AllTheseThingsIveDone.com

Last night I’d been asked to engineer for Littlehampton Community School’s Battle of the Bands. This was mainly as ACC has a far better sound system than the school. After a morning planning everything, including printing copious amounts of paper work so that each bands settings could be restored without any problems.

The plan was to meet at 13:30 ready to get the hall set-up. Five of us, plus a few helpers from ACC, opened up the container and started wheeling equipment over to the main school hall. An hour later and it was done. Sound checks could begin.

Sound checks are an art - They’re very easy if you’re regularly playing and know what you want to hear, however if you’re not…they can be a real pain in the bottom. Having made my way through seven bands it was time to count down the hours until enough of guest band Retrofect (my real reason for being there) made it to make soundcheck possible. First Ben, then Jamie, then Joel and then, well nothing: The two final members Adam and Josh didn’t make it there in time for sound check. So I’d be doing that by the seat of my pants.

18:05 doors open. Hyperfuse on my iPod. Mood, relaxed. As the seven acts played through I was mainly controlling vocals through FoH, things were no louder than they would be at Church on a Sunday morning. Then it was time for the ‘fect. Suddenly moods switched. Desked lined up, check. Foo Fighters on, check. Blackout, check.

At the end of “The Pretender” the boys started to rock and rock they did. Ben and Josh are an incredibly tight rhythm section and although Ben seemed determined to destroy a tree’s worth of sticks and Josh hit a few dodgy notes they were still incredibly tight. Jamie’s synth and key lines resonated through the venue. Even the lighting guys seemed to be having a bit more fun as Joel sung his heart out and Adam played guitar like I’ve never seen before. And the sound well, I won’t give figures but I broke out of Sunday mode and gave it my all. It was loud, it rocked, and it felt like a gig.

Wednesday. Wednesday was not a normal day. My day started at 02:15 when I went to pick Lee Slater up ready for a run to Heathrow airport to take my good friends, the d: boys, equipment ready to goto Moscow. There’s something something odd about unloading a Transit van outside Terminal 3 at 04:20. Still with the roads quiet the van was back to Furious? by 05:40 and I was home by 05:55 ready for a couple of hours extra sleep. Anyway, I spent the morning watching rubbish TV and it was soon time to pick Rosie up and head off to Brentwood.

Brentwood is about 12 miles other side of the Dartford crossing and, by the looks of it at least, is quite a nice place. Due to traffic on the M25 (Is there ever a quiet time!) it took us about an hour and forty minutes to get there. We arrived at the school just as it was kicking out time. And there was a lot of traffic!

90 Minutes to setup isn’t very long, especially when Jim changes his mind half way through. We suffered with mis-placed items and by the time we were ready, and sound checked, it was 5:00. Oops. We started a little late.

So, the gig: Considering Jim is a little out of practice, it was a good return. This is the beauty of having the IEM; Jim concentrates on the singing and not the 5 year old who’s bugging him in the front row. The hall was, err, very cramped which is a good thing but it was possibly too small to actually host Jim.

The Spicy Camels didn’t, for once, make a mess. Maybe Jim has finally house trained them during his break.

Favourite thing from the gig? Well, I’d have to say either Colours of Salvation or Fearfully and Wonderfully Designed.

We won’t really mention the drive home as Jim spent a lot of it talking about bodily functions and complaining a little about the Scouting for Girls album not sounding how it did in his house.

When most people finish work they simply go home and put there feet up. That’s not me! After finishing work at the ACC office I drove home and had dinner (nothing that unusual there) and then got back in my car and headed off for Bristol. Why? Well, I’d been asked by Jon Bonner to do some training on Digidesign’s Pro Tools.

The drive was good, there’s something amazing about seeing the magnificent suspension bridge that links England and Wales all lit up, but enough of the poetic images. I will, at this point admit to getting a little lost, however I feel that this was justified as the only directions I had were on a printed piece of A4. Oh well I’ll have Tom Tom soon! My awful sense of direction aside I made good time and when I arrive was warmly welcomed.

Personally I made the decision that Pro Tools wasn’t the way I wanted to go forward. I prefer Apple’s Logic Pro program. So getting out all my old skills felt a little strange, but they were still there.

Jon had spent £1750 on his Mac/Pro Tools/Studio setup and up until yesterday had only got as far as Apple’s Garageband. This isn’t particularly good when you’re a composer with ideas ready to jump out at you ready to lay down in demo form ready for people like Andy Harsant to give a good musical buffing too.

So, we sat down at 9am with a plan to get Jon learning Pro Tools how he’d use it in real life. With a real session. I personally believe that practice exercise serve a point when learning the small intricate details of a program, but don’t help the bigger picture.

So we sat down and set about work; Acoustic guitar, then Electric, then Bass. All along the learning the important information, like how Pro Tools’s plugins work or some of the features of the Mbox 2. Still after our first four hours Jon had made some big steps and at least could see that his money hadn’t been a waste. After a further two we had the demo track completed.

I’m under no illusions that when Jon does use his own system on his own it’ll take him a good twelve hours to get something useable. That unfortunately is life. However with practice he’ll get better.

Personally I got something out of it too. Even with the huge influx of project studio’s and the sheer amount of home recording going on I saw a future. Actually engineers and Pro Tools users are needed; They’re needed to provide the vital experience with the software to create the flattering sounds (I don’t want to call it professional) that most bedroom musicians are after.