Friday, May 26, 2006

Kitchen Utensil's demo songs

Alright, here are the promised songs that the band did so far. I'm afraid this is the most I can put up since the band didn't want me to put up the full songs. Anyway, here's a small(literally) insight of how we sound like and the kind of songs that we write.







Hope you'll enjoy them and there will be more in the future from the pots and pans of Kitchen Utensils! :)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good stuff! :) I like the acoustic guitar playing.. the only thing is they're all clips from the intros.. so I can't tell what the development and/or chorus sounds like.. ah, but you've perked my curiosity.. lookin' forward to listening to the complete material when the time comes. Btw, what instrument do you play in this band? (the microphone counts as an instrument as well ;P)

Anonymous said...

The timing for "God Who Never Sleeps" is somewhat proggish.. (esp. when the hi-hat speaks) :) I presume it loosely phrased on purpose?

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot for your time and comments :) I actually play the bass in the band and if you count the PC/mixer as an instrument, then I guess I played that too. *giggles*

Anyway, about "God Who Never Sleeps", the hi-hat is out of time by a tiny margin. Here's how it's supposed to sound like: Hi-hat on time while the acoustic guitar is slightly 'off'. It can be done nicely but on the day we recorded the song, we were just experimenting with new ways of recording our songs(so, this is actually our VERY first recording session as well as the VERY first stuff that I've ever recorded/mixed in my life).

With everyone in the band still stuck to other commitments like school, we've decided to leave it as it is and record the song all over again the next time we have time. Thanks again! :D

Anonymous said...

Ah, 'tis a pity the clips ended before the bass came in. I swear, it sounded like the full band was going to come in just after the clips ended (well, at least for two of them). ;)

What equipment/software did you use to record the songs? The quality is pretty good to my ears.

Anonymous said...

Haha... I didn't realise that the clips ended before the bass come in. Hahaha... Guess I'll have to remedy that some other time. ;)

I used Audacity to record everything. I could go on with all the nerdy details if you want me to :)

Anonymous said...

hahah...the bassist posting clips w/o the bass kicks..ouch..i can mail the full songs to you if you want sooT

Anonymous said...

Actually the ones that mich has isnt the final mix ;) So, technically, if you listen to that, you would get to listen to the final mix ones. Which means you would have one of the 'rare' copies of the song in the world and if we ever become a platinum selling band, you would earn millions selling it on Ebay!

That or it gets distributed around the net.

LOL.


:)

Anonymous said...

*laughs* Sounds good to me.. Ah, Audacity.. I use that for my horrendous random guitar (occasionally piano) noodlings as well. The only problem is I don't have any good equipment.. my mike is just the mike of a headset. :P What kinda mikes are you using? Shure SM57s? Or are the instruments directly inputed? How did you record the drums? Yeah.. nerdy details would be good, though I probably won't understand all of it.

Mich, I'm taking up your offer. Hit me with those rare demos!

Anonymous said...

*laughs* Sounds good to me.. Ah, Audacity.. I use that for my horrendous random guitar (occasionally piano) noodlings as well. The only problem is I don't have any good equipment.. my mike is just the mike of a headset. :P What kinda mikes are you using? Shure SM57s? Or are the instruments directly inputed? How did you record the drums? Yeah.. nerdy details would be good.. even if I might get lost halfway. :)

Mich, I'm taking up your offer. Hit me with those rare demos!

Anonymous said...

Alright, mate. Here are the nerdy details:

I will first talk about the microphones. Altogether we used 4 mics. 1 Shure SM58 and 3 other el cheapo generic mics. The SM58 would almost certainly be used for Vocals and the other 3 are used to mic the drums. To mic the vocals, we just plug the SM58 into the mixer and from there we EQ the singer's voice to something that everyone thinks is good/feels comfortable with. As for the 3 mics for the drums, here's what we did: We took one and stick into the bass drum, through the hole, and 2 more as over head mics, with the help of the mic stands of course. You mentioned something about the mic of a headset as well as Shure SM57s. Not to knock on other people's creation or works, but the mic of a head set is really poor compared to commercial mics like the SM57 or the SM58 for one reason: QUALITY. Plus, the mic of a headset is omnidirectional(which means they will pick up sounds from all direction) whereas the SM57/SM58 are unidirectional mics(which means they will only pick up sounds from the front, which is PERFECT to mic acoustic instruments for the piano). So, if you want to record your piano or guitar acoustically, get the SM57. It's really worth the investment. Plus, you can use the SM57 to mic ANYTHING. From the snare drum(which will sound ridiculously good, cause we just tried that but didnt manage to record it) to the vocals to the other acoustic instruments like a trumpet, oboe, ukelele, guitar, bongo, etc...

As for the other instruments, we connect them straight to the mixer. For e.g., the Electric Guitar/Acoustic Guitar will connect straight to the mixer. As for the bass, I first connect it from my bass to the bass amp that we have and from the Line Out of the amp, I connect it to the mixer. I did that because I did not have a D.I. Box for the bass then. Now that I have one, I will connect it straight to the mixer next time. But hey, it doesn't really matter, does it? :)

After everything's plugged in, I connect the mixer to the laptop(where Audacity is installed), using a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch cable through the Output of the mixer.

I hope that helps. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Very enlightening. Gives me some degree of hope for my future home-made notes/beats of randomness. *thinks* Ah, yes.. I'll be home for three weeks.. enough to go to the parsonage and use the mixer there to record some noise. :) Yeah, I do realise my headset mike is really sucky.. mm, will consider getting the SM57 when I have the extra cash. :) And yes, indeed the SM57 is the industry standard for miking the snare. Some have suggested using the SM58 as a budget bass drum mike. A possibility for poor indie musicians like us. ;P

Anonymous said...

To indie music!

Cheers!