We’re upping our game! To prepare for our upcoming tour to PTA which includes Cafe Arc’ and ABSA Arena with Blind Guardian, we’ve been practicing with click tracks and backing samples from our EP. Pictured is Scott behind our newest best friend, an electric drum kit that will preserve our hearing for a few more years:)

So on the way to our last full band practice yesterday the mileage hit 77777. Call us superstitious but we feel it’s good luck for the recording.

During the practice we pretty much fine tuned the last of the EP. With one or two more vocal sessions on hand we’re more ready than ever.

ps. It’s Heiny’s (Brent) birthday today, so drop him a message on his myspace.

ps. ps. It’s April fools tomorrow so slay alert;)

We talked about it in a couple previous posts and here it finally is. To get everything as tight as a Jewish budget we input all our songs and all their layers into Guitar Pro. This along with a click to the right tempo is an ideal way to go into recording reducing all doubts of riffs and timing.

The clip is pretty blurry as YouTube reduces the quality somewhat, and there is a limited window size we could record the screen with, but you can get the idea as how the midi sound is for Bryan’s guitar track. This is only a snippet as we have tracks with dozens of layers including drums, bass, keyboard and several vocal harmony layers.

After the EP is released we’ll put the Guitar Pro files up for download for you guys to jam with.

So this morning we got Kamil in for a couple hours and Bryan and Scott went over the songs for the EP with him. They were amazed at how fast he could pick up the riffs after so little tries.

He just confirmed that he’s coming up to JHB with us to record and play both shows. Whooaah!

Later on tonight, while everyone in Cape Town was getting liquored, Rob, Bryan, Scott and Brent sat in a little dark corner like a bunch of responsible homo’s and finalized the click-tracking for the EP.

If you are in a band and not using a click track seriously consider it, as your tightness as a band increases ten fold.

So this week we got Devon from Doppler in to practice with us on keys for Ramfest. His keyboard is way better than ours and he’s got some sweet effects too.

We gonna hit 3 practices at Mercury practice rooms as our PA blew the other day. We’ll be playing 3 songs off the new EP so we’re taking a risk as it’s never good to play songs people don’t know for the live show.

Expect a full 45 minute set and some free beer!

See you there..