We need your votes.  Click on this link: http://www.seat-world.com/#/coverflow_audio/music_52_freetracks then scroll using arrows on the left or right side of the page and when you get to Fear Zero hit “Stem” to vote for us.

Contest runs from Nov. 10 to Dec. 8.

Votes can be cast once per day, most votes wins.

Thanks everybody!

Now Fear Zero needs your votes one more time.

Between 8pm and 9pm Pacific time on Wednesday, June 3, they will play our song “Breathe Again” on CFOX and you can vote for Fear Zero (only during that time) by phone at 604-280-CFOX (2369) and by Text Message to 843369 (THEFOX). (A 25 cent charge will apply as usual to all text message votes).

Not in Vancouver? Go to http://www.cfox.com/ and click LISTEN LIVE!

Thanks so much for the support!

Thanks all!

After many all nighters and thousands of dollars, I am happy to say that “Whole Damn Nation” is nearly finished.  Right now we are in the mastering stage where all the levels and equalization get evened out.

The last recording session was an all night one, just me and my guitar in a studio somewhere in North Surrey from 10pm to 7am.  It was an awful night and here is why:

#1  To start the evening off, as I was about to get out of my car to load my equipment, a cyclist ran right into my door as I opened it.  It was 9pm at night, very dark, and the guy was wearing no reflective gear.  I checked my mirror as I always do before I open my door and all I saw was a couple of headlights from a truck, no cyclist.  The guy lived and scraped himself up off the ground after taking off a part of my car door in the collision and rode off with barely a word.  Great start to the evening.

#2 Once I got to the studio, I quickly realized that a lot of the wiring was not what I needed it to be.  Cables out of phase, snake inputs dead, various things meant to snafu the proceedings.  I eventually got to actually playing music at nearly 2am, right when my brain was screaming, “Sleeeeeeeeeeep!”

#3  I had been in editing mode for so long without getting to practice, my hands were not ready to record the demanding piece of music that evening.  I got it done in about triple the time it should have taken for that reason.

#4  There were no second chances, hundreds of dollars were on the line so I HAD to finish or else.

#5  Rush hour traffic at 7:00am sucks from Surrey to North Vancouver.

#6  All the coffee I ingested (thanks John) prevented me from getting any sleep so I went to work as is, staying up for nearly 40 hours.  It was definitely a first time experience that I hope not to repeat.

Anyway, all whining aside, I am really looking forward to getting back out to play some shows for y’all and I hope you take a few minutes to check it out when it comes out.

Thanks for reading and hopefully I can get back in the pocket on this blog stuff.

Till next week!

We’ve recently received some other awesome statistics about the tune that we thought would be neat to share with our fans; without you, we wouldn’t have anything to brag about.

Rank Active contest: #58 of 1,611 in Rock
All-time: #300 of 15,860 in Rock
Best #58 of 2,151 on 28Sep2008

Track of the Day on 7Feb2008 in Rock

• #5 Best Production in Rock, all-time
• #24 Rocking Track overall, all-time
• #2 Rocking Track in Rock, all-time
• Best Male Vocals in Rock, week of 21Jul2008
• Best Male Vocals in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Best Guitars in Rock, week of 28May2007
• Best Guitars in Rock, week of 30Jun2008
• Best Drums in Rock, week of 30Jun2008
• Best Drums in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Best Production in Rock, week of 30Jun2008
• Best Production in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Best Melody in Rock, week of 28May2007
• Best Melody in Rock, week of 21Jul2008
• Best Melody in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Best Beat in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Best Mood in Rock, week of 30Jun2008
• Most Original in Rock, week of 28May2007
• Rocking Track in Rock, week of 24Dec2007
• Rocking Track in Rock, week of 25Aug2008
• Rocking Track in Rock, week of 22Sep2008

The first Fear Zero CD I made on money I had saved up teaching music for 4 years.  Throw in a credit line with a lot of favors and some lucky breaks as well as studio time late at night and voila, you have the first Fear Zero CD!

That CD cost around $17,000 to record, including paying session players, studio time, and mixing engineer fees.  That does not include the cost of me having to drive to the nether regions of Vancouver every few days to get to work on it for a year.  Pressing the CDs and artwork cost another $2,500  so it was basically $20,000 all told and that was cheap!

Of course, no band recoups on their first CD (unless your band is named Boston) so when it came time to do the 2nd CD “Concentrated”, I was broke basically and I managed to get an EP done for about $5,000 plus with CDs and artwork printed, close to $7,000.   I recorded and engineered and edited all of that one at my little dirtbag studio here in North Vancouver and while I am proud of it,  there are some things that would have made that one better if I had the budget to do so.  That being said, it still stands up against any independent CD out there.

Some bands spend nothing on recording and basically use their recordings to get live gigs.  It really depends on the type of music you are doing.  I read somewhere that a local independent band from Vancouver signed to a smallish label in the US made their last CD for under $10,000.  That is great if you are writing oddball music that is not geared toward the mainstream but for Fear Zero, we are going for a big, produced sound that can get us on the radio and that costs a lot of money these days,  if you want to do it right that is.

 Getting down to brass tax, here are some numbers I crunched:

Drum tracks recorded at pro studio and edited and layered with samples $2885
Guitar and vocals 4 days at a friends local studio $1000 
Pay for engineer for 4 days $800
Editing tracks $320
Mixing 4 tunes in the box (meaning on a computer as opposed to in a studio) $4000
Mastering $600

Total $9605 for 4 damn tunes!  And that is the cheap version!

Here is the expensive version:

Drum tracks recorded at pro studio and edited and layered with samples $2885
Guitar and vocals 4 days at a friends local studio $1000 
Pay for engineer for 4 days $800
Editing tracks $320
Studio mixing time in “A” room at local studio for 3 days $1,950
GST 5% on studio mixing time $97.50
Mix engineering fees for 4 songs $3,000
Mastering $600

Total $14,652.50.   Whew, 4 tunes is damn expensive these days!

 So there you go,  hopefully this shows you how much it really costs to record something of quality, sound-wise.

Try to remember this before you download an artists song for free, especially an independent artist’s song!