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New Age Soldier / Blog

Things are heating up for spring...

2013 got off to a great start with the release of our new ep 'The Days Between'. We have been extremely happy with the response and are getting excited to make the rounds and play a bunch of shows to support it. Shows are lining up and we have already confirmed to play Kingston, Toronto (x2), Peterborough, and Belleville over the next few months. We are also really looking forward to the 2nd annual Centre Hastings Rocks which will be held in conjunction with Canada Day celebrations in my home town of Madoc. Plans are in place to add a handful more shows between now and the beginning of summer with Ottawa, Cornwall, Montreal, and Oshawa potentially on the schedule. Hopefully more news to come soon. See you out there on the road. Can't wait to share some new music with you! Aaron

New Album - Studio Day 1

Well we're off on another recording adventure and really excited about getting started on recording. I have been writing a lot over the past several months and can't wait to hear the songs come into being. As I said with the album announcement, I will be blogging throughout the recording process as an insight into how an indie band records and produces a full length album. The fact is that there are many ways to go about recording and releasing and this blog will represent my own take on how it can be done and the method we are following. Day 1 - April 22, 2012 Really happy to be working again with Terry Benn at Sonic Pit Studio in Napanee. I was very happy with Terry's engineering and production work on the first go around and feel that with our comfortability and understanding of each other this project will only improve on previous recordings. Step 1 for how I like to do things is the laying of scratch and click tracks for the songs. These are basic tracks where I make decisions on how the song will be arranged in terms of song structure (verses, choruses, solo's, etc.). It is also when we lay a "click track" using a metronome, which will become the basis for recording over. This track is important for many reasons, but primarily to keep the timing of the song constant and also to provide a framework in which our drummer (Brad "Stumpy" Thompson) will play over to keep the drums and structure in perfect time. The guitars and vocals you hear are only to make sure the drummer knows where he is in the songs and the feel for how transitions will take place from verses to choruses to solos etc. These guitar and vocal tracks are generally all done in one take and often contain mistakes and pitch problems in the vocals but this really doesn't matter as they will be scrapped once the song gets farther along. Many of the lyrics are also still in the writing stage and will often change between these tracks and the final recordings. On this particular day I was able to lay these tracks for 8 songs and am excited to get them in the hands of Stumpy and Kris so that they can start working on creating their respective parts. As part of this process we will follow the song "My Way Home" from start to finish. Please look for the Studio Day 1 version of it in our song list and give it a listen. It should be very interesting to hear how it transforms during the recording process. Will update you again soon after day 2!

New Album Announcement!

Hi Everyone. It is with great pleasure to let you know that plans for the 2nd album are now fully underway. At around 1pm today I started on 'scratch tracks' for 8 new songs and thus have begun the recording process for album #2. There is no specific timeline as of yet but am hoping that the finished product will be ready for either late winter or spring of next year. We may even release a few songs early to keep everyone excited! As part of this process I have decided to start blogging to keep everyone up to date and engaged in the recording process. I know that for most of you the recording process is very foreign but I hope there is some interest in how it all works. I've decided that I will guide you through each step of the process with updates from each studio day and to help everyone understand this, I will be featuring one song throughout and you will be able to follow it from the very beginning stages right through to completion. I hope it is an interesting and enlightening experience for all of you. Please wish us luck as we voyage into the unknown that is record making. Its a process that I really enjoy and hope that you will too! Aaron New Age Soldier April 22, 2012