A Working Day

Friday: Generally,my day off work as well as any Saturday and Monday but, today I certainly haven't put it to waste. This morning I got up at around half past nine and I was straight at my desk and loaded up Garageband. I didn't really have many plans for the day, originally I thought about getting my hair cut around mid day because my hair is longer than I'm comfortable with. I hate it when my hair irritates my eyes. I kept thinking about it but, decided it can either wait for tomorrow or maybe even Monday at this rate with the workload that I am creating for myself.

A screenshot from todays filming session.
Guitar: Washburn MG-74.

So, at the start of the day I got back to work with my pop punk song titled "I Don't Care". Very anarchy. I managed to write some more lyrics and record all of the vocals for the track in one morning session. I had to keep taking the drum track here and there but, its nearly finished now. It just needs a little more guitar work. I filmed myself singing when I recorded the vocals, this will be used in the music video for the song all being well. I'm thinking of making a black and white video for now but,  I managed to get some nice shots in with my guitar too. Plenty of selection!

A screenshot of "I Don't Care".

After about hours into the session, I decided to end it for a while and take a break on my PS4. I played The Legend of Kay 20th Anniversary for a while, pretty much until my mum got back from work. My pre order came from amazon today at the same time as when my mum got home, so I didn't have to go to the door. It was my copy of Simple Plan's new album, "Taking One For The Team". Of course, the first thing I did was finish up on my game, struggle to open the CD wrapping due to over excitement and then whack it into my suppressive to stick on my iTunes... then my iPod of course.

Later on, when my dad got home we all went shopping together. This was the perfect opportunity for my to listen to their new album to the full extent with simply no interruptions. When we were on our way back home, I had a thought that I could make a mashup of their new album. I wouldn't include all of the songs, just a select few and I wanted to challenge myself to see how far I could come tonight with it all. Simple Plan announce that they we're doing live responses on Twitter at 5pm EST so that would mean around 10pm in the UK where I am. We got back a little after 7pm and I wanted to see how far I could get in those three hours.

A screen shot of all the exported
drum tracks.

I started by selecting tracks that I wanted to include in the mashup and told myself that I would use all of them. After that, I imported them into Garageband with separate tracks to align them into an order that I would like to listen to them too and then I started shifting about the timing. All the tempos were different so it was important that the transition didn't sound wrong but, sounded natural. After I got the layout about right and I knew what needed to be done I started to create the first drum track. I had to do one for each song that I had chosen so I knew it wasn't going to be a quick job. The most difficult part of this was trying to figure out the correct tempo and match it completely to the song again and again. Some songs were much easier than others but, one in particular took me at least 45 minutes just because it had a slight swing to it. It took a while to get it as perfect as I needed it to be.

And here I am now. All I have finished tonight in regards to the Simple Plan Mashup are the many drum tracks which have now had to have been exported so that I can use them all together in Garageband without the metronome throwing a hissyfit because of all the tempo changes.