Tuesday 22 September 2009

The End is in Sight!!!


EP News

Well...

It's with more than a little bit of excitement that we can tell you, we've completely finished mixing Barriers. It's all ship-shape and ready to be sent to mastering.

Today I listened to the final pre-mastered tracks in running order with all the links and bits and bobs. It was a really funny feeling, listening to them all one after another in the correct order, obviously without having to load a Pro Tools session in between. It felt a little bit like hearing the product of not far off a year's worth of really hard work, squashed down into one 40-minute sitting.

I guess this is just what it feels like to finish making a record... I'm really pleased that I'm finally able so say that sentence. We've finished making our new record!!!

I'm sure the other guys will come on and give their input in due course, but it's a pretty special time for us, after working out backsides off trying to make a record we can be proud of by our own fair hands, from the ground up. It feels really really great to know it's all our own work too.

Other Info

On a side note, we played a really fun show in the Bathgate Music Festival last thursday with the mighty Jackie Treehorn. It was nice to be back playing live after a short brake to finish the EP. We had a really great time, so thanks to everyone who came out to watch us play - as ever your support really makes it for us.

Cheers to all who signed up for the mailing list and bought a t-shirt. We've only got 4 of the original A Torn Mind logo batch left (in Medium), so be sure to let us know if you want one of them. New merch will be on it's way soon, including girls skinny t-shirts in a colour and a second colour for the gents shirts. Similarly we hope to have the Online Merch Store up and running properly very shortly also.

We're currently putting together some ongoing content for our mailing list subscribers, so we really do advocate that you stick your name down to avoid missing out on the first looks and listens to the 2nd Preview Video and a lenthier Audio Sample Clip of the record, as well as a bunch of other cool exclusive things we plan to do. More on that as soon it's all ready.

Be sure to check us out on the following also:
We'll keep you posted!


Euan


Friday 4 September 2009

Mailing List

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A Torn Mind

Our new stickers arrived in the post today!

Thoroughly chuffed with them! Next up is the new batch of shirts with some different colours and stuff. We'll also be getting in some girls skinny style shirts too, which will be cool.


"Barriers" is nearly finished. Chris and Grant informed Ryan and I that they've pretty much 100% finished 2 of 5 tracks now. We've been having a bit of a chat about the mastering and such and there's a few pretty exciting ideas buzzing about.

I'll be back in with Grant tomorrow to do a big shift on the remaining tunes - I'll post another blog with the outcome of that.


That's all for now!


Euan

www.atornmind.com
www.myspace.com/atornmindband

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Mixing Update



This post is going to be a bit of a techy one... bit of chat about the EP and the mixing process.

We've still been hard at work on the mix this week. Monday evening consisted of a tough session on the very last track on the EP - "Vita".

Just to break it down a little for anyone who may read this and doesn't know a thing about the track etc...

"Vita" is a fairly lengthy track at just shy of 10 minutes, and its got a lot of stuff going on. There are quite a lot of different audio tracks involved and the song covers quite a lot of different sounds, styles, tempos and speeds. We've always considered her our "Epic"!

So, as expected this track in particular has been pretty challenging to wrestle with. She's definitely kept us on our toes.

We've had to do quite a lot of playing about with the guitar levels and such to get everything sitting nicely - particularly in the choruses. Grant and I agreed that the choruses in this tune are probably one of the thickest points, in terms of guitar, on the CD so keeping it from being a chun-fest was very important to us.

I won't say too much about the content of the track, but I will say there's some nice surprises for people in there. Particularly those who already know it and have a version in their head. Definitely some things to keep your ears pricked up for. That's all I'm saying.

After all that, Vita's really not very far off completion at all...


We also took the time to check back over everything else quickly at the end of the night. Our worry was that having spent the last 3-odd sessions working purely on Vita, we might be somewhat unhappy with everything else, however, I'm glad to say that wasn't the case.

This week we'll have a little bit of tightening up to do in terms of levels and things. A few very minor changes that we both agreed upon when listening through everything else.

Then we'll have to sit back and take stock of the whole affair and see just where we stand.

We might just be nearly finished... you never know!


More bits and bobs soon. I've still got a few pictures to throw on the net and Chrissy's back from his holiday he'll be getting onto the 2nd teaser video to make you all salivate a little bit. We've yet to bang our heads together to decide exactly what we want to give you... and what we want to keep until it's released... ;)

It's been really really tough work self-producing, recording, engineering and mixing our first CD. It's a pretty long-playing EP that's looking like it will clock in at roughly forty minutes in length. So there's plenty for you to listen to when it finally hits your ears!!!


Euan // A Torn Mind


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