The video below is a track taken from our new album released shortly.

As with our first album 'First' it was recorded, mixed and mastered using an ipad4.

How we create our album is by firstly tracking using Garageband. The advantage to us in using a fairly basic recording App is that we don't get lost in the detail. There are many more sophisticated DAW's out there and I have tried them but find that I get distracted by the amount of variables and my attention to the music is sidetracked. With Garageband we basically record it all flat with a little limiting and compression from our Joe Meek Compressor/Exciter. Again the Joe Meek is very basic and simple to use. We record 16 tracks of say backing, drums, bass, guitar, keys etc and then bounce those to stereo whilst keeping the original separate tracks. This way we create slaves for our vocals, strings (Rachel, my wife plays Cello) and any other overdubs that we want to multi layer.

 Cubasis for iPad

We usually end up with 20 to 30 tracks which we then transfer to Cubasis which is basically Cubase for the iPad.Cubasis is fully automated and has reverbs, compression, delays many different FX. Basically its all we need to mix with and again its simple to use. We then send the mix for mastering to the Mastering App.

Mastering App for iPad

In the Mastering App the track can be eq'd, the stereo can be widened and much more but its here that we check that the volume and the apparent volume matches up to other music out there. What I do is download a track to the Mastering App that I think sounds great and then switch between our tracks and it to see how it compares. I'm also comparing it for loudness, size, eq etc against the other tracks on our album to make sure that it works as an album. Its at this stage that I will print a CD of the track or tracks and listen to them wherever I can. The car is always a good test.

I will be going through the process in a bit more detail soon.

Blue Note by The Purple Pudding Clause