The Dominican Affair recorded for the first time ever on Saturday. What can I say – it was an experience! It was not a professional recording and therefore the sound quality is not perfect. Over all I think that it is a reasonable first attempt for us.

I really didn’t expect that it would be as hard as it was. It took us eight hours to record one song! Never mind the mixing the sound engineer had to do afterwards! We started with the guitar, then he put a computerised drum loop in along with it – which can still be heard sometimes in the finished version! Then the bass, then the vocals and then the drums. Christina was the only one to get it right on the first attempt. The guitar took ages. One thing that I don’t think the engineer understood was that the guitar in this song is supposed to be discrete and very low. Background music nearly. He actually put two guitar tracks over each other and put distortion on one of them which was a bit of an overkill I think.

The bass went smoothly aswell but it took a few attempts to get it right. I don’t think that the bass is loud enough in the finished version either. We like it very loud in this song! Then came my turn. Absolutely terrible. It was so damn hard. I was playing with a metronome and the rest of the band in my ear. But as soon as I started playing I couldn’t hear anything through my ear. And they kept telling me to hit the drums as hard as I would playing live but when I did that I could hear even less. Vicious circle really because I kept going out of time. Eventually I had to simplify the drums, take out some of the breaks and try my best to hear what was coming in my ear. In the end we got an ok recording, though the sound quality wasn’t that good. We didn’t have the best equipment…

I should also mention that this is a greatly shortened version of this song. The full version hits seven minutes. We recorded it minus one verse and a chorus. Then the engineer digitally removed a few bits including the guitar solo. That’s why you might hear a not perfect transition between the drum roll and the last chorus.

There are a few things that made it hard for me. The tempo of the song is slow in the verse and a bit quicker in the chorus, but the computerised metronome cannot change tempo so I had to re-learn the song with this standardised tempo! The other thing is that I am a drummer and as a drummer I don’t keep in time. I set the fucking time man! I was trying to stay in time with everyone else where as usually everyone else is staying in time with me. I can set the time and keep to it but I just found it really hard to follow everyone else! Also the drums drive the song. I am responsible for making the song exciting to the other musicians and to really hammer it in when it should be hammered in. But when we recorded we did not have each other there to guide and inspire.

Taking all that into consideration and not being too harsh since the people who recorded us did it for free I do not think that this is an example of The Dominican Affair experience. It’s too not us. It’s too steady and conformist and the same. There is no great display of talent here because we just werent all that inspired. There is no atmosphere. I hope that this does not mean that we are destined to be a “live band”. Anyway I know that this post has been all negative but I really do have to thank the people that helped us make this recording happen. It was a great learning experience and it lets us know that if you think your tight then your not tight enough, you must know that your tight! That’s enough moaning it’s time to let you decide for yourself what the song is like!

Download the single for free here.

Listen to the single on our Bebo page.

Let me know what you think of it now. I know I’m just being critical because I have played this thing a million times and this time I could not get it right!

I took part in the local pantomime again this year. This years panto was ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

It really has been taking a hell of a lot of time out of my life recently. For the last three weeks I have endured the drill of school, panto, school, panto… The only free time I got (like an hour a day) I spent on my CMS. This years songs weren’t all that great either. Among them are ‘When I Grow Up’, ‘When the Cat Crept In’ and ‘Rehab’ – which is actually my favourite song of them all to play! It goes downhill from there, the rest of them are either pop or country!

The show has been running for the last two weekends. One on Friday night, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. I have to admit despite what I have just said it is a good experience and it has benefited my musical capabilities. Mainly because of the jamming, not the show itself. Every year I say that I will not do it next year… but I always do! So I’m not going to bother saying it this time.

Anyway I have two shows left, one tonight and one tomorrow. Then I am finished and ready to concentrate on Furasta, which will be released in beta stage next weekend. Look forward to it!

I ran the Battle of the Bands in Monaghan last Wednesday. The reason that I ran this is because i wanted a chance to play in a competition… Therefore my band was taking part in the contest. This may seem ironic – that I am both running and taking part in the competition – but the only reason that I ran it was because nothing like that was really available in Monaghan.

Doors opened at 8pm, and the first act were 82 Frets, a Tydavnet and Sligo twopiece featuring the almighty Luke Treanor. Heh. 8 bands participated overall, with genres ranging from metal, to punk, to psychedelic funk. The Magik Guvnors Radio Bottle won the crowd vote, while my band The Pot Smokin’ Pirates came in second. The Magik Guvnors also won Best Original Song prize, joined with The Torture House Effect, as judged by Adam Brennan from Venue Promotions.

I was pretty satisfied by how things turned out, and I hope to host another Battle of the Bands next St. Patrick’s Day.

I am currently working on a project called MusicJam. When i say working i really mean waiting. You see I cannot get PEAR working on my VISTA laptop. I have decided therefore to install Fedora in a VirtualBox so that i can run all of my code off Fedora and bring it all together on Vista.

This would seem like a good enough idea, but because of my lack of internet access my attempts to download Fedora 9 have all been in vain. I have been downloading (if you could even call it that) Fedora on and off for the last week and a half at an average speed of 56 kbps ! Even now as I write I am in Mc Donalds stealing both their Wi-Fi and their electricity for the sole purpose of downloading Fedora.

When i get Fedora installed and PEAR working properly then i will begin to do construct the fondations of MusicJam. You can check out the brilliant site as it is at http://www.musicjam.eu.

So for the moment the project is all talk no action. But I am looking forward to starting! The whole idea of MusicJam is to make a place for musicians to socialise and to organise jamming events. This will be achieved by creating various sub-domains – one for each area that asks for one! For example the first one will be available at http://monaghan.musicjam.eu. It seems like a good idea to me, but also a steep learning curve for a beginner programer like me.

I’ll keep you up to date with its progress.