instruments one by one tweaking EQ and compression as you go.
8. Burn all your tracks onto CD
9. Listen to your CD on multiple systems as possible. Car CD players, small CD players, on headphones and through the hifi speakers making notes on what needs to be tweaked on your songs. e.g. too much bass on guitar, lower vocals.

Do this for all of your songs. Spend no longer than 25 minutes for each song.

Day 7: Tweaking & Mastering

1. Fire up your DAW
2. Using your notes as a reference, make final tweaks to your songs
3. Render all your songs to .wavs/.aiffs
4. Create a blank project on your DAW
5. Create as many audio tracks as you have songs
6. Add EQ to each track and a multiband compressor (bypassed for the moment) on the master track
7. Import your audio files into the project in the order you want them in, one on each track, stagger the timing of each so that they follow each other sequentially.
8. Listen through to your tracks. Choose the best mixed track (the track you're most pleased with) and tweak the EQ for each of the tracks so that they fit in with your best mixed track. (bear in mind that your not trying to EQ to make it sound exactly the same as your "best mixed" track, just so that there isn't a big difference in sound when it jumps from one track to another.
9. Turn on your master compressor and tweak the settings so that it adds a small amount of compression to catch any stray peaks in your tracks
10. Render your album as it's individual tracks and burn to CD
11. Show of your work to all of your friends!

Congratulations, not only have you commit yourself to creating an album, you've learned and practiced techniques that will help you make better music quicker for your next album (wait, is there a gap in your diary next week..?)

Kasabian - Blow Up iTunes?!

2010-01-14T07:25:00.001-08:00

(via XFM http://bit.ly/6sTbgZ)

"Serge Pizzorno and co. take a stand against the internet and illegal downloaders. “There’s nothing special about music anymore”, they say.
Guitarist Pizzorno added:

“Wouldn’t it be phenomenal if there was some sort of wave that hit earth and wiped everyone’s computer and the only thing left was CDs and records?”

----

So basically people would only be able to have access to signed music? What a ridiculous elitist thing to say. It's basically saying "I've made it to the top, now all of the others can f*ck off".
iTunes and all of the other download sites have given people access to music they wouldn't normally be able to have access to. And yes, even illegal downloading has given that opportunity to people. People used to bootleg music way before itunes and people will continue to afterwards.

How many people have downloaded Kasabian from iTunes from completely remote areas where your CDs wouldn't have been sold? If you took all of Kasabians download sales away how much money would you have left? A f*cking lot less.

I'm not sure if the band are saying that to try and be controvertial or maybe they're just idiots, either way they have well and truly lost a fan.

Learn to Trust Your Ears

2010-01-13T09:37:00.001-08:00

A musician friend of mine emailed me recently asking for advice on music production and mixing.

I remember the amount of trouble I had with mixing music and how much I absolutely hated it. I'd mix my track, think that it sounded great, stick on a Radiohead record and then think "Oh shit, my track sounds completely wrong". There'd be too much bass, not enough bass, bassdrum would be too distorted, every possible problem with the track.
Looking back, the first piece of advice I would offer other would-be producers/engineers/mixers would be:

Learn to trust your own ears

If it sounds wrong to you, then you need to change it, not to how it would sound on a U2 record or a Radiohead record but to how it should sound for YOUR record. One day I downloaded an eq guide which listed what frequencies in each track did what. How to make a guitar sound less "boxy" by reducing eq at around 500khz, how to add weight to a bass drum by increasing at 60hz, all of this stuff suddenly starting making sense and I had a reference guide to what I was hearing and how to control it. There are many eq guides on the internet:

The second important piece of advice is:

Don't try and imitate other people.

Yes, its nice to learn how to get that cool synth sound that Aphex Twin uses, or get that drum sound thats in that yoghurt advert soundtrack, and you should always be looking to learn new techniques, but if you're trying to copy someone elses style then inevitably it will end up sounding like what it is: A copy.

You should look at each of your own tracks as an individual and how it should sound on its own. Nigel Godrich mixes differently to Mark Stent and he mixes differently to Bob Rock you should be mixing to what sounds good to you and not be constantly comparing your track to others. If your track is similar to a track that Nigel Godrich has mixed then sure, research and look into the techniques he used but don't try and get all of your tracks sounding like the tracks on that song because ultimately you will end up dissapointed and frustrated.
I think this is the main reason why my first album took 4 years to get out. And if I could redo the whole thing again I would!!

http://archiveofeverything.com

The Hit Squad: The Movie

2010-01-10T09:46:00.001-08:00

Ok, so it's a crap blog title, but it's an accurate one.

Some of you know about my cartoon project I've had in the background for years now, I've been faffing for years trying to work out how to do this cartoon, stating release dates, breaking them, breaking up scripts, sewing them back together. It's one of those things that I just want to get perfect.

The Hit Squad working as a cartoon series would have been good, but it still didn't sit right with me. I wanted it longer than a 2 minute snippet, I wanted it to have a start and an end. The first three half hour episodes I wrote were basically the story of their main struggle and I don't know why it didn't occur to me to stitch the 3 half hour episodes into one 90 minute film.
So that's what I'm going to do.

The Hit Squad is now officially a movie (in progress).

I'll be going over everything again, The characters profiles, the script, the soundtrack, the voices, everything.

And I'll be wanting help. So all you musicians, actors (voice actors or not!), even just friends, I will have opportunities for all of you to get yourself involved. Go to my website and sign up to the newsletter (http://www.archiveofeverything.com) and I'll keep you updated.

I'm aiming for a mid-year release, but we'll see what I can do in the time...

2010 will be an exciting year!

Chris AKA Archive Of Everything

New Years resolutions...

2010-01-05T09:22:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope all is well with you all.

I've been making lots of New Years resolutions for this year. Mainly a schedule of what I want to do with my year, things I need to complete. These include:

1. Getting The Hit Squad cartoon finished in one form or another.
2. Releasing Hyperman Versus Rockman in one form or another
3. Compile a special edition boxed set of every AOE release
4. Publish my book

As I posted in my last blog, I think that 2010 will be a productive year for me. I'm trying to find the best ways of being productive, I've decided that the best start is to take one hour per day to do ONLY work. No distractions, no messing around, just a planned hour of work.

I found when I was doing my "Album in 5 Days" project that planning out a work structure and giving myself a deadline made me work quicker and more efficiently. If I keep a structured work practice then I will be able to keep the rest of my life free and open.

2010-01-05T08:47:00.001-08:00

Going through Hyperman Versus Rockman and making some changes... Thinking it needs to be released as an EP...

2010-01-05T04:22:00.001-08:00

Sat planning my year out. Big list of things to be made this year, exciting times!!

Getting the commitment to motivation

2009-12-28T17:13:00.001-08:00

So, the other week I'd set myself the challenge to record an album in 5 days.

I'd looked back on the year and realised that I'd done nothing musicial whatsoever. I still have an album waiting in the wings to be released and it was almost 12 months since I'd made music.
So I setup a group on Facebook called "I'm Making an Album in 5 Days" and started the project.

Suprisingly enough, it was one of my most well received albums, people commenting more and downloading more than any of my others. I think half of the reason was because I had commit myself to a deadline. I'd announced a deadline and would look rather foolish if I didnt realease anything.

I think that kickstart was the motivation I needed to get myself making music again. Then everything came flooding back, the fun, the excitement, the stress! I think that a lot of modern musicians lack the motivation to commit to making an album, they release things as "demos" or the "latest version" rather than committing and saying "this is my album, warts and all".

It's a strange satisfaction when you release something, all of the things that bugged you beforehand and changes that you decided not to make all fade away and you become immensely proud of what you have just done.

With a new decade arriving it's the time when people make new years resolutions and have an immense amount of motivation. I urge every musician to push themselves to take that step and do what they have always wanted to do: record an album.

2009-12-20T01:20:00.001-08:00

Work still going strong over Xmas! Have a 6 hour journey to kill. Time to type...

2009-12-17T02:55:00.001-08:00

Thanks for the album downloads everyone! Glad you like it. Working on cartoons today...

2009-12-14T17:57:00.001-08:00

Microcosm Office (acoustic version) - Out Now. Free download until Dec 26th. http://bit.ly/MicrocosmOfficeAcoustic

2009-12-13T06:47:00.001-08:00

Album was finished last night. Going to mix it today. Speak to you all later with ALBUM NUMBER 3!

2009-12-12T15:10:00.001-08:00

no defeat! Still rolling on...! Album 3 will be finished before daybreak!

2009-12-12T09:21:00.001-08:00

moving along swiftly with mixing... Sounding much better than before...

2009-12-11T15:11:00.001-08:00

AOE album 3 out tomorrow... Keep your eyes on the webs...

2009-12-11T00:49:00.001-08:00

Up early to try and make up for lost time yesterday! Lots to do!

2009-12-10T12:20:00.001-08:00

Recording interface broken, resorting to using digital 4 track. Should be interesting... :

2009-12-09T16:27:00.001-08:00

Sorry about the lack of update today, was very busy. Will be right back to it tomorrow.