Another problem came about when I was thinking about the studio bill that would follow such an experiement of sounds. I mean in Malaysia recording an album is not cheap especially if you want to spend hours and hours just playing around with effects or lack of effects and see what would happen if you stuck a microphone down a toilet and flush it down while singing in D minor... not that I would actually do that but you get what I mean.
The solution came about when I was just standing in my room and just standing in front of my Behringer Mixer with it's mesh of wires going all over the place and my two microphones just sitting on top a my computer table. You see I've had purchased this exact mixer with a fantastic external sound card which allows me to hook up to my laptop with the intention of using it for my podcasts on my blog, Moenasrul.blogspot.com. But that idea faded quite quickly and I decided to make the best of a situation and use it for live recordings of my band jamming or record our live performances at gigs. I was practically the only vocalist who always brought around a huge bag of wires and what most people would call "gear". Guitarists and Bassists were notorious for lugging around huge cases of effect pedals and other funky devices but vocalists were free radicals so to speak. All they had to bring was themselves and at most a bottle of water. I guess you can say I was the odd one out. However it had it's advantages, I made friends alot easier than most vocalists with the sound guys. Mainly because I was usually the guy asking if I could share a multi-power plug point with their system or if they could help me hook up my mixer to their main board or if I could place the mics near their deck cause that happened to be the sweet spot and so on and so forth.
There I was just staring at this boxy apparatus with multi-colored buttons, I had decided to experiment in my room. That lasted only a few days. I mean there was only so much screaming that I could do in my room at 3AM in the morning before my house mate sends me an SMS saying "Dude... Too loud."
It was pretty obvious that my experiment with sound was going to be loud and I needed a place where the volume wouldn't be a problem. This actually took awhile.
So lets fast forward to a few days ago. I was discussing with Matt who is my Personal Assistant/Best Friend/"Substitute mother when I'm acting like a 5 year old"'s cousin who is the guitarist for a Metal Band called A Ruthless Cleansing about our individual solo projects. Matt wanted to do a solo album as well because just like me there was alot of material which he had that he couldn't play with the band because it had a different sound or style that just didn't mesh with the bands sound. During this extensive conversation that lasted close to 8 hours and involved alot of shuffling back and forth on his iTunes and discussing the different styles of mixing and mastering done by various bands from U2 to White Snake, to Meatloaf to Van Halen, we decided that we could use Cheryl's vacant guest room which was on the third floor of her place. After imitating a yoddling Ricola advert we found out that the room had good acoustics and was relatively sound proof due to the amount of stuff stored in the room and the thick curtains that lined the windows. We instantly asked Cheryl in the most adorable way inclusive of baby language, if we could use the room to which she agreed. As long as we cleaned up... to which we had no intention of doing right away but figured that we would settle it all someday in the distant future to fulfill our end of the bargain.
Two nights later, the room was filled with miles and miles of cable, Speakers, Amps, Effects pedals, Microphones and two guys jumping around belting out random riffs and tunes. I'd have to say it was a very productive night. We even had occasions where Cheryl and my other Personal Assistant/Friend Shiela come in and take photos and videos of us recording to which I would never post online. If your curious why, well... lets just say the air condition in the room wasn't all that powerful and at one point Matt and I had to strip down to our boxers to continue our experiments. That and my boxers happened to be pink... yes Pink, like the song by Aerosmith. Maybe one day when I have the courage, I may just post it up, but for now it will forever remain in a memory card buried deep into the earth in some random vacant graveyard where it will never see the light of day.
 If you want to know all that goes on during Moe Nasrul's Solo project check out Moe's blog on Moe Nasrul.com |
| If you want to know what goes on behind the scenes during Moe Nasrul's Solo Project Check out the dedicated blog on Moenasrul.com |
