The Making of My Favourite Protocol
October ¦ 2007
With the album fully written, we rehearse like crazy and finalise the samples and backing tracks for the live shows to premiere the material and see if we are as good as we really think we are!
We book gigs in Brum and Tamworth and get great reactions and feedback from the shows. Time to start the process of getting this stuff into a full album.
November ¦ 2007
We start recording guide tracks and further guitars and samples ready for the process. We finally invest in some decent equipment for recording and know that we can record everything except for the drums ourselves. Vigz goes on the hunt for a great drum studio to get everything recorded in.
December ¦ 2007
We finalise the backing tracks and squeeze the drum session in just before Xmas (22nd December) at Gighouse Studios and get the session underway. A great day had by all and Vigz nails the material in a few hours. Job done!! We're now left with a few Gigs of 24bit drum tracks that we need to tweak and mix.. erm...
January ¦ 2008
We head back into The Unit to import the drum tracks, gate, EQ and compress them and then start recording at least 1000 guitar parts per track from Stu and loads of final bass parts from Min. We finalise the lyrics and melodies and record some test vocal tracks with the AKG mic.... the results are starting to sound good.
February ¦ 2008
Vigz goes off for a six week honeymoon so the rest of the guys pull the hours down The Unit to get all the guitars, syths and bass recorded. We start experimenting with the final mixing and mastering process as well nice and early, with mixed results.
March ¦2008
Vigz comes back, everything apart from the final vocals are recorded. Everything is starting to sound really professional so now the drums now sound out of date!!! arghhh. Back down there tweaking, compressing and re-gating everything to get it balanced. We also start recording the final vocal parts from John, with some truly excellent performances.
April ¦ 2008
We're all going stir crazy now. John wears a hard hat just for fun, Min starts to learn how to drive, Vigz ends up editing each wav by hand and asking for cups of tea and Stu wants to overdub more guitars... we keep going
May ¦ 2008
Min and Vigz have a birthday and both realise that we're now a year older and this album is still not finished. We put our heads down and get the final vocals all done and dusted and start the final mixing process. We start to look at the mastering process and contact Blue Pro Studios in London to do a test track. We upload a tune, head down there and have a great day with the engineer getting loads of tricks and tips and hearing how the stuff will sound mastered.
June ¦ 2008
Nearly there. Mixing as a band was fun "just make that solo louder", "hey, my ride is not loud enough", "where's the bass gone?"... oh well, keep going as we're getting there. We also find out how to master the album ourselves and get the final track lists done and dusted. Nearly there. Nick finalises the artwork and we look around to get this masterpiece pressed.
July ¦ 2008
The album is finished! What a relief!! We sort the copyright, get it pressed and get back to rehearsing, while also writing new material for the next one... here we go again. New website gets up and running and things start getting back to normal and we're all looking forward to gigs and getting the material out there.