Back in the studio

I've spent the past few weeks at Bellville Studios recording drums for the upcoming Mark Haze album. It has been a blast working with the legendary Theo Crous, who is not only a fantastic engineer and producer, but also very easy to get along with and lots of fun to work with.

It has been quite a while since I've been in a studio, which proved to be a bit of a hindrance for me. I think I've grown so accustomed to not hearing enough of myself due to poor on-stage monitoring at shows or just the loudness of our rehearsal room, that I actually found that playing in studio is a lot harder than I remembered it to be.

You see, playing drums on a studio recording immediately puts your abilities as a musician under the microscope. If at any point you're slightly out of time with the click track, the engineer's hawk-like vision notices this while he examines the waveforms on the screen, and even though the untrained ear might not notice it, that little error can be catastrophic in the long run. I had to re-play several parts to get them just right, as contrary to my prior knowledge, you can't always fix human error with a Pro Tools plugin.

However, the recordings so far are sounding great and I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it. Bellville Studios is an incredible place to work and this is noticeable just by looking at the equipment on offer. I had the privilege of playing a Yamaha Absolute Maple Custom kit along with a rare Ludwig Black Beauty brass-shell snare. The sound quality and feel of the kit was fantastic and the sound that Theo got out of it is world-class. I cannot wait for you to hear the finished product.

Apart from recording, I have been enjoying life in Cape Town, although I think the wind is about 10km/h stronger outside my apartment than anywhere else in the city. I've discovered a ton of fun places to eat and hang out at, all a few minutes away from home. The joys of living in the city... :)

Although I haven't been blogging as much as I would like to, I hope you've been enjoying my Twitter updates. If you're not already following me, and you're interested, feel free to do so HERE.

Adios, until next time! :)

Begin New Transmission...

I'm not even going to count the number of days/weeks/months since my last post. I've been busy, so here's a quick round-up of everything that's happened in the past few months.

My last post was on 23 September 2011. I got engaged the next day, which was our 7-year anniversary, on top of Table Mountain. I then got married a little over a month later on 11-11-11. It was awesome and being married is fantastic. Nicole and I are very happy. We received a lot of gifts and kind wishes from our friends and family, which are very much appreciated. On that note, we have moved into a new apartment in Cape Town and are enjoying life in the concrete jungle, although we have a great view of Table Mountain, which makes it seem far from the city.

I had a really fun Christmas and New Year and have been enjoying the summer. It is good to be performing again. If you didn't realise, my brother, Mark Haze, came 2nd in the last season of Idols SA, which has helped our band tremendously. We no longer perform as 12th Avenue, but rather as his band. It's basically the same as always, just better shows, and since we are all basically session musicians now, it opens us up a bit more to collaborate with other artists, which is quite cool. Mark also signed to Universal Music, which is pretty awesome. We've been working hard on new material and will be heading into studio in a couple weeks time to record his new album, which Universal will be releasing.

The shows have been very well attended and it's great to see so many new faces in the crowd, as well as everyone else who has stuck with us through thick and thin. It's been good to travel more than usual lately too, even though I miss home during tour.

There it is, the last few months in a nutshell. It doesn't sound all that exciting the way that I'm writing it, but it has been quite a roller coaster of a time. When I have a bit more time and energy to put into my blog, I'll maybe go into more detail. Maybe not, though. Just because I have a blog doesn't mean that I have to share absolutely everything that goes on in my life. That's what Facebook is for, right?

If you're in Cape Town this Friday, 27 January 2012, get down to Mercury Live in De Villiers Street. We'll be performing there and it should be a blast. Get your tickets at Webtickets.co.za

Adios!

Pre-production update

For the past couple of weeks, we've been locked up in our home studio working on pre-production for our new album. In between regular rehearsals for shows, we've been writing new material and making the roughest of rough recordings on our cellphones. After racking up a fair amount of ideas, we're now refining the ideas and formulating and recording some actual songs using actual recording equipment as the first phase of pre-production. I decided to get all artistic and take photos of the studio setup, but upon taking out the camera the other night, I realised that I had left the batteries charging at home.

Enter the infamous cellphone camera... (Please, no comments on the poor focus of some of these photos. I did the best with what I had!)

I discovered the other day that my phone's camera has a macro function. I also discovered how cool my snare drum mic looks when photographed with the macro function! :)

At least 1/4 of each session is spent deciphering horribly distorted recordings taken from Mark's iPhone. Here's a photo of the rest of the guys deep in discussion as to what chords they were playing on the rough recording.

 Typical studio photo. I couldn't resist...

My corner of fun. Complete with bongo drums and a tambourine! 

Three essential components to any studio setup - Working batteries for anything that requires batteries, spare cables for when you trip over the current ones and break them along with your legs, and masking tape for temporarily fixing broken equipment until you can find duct tape to permanently fix it.

If you could read waveforms, you'd know how much this song rocks... :p

About 1/3 of my drum kit. I like drums. Can you tell?

We still have a few more ideas to run through and record before we enter stage 2, which is reviewing the tracks again and actually constructing songs that don't involve us singing "nah, nah, blah, blah, doo bee doo" because we don't have any lyrics yet.

Hopefully my next update will include a few sound clips of what we've done so far. For now, adios amigos!