Yay! I'm finally done recording all the songs. Just finished the vocals for the last track I was working on. All that's left is to master everything. I've got two days in which to do it, if I head out to Montreal on Wednesday, which is becoming increasingly unlikely. I have a 'group' meeting follow by an 'initiation' for my University department on Thursday, but I really don't feel like going. I really want to finish this record thing. Everything is sounding kinda ok right now, but I want to make sure everything's 100% polished before I put it out there. I do have to come back to Edmundston before the end of September though, so I might postpone the launch a little bit to make sure everything's done.

All in all I'm really tired right now. Feeling totally drained. I've been working on this thing all summer and I'm really sick of all the songs. I guess that comes with the territory. Anyway, no one reads this, so blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah. Blah blah.

The songs are a mixed bag but you can definitely hear alot of influences in there. There's some Sonic Youth in there, definitely some Lou Reed/VU, a little bit of Zeppelin, Beastie Boys, RATM, alot of oldschool punk. Yknow, it's hard to describe what my sound is. It's 21st Century Complex is what it is. It doesn't really sound like anything I can think of, except really badly done indie. Really a mixed bag. I think the vocals have improved alot. I dunno. I enjoy singing and I realize I'm not really good at it, but I'm having fun doing it. I went more for energy and performance than for beauty. I hope the energy comes through. I'm really not good at mixing and I don't really have a good set up to do it (terrible room acoustics and setup).

Anyway, can't wait to get some serious feedback on this thing. I hope people will genuinely enjoy it, and not just say it's good to humour me. I mean, I don't want people to buy it just to support me yknow, I want them to listen to it and stuff. I definitely don't want people to buy something they won't listen to or enjoy. Although I do want to sell alot. Hopefully. Oh well.

Stay tuned for a release date and stuffs.

-Alex

Ok so I'll be starting work on the 10th song later today or this weekend. And then I'm done. I'm not going for twelve or for eleven or whatever, because I'm (almost) completely burnt out right now. The last song I'm doing is a remake of a song I botched earlier this summer, so there's nothing really creative about to happen here. Except I'm gonna record it better and make it good damnit.

Anyway, I want to polish everything to a massive shine before I go back to Montreal, and actually send the stuff to the distributor before I leave so it hits the stores in Octoberish.

That's all.

- Alex

I'm up to eight! Yay! It's a 'hard' eight, I'm not counting the one I need to redo. So it woulda been nine. Oh well, plenty of time left.

Anyway, I'm definitely gonna reach my goal, which was 10 songs. I'm probably gonna have time to do like twelve songs total. Like I said in an earlier post, I'm mastering stuff as I go along. Things are sounding pretty polished right now, although I think everything sounds a bit muddy for my taste. Like a little washed out. If I put more high end in there it sounds brittle. Everything sounds a tiny bit squashed too. I'll have to fix that. Otherwise everything sounds pretty much like I wanted it to sound.

The album art is pretty much done as well. Gonna use one of my uncle's paintings. I have to choose one and so on, but the one I have in mind is pretty snazzy. It's an abstract piece.

If everything goes as planned this thing - whatever it is - should be on iTunes and other stores around the end of September/mid-October.

Can't wait.

To get away from my music for a minute, this summer was pretty disappointing. Wasn't as fun, party-wise and drinkin'-wise as last summer was. I guess we're getting older. I'm getting older, at any rate. I've been hitting the light beer lately, and I've come to like it better than the regular kind. Maybe it's cos I lost a bunch of weight or something, but I can't seem to hold my liquor as well as I used to. Maybe it's the fact that I cut back on drinking dramatically. Anyway, there were only a couple of fun parties that I've been to this summer, and they were pretty tame compared to our old highjinks.

The Foire was really disappointing as well. 1755 didn't live up to my expectations at all. But then again, they're a party band I guess and they started playing at 9pm when it was still light out and nobody was drunk. Oh well. The band that played after them was so disappointing too. I didn't care for them at all. 

All in all it was a pretty bland summer. I didn't make out with any 40 year old women and I didn't get any action. Meh. I guess I can look forward to University now. I get the feeling that it's gonna be a pretty tame University session as well. Oh well, there's always New Year's party to look forward to. 

And the album launch party! 

That's all for now. 

 

- Alex 

Alrighty! I just finished the '7th' song. Kinda. There's a song I did earlier this summer that I'm gonna have to redo. I'm totally unhappy with it and I can't get it to sound right for some reason. I'll keep this one for last just in case I run out of time. Then I'll cut it from the album or try to salvage it as best I can. Oh well.

The new song is a slick little disco number. Yeah, disco. I'm running the gamut on this album: anything from noise alterna-grunge, post punk, country-influenced pieces, experimental feedback tracks and plain 'ol rock'n'roll.  Transitions are gonna be a pain to do. Oh well. The styles may shift from one track to another, but in my opinion this is just pure Rock. Not rock as in the genre, just good music to Rock Out to. Even if some of it is fucked up disco about dancing robots.  

Starting work on the '8th' song today or tomorrow. It's really the 7th if you discount the track I plan on redoing, but it's better for morale if I say 8th :D

On a brighter note, mastering is taking care of itself. Originally I was planning on mastering the tracks at the end of the summer in a big batch. What I find myself doing instead is mastering as I go along. After a track is done I slap some mastering touches on there and listen to it over and over on my monitors. Then my headphones. Then in my car. I do touch ups here and there. I plan on revisiting every song at the end of the recording session though, just to make it has that extra coat of polish on it. I do plan on selling this stuff, so yeah. I want to offer a good product.

Welp, that's all for now.

Stay tuned. I guess. 

- Alex 

Yay! I just finished the 6th song. Well sorta, I still have to record some lead guitar for the 2nd part, but everything else is done, except for mastering. I already said this song was hard for me to do and so on. To be honest, I think this is the best song I've ever written, but that might just be me being sentimental over it. Anyway. I think it's my best, but I doubt if you guys will like it. Oh well.

Starting song 7 tomorrow. Oh yeah. This one's gonna be awesome also, but in another way.

 

-Alex 

Hello! It's blog time again!

I've been working on the 6th song all day and it's all pretty much done, except for the last part, which I'll finish tomorrow. This song was really hard for me to do, because it's relatively more serious than the rest of the album. It's also a very personal song and anyway... I can't wait to be done with it and move on to the 'lighter' material.

On a brighter side, after today's recording session I wanted to try out the drum part I had programmed for the last song in another context seeing as my bass was plugged in. So I made a really quick song with bass, drums and keyboards and some (very) lame vocals. I called 'Oh Hey Jess', because I was talking to lain. I sent it to him after I was done. Pretty funny. I might do something with it eventually, but for now it's relegated to the 'This is how I get my kicks' archives.

That's all for now, I'm exhausted right, completely drained.

Stay tuned for the next blog post. Eventually :P

- Alex 

Howdy!

Just making another blog post in between recording sessions. I'm currently up to 5 songs. Actually, almost 5, I need to record the vocals for the latest one. It was gonna be a filler piece but somehow it turned out really really great. It sounds like a love orgy between old-school punk, Sonic Youth and the Allman Brothers. Yeah. It's pretty messed up. So far it's probably the most 'commercial' song, in as much as the lyrics aren't THAT depressing and the song is only like 2:40.

Anyhow, still on target, things are going pretty smoothly. My current goal is 10 songs and around 35-40 minutes of music and I'm halfway there already. I plan on finishing another song before the start of next week so I'd be up to 6. Current target is 8 songs before the beginning of August. Which shouldn't be too hard, seeing as all the songs I want to do are pretty much completely written and only need to be recorded. If I have time to spare before I need to go back to Montreal before school starts, I might bump the album up to 12 songs, if I have time to master everything.

As a side note, IDv3 tags won't let me put "Rock'nRoll, bitch" as a genre. :( 

Well, that's all.

Keep rockin'

-Alex 

Hell's yeah. Recording season is in full swing and I'm in 'studio' mode. I'd like to say things are going smoothly but that's not really the case. I lost a whole day's worth of work on Saturday because of some weird bug with Session Drummer 2. The drums at the end of the song became unsynced with the music and there was no way to get it right again. I even tried mixing down the drums to a seperate audio file and inserting it into the project but no luck. I think all the tempo changes messed it up when I removed a pickup measure at the beginning of the song. No big deal though, I plowed my way through and I re-recorded all the parts on Sunday. Like 6 times. I just couldn't get the sound and feel of the work I had done on Saturday. It seems I just can't get the guitar tone I want out of my solid-state Fender amp. Oh well.  The 3rd song is almost done now, just need to record one last guitar and that'll be that. This song is a biggun if I do say so myself and I can't wait to share it with people. I put a roughly mastered copy on my iPod and drove around for like 2 hours listening to it. It's pretty hypnotic, in a good way. I think I gave myself whiplash from rocking out too much to my own music. 

Now, you guys already know I'm trying to keep a close lid on the new material. I'm very reluctant to share 'demos' with my friends, as compared to last year when I sent every song to everyone as soon as I finished it. This year I'm gonna be waiting until all the songs are done to get some input. Even then I might just put up a few songs on thesixtyone and you guys can go buy the full album on iTunes or Amazon or whatever :P

I don't know if I'll have enough time to record everything I have written up to now. My work ethic has been pretty lax and I'm only doing one track per week. I'm gonna have to step it up if I want to get all 12 recorded and mastered before I head to Montreal again. But it's really pretty hard doing all the work myself. I mean, there's definitely periods of the day when I feel overwhelmed and disatisfied with my work. It's natural, I guess. I get the feeling that I'm gonna be emotionally drained again after the summer's over. I already think I'm going a bit crazy here, but it's all good. 

Anyway, that's it for now. I really hope you guys enjoy the next album when it's finished. I think you guys will be surprised.

Buy my records,

-Alex 

Hello again.

I know I haven't posted a blog entry in a while, mostly due to the fact that the blog software doesn't work with IE on Vista for some reason and that up 'til now I've been too lazy to install Firefox. But I digress.

Now, pretty much everyone who reads this blog already knows that I'm a musician and that like most musicians I suffer from the 'I oughta record this shit' syndrome. At any rate, it started hitting me last summer and I recorded a string of about 9 song 'demos'. The feedback I received for these tracks has been mostly positive, though listening to it again I'm sorta disappointed. Unfortunately, that's the artist's curse: every time you revisit your own work you feel dissatisfied and you'd like to redo it and 'make it good this time'. Luckily, I don't have the patience or the will to throw myself at my old material, so I'm moving on. Last year I had said in my blog posts that I would be making another album this summer, and here we are.

I've already completed two songs, and I have about nine or ten more in the works. The new material is pretty different from the stuff I did last year. It's markedly more rock'n'roll (or more 'pop', if you will). It's definitely more 'commercial' - as far as a bunch of recordings made by a guy in a basement can be commercial, anyway. The songs are, as weird as that might sound, simpler and more complex at the same time. The sound quality, I think, has grown alot. And I mean alot. I sucked it up and actually purchased a professional DAW. I'm glad to say that because of this new software the general quality of the recordings has increased dramatically. I also purchased a pair of studio monitors that should help with mixing and mastering, and I plan on getting a suite of mastering plug-ins. All in all I'm moving more towards the 'professional' side of recording music in a basement. 

Anyway, that's about it. I'll be posting here intermitently during the summer. Stay tuned.

- Alex 

 

p.s.: if haven't heard the old stuff, you can hear some it here:  http://www.thesixtyone.com/complex/ 

p.p.s.: the new material won't be going on that page until the album is done, i.e.: September-ish or later 

But seeing as I've a few requests (alright, two), here are the chords'n'lyrics for 'Quiet'. It's really the simplest song on the album in terms of structure and chords and so on.

First of all, the picking is really just two guitar tracks. One is doing open chords, the other is doing barre chords, which are harmonizing alternatively between 3rds and 5ths, don't ask me exactly where:

(doing all this from memory btw, so don't ask for specific picking patterns, accurate tabs etc. :P) 

Intro/Verses/Etc.

Guitar 1: Picking through most of the song, doing melody and so on. 

Am         C         G

|--5-------8-------3---
|--5-------8-------3---
|--5-------9-------4---
|--7------10-------5---
|--X-------X-------X---
|--X-------X-------X---

Guitar 2: Same chords, open positions. 

The rest of the Guitar 1 chords aren't barred but they're picked and/or strummed, I forget which. Anyway, it should sound ok with 2 guitars. 

Lyrics/Chords:

Am        C                          Am   G    Am (and so on)

How the moon shines on my very soul 

The tired miles stretch on beneath my feet

Across the fields, slowly the men fall

No silver thread to hang them on

What will dawn's sickly glow reveal?

Heaven's above stars' secrets to steal?

 

C              G         F

That's the road we choose to walk, etc. 

Fill:

Dm C G

Am         C      Am     G    Am (...)

Slow and sure, night gives way

Silver lines, show us day?

As the pyres and pawns keep burning

While the fates like jesters keep laughing

And in the light, still the men fall

Across the broken fields of dawn 

- Repeat ad nauseam -

Solo is just the same chord progressions, watch out for the changes, and that's it. I'm not gonna tab the solo, 'cos you know, that would take too long and my tabbing skills suck.

 

Stay tuned for more comments about the album, which I'll post eventually.

Deliciously yours,

-Alex 

p.s.: copyright 21st Century Complex etc. etc. Share my music - the mp3s - all you want kids. I'll be expecting royalties if this turns up on the radio (we all know it won't) :P