All posts by glibersat

Lymbago, Day 2

This one will be short since we’re really short on time to stick to the planning and I can’t find a single minute to write the daily reports. But, anyway, if we speed up a bit, we’re still on time !

cymbals

So, Tuesday, we started recording the missing double-kick parts to reinject them in Ttta & Salami. The trick worked well. Then, followed Nouvo recording. Mehdi helped Bertrand by supporting him with an acoustic guitar.

At this moment, we therefore had 5,5 tracks recorded (see picture)

While finishing the drums, Louis, Diego & Mehdi decided to wrap up Celltool, which lacked some riffs. They went out and rehearsed.

rehearse_out

Thanks to David, we could make a break and enjoy a good BBQ, just awesome :D
Louis also greated us with a nice pan flute concerto ! That was such a success, we decided to replace all the guitars by it. Yes, I’m serious.

The afternoon was dedicated to complete once for all the drums. HJ was the next target, and not an easy one. The support tracks couldn’t even be used since the software they use (Guitar Pro) didn’t managed to handle the rhythm switches, resulting in glitches in the audio file. We therefore recorded it live with Mehdi on the guitars as backtrack for Bertrand. Diego also rehearsed since this song is hell for him !

record_state

The last one was Celltool. This one was a nightmare ; nothing more, nothing less. We felt the pressure getting a bit more on our nerves every minute that passed. The guitarists decided to change some structures and other (not-so) details in it, so Bertrand had to find new parts in live. It’s useless to say that Bertrand ended by looking at Mehdi a bit like an enraged dog would have :D

bertrand_finishedAnyway, this day was succesfully completed, with all the drums done and an exhausted, but happy drummer !

Lymbago recording, Day One

Bertrand at the drums
Bertrand at the drums

Just back from this first day of studio. Well, I have to say, things seem to go pretty well for now :-)

8:00AM: the bell rings, Louis is here with the van, we load all the gear and we’re ready to go. Mehdi was kind enough to bring the breakfast –even if it was dated. 50 minutes later, we’re there, joining Diego, Bertrand & Tania.

They were here, waiting for us, like dogs ready to bite. Diego, using his ol’ litt’l Colt, blew the barrier’s padlock with style so we could break into the studio… piece of cake. TRUE STORY. Hum, I’m digressing.

The morning was in fact dedicated to install the amps, guitars and other stuff in the studio. The first step was to hook all the cables according to the cabling scheme and see how it goes. During this preparation step, I took an express course on the available hardware (such as this Tascam TM-D8000) and we could hear the first sound a few minutes later. Great !

As the good practices outline, I’ve decided to record all the drum tracks in a row. The reason is simple : placing and calibrating the microphones on a drumset is just as hard as hell. This is why we spent about 2-3 hours trying to get a decent sound from the drums. Hopefully, it was smoother than expected (no big phase problems, etc) and we could jump to the recording step faster. We were basically ready to rock, awesome !

We started recording Stomach since it’s pretty straightforward for Bertrand and we could focus on fixing the remaining details on the console side. After a few takes, all was wrapped. Then, followed Blub which ended to be easier than expected : legen, wait for it, dary !

While Bertrand and I were focusing on recording the drums, Louis, Diego & Mehdi were trying to write the incomplete songs and finish the last minute modifications. They grabbed three acoustic guitars, went outside to play and managed to sort that out. Almost (:D). In fact, some of the songs still need more work since they have undergone heavy changes during the last days. You’ll know who to thanks for that (hint: this guy is bearded, hehe).

Then we tried to record HJ, but it was merely a disaster due to the lack of sound tablatures. We gave up after a few tries and decided to postpone it to the following day. Therefore, this was Salami‘s turn. The recording went smooth, even if Bertrand had some difficulties with the fast double-kick parts. Even if it was not perfect (still, quite good), we ended this day by recording Ttta. Not an easy one, and trust me, it was quite a tiring day for Bertrand, which started to feel the fatigue in his legs and arms. After a few unsuccessful takes, we decided to record it without the blasts (and record them later on). This way, we could have a safe base and complete it the next day. That revealed to be very successful !

So, to sum up, we now have a calibrated system to record all the drums and the already recorded songs are : Stomach, Blub, Salami* & Ttta* — (* = kicks missing).

Let’s see how it goes tomorrow but, as I said earlier, we’re on tracks I think. For now, it’s time to go to bed since we’re leaving at 7:30AM !

PS: I’ll update this post tomorrow with photos from Louis.

CS-SoC’09 ends too !

Yeah, CS-SoC… It’s like Google Summer of Code, but internal to the CrystalSpace community, hehe.

Jorrit (CrystalSpace project leader) proposed to sueastside (Jelle) to get a particular slot so that he can work on DAMN and its web interface during this summer and be paid also. Read Jelle’s blog for more informations.

The goal of this SoC was to build a Web interface on top of DAMN, to enable artists to work easily with the new tool chain we’re building at Kyanite. Jelle also added support for the Open Asset Import Library (Assimp) to DAMN, which is a very good thing. It provides us support for many new formats such as 3dsMax, Autocad, Maya, Quake, etc, etc (see here). He also made many other contributions, that you can read there.

We hope to use all his work soon to enpower the new tools even more ! :D

Thank you sueastside !

GSoC’09 mentoring ends

The CrystalSpace GSoC’09 is now almost over, students have to put their pencils down.

Sam Devlin, my student from the York institute, working on the Quest refactoring and Behaviour Tree implementation (Artificial Intelligence) for the Crystal Entity Layer, managed to successfully complete this challenge ! :-) Thank you Sam for your serious and involvement into this project. I couldn’t expect a better SoC ! You can read his proposal to understand the objectives better.

He managed to complete most of the objectives and we have worked on preparing a future integration of the BT into editors such as CrystalArchitect. Sam is going to be a Phd Student next year, but told us he will continue to contribute to the project, which is an awesome news for the CrystalSpace community !

CrystalSpace should therefore have soon a better Quest System and a sound implementation of the Behaviour Trees. Of course, it’s not totally complete, so volunteers are welcomed to finish it.

Thanks for your work, we’ll merge it to the main branch as soon as possible… and good luck for your PhD !!

Bike trip 2009

Sunday, we’re flying to Pragues (Praha) with our bikes (yes…:D) for a one-week trip. The goal is to travel from Czech Republic to Slovakia, by going through Austria.

Biggest part of the trip
Biggest part of the trip

This is the first time I’m going to see the “east” countries, which is very intriguing for me. We are 7 to go and our roadmap is there.

We have our packages and tents ready, so we’re ready to rock ride !

Kyanite lille meeting #1

Pablo (caedes) came to Lille for one week so that we could see each others and code on CrystalArchitect, CAF, DAMN & Metamodel :-)

He visited the lab where I work and discovered what I do with the these python packages we wrote — on the profesionnal side. He could also see some works around the Fractal component model and we had some interesting discussions.

We also visited the 3d team of the lab so that he could see what they do (multitouch applications, virtual reality, …) there.

Of course, we also had  fun, drinking some good beers and eating many dishes with mayonnaise =P. I also discovered the spanish omelette, which was great !

The result of dicussions and work is there : Lille dev meeting.

We also saw a prototype of what Sueastside (Jelle) is doing for the CrystalSpace SoC and it was very cool ! The status of his work is there : DAMN SoC’09.

Next meeting should be Amsterdam :D

Lymbago studio recording

In wholesale mlb jerseys two cheap jerseys weeks, cheap jerseys Lymbago, Why a Crate french rock-metal atmospheric/alternative/progressive (hum…) band from Lille (France) is going to produce its first record ! I’ll be their sound engineer and producer, which is an exciting, yet challenging, opportunity to enter the world of music production.

They have decided to release their music in the spirit of free art, which is a clever approach considering the evolution of the music industry. I therefore appreciate this and support them as much as I can.

This is why I ordered a professional sound card, an ART TubeFire 8, which has 8 inputs with 8 class-A tube preamps ! It works pretty well with Jack and FFADO (thanks Eugene for helping me in this choice), while you must have a good firewire interface (forget Ricoh one). The goal is to use only free software to produce this record, which is totally possible considering the awesome tools available (such as Ardour, Jamin, etc).

We have booked a studio, the Cabanamusic, for one week (last one of August) — thanks David. Here are some pictures :

It will be a one-week-sprint, very intense but I think also really amazing. I hope to produce a good record for this awesome band that really deserves it ! :D

By the way, if you want to support us, I’ve setup a web page to make a donation and/or pre-order the record !