Waitin'

I don't have much to report at the moment, hence no post over the weekend.  I have 2 weeks off of work starting this weekend and so I'm simply mentally gearing up.  The agenda is mainly about mixing, still trying to wrap up the "Mirror Land" EP and really focusing on both the "Lost Weekend" remix and the Defrost Nixon mixes.

Peele has been working on the mix for "The Effects of Connection" and I'm currently waiting on his second draft.  The first was decent but there were a few issues.  As expected, he's mainly battling problems with the drums, and these are the same issues I've been battling with the Defrost Nixon album in general.  If nothing else, now I know it's not just me.

I'm really curious to see how far I can get with the "Lost Weekend" remix over the next couple of weeks.  I'm thinking (hoping?) that I can take it quite far, if not nearly to completion.  Is it possible?  I guess we'll see.  It'll be a good test to see how much the equipment investment has paid off and how much I've actually learned.

I've also started planning out what I want to get accomplished and released in 2023.  2022 ended up being a year of learning, more or less, so I'm hoping everything pays off in 2023 and that I do a bit of catch-up.  If all goes well, I'd like to see releases for the "Mirror Land" EP, "The Effects of Connection" b/w "Two Step", the "Lost Weekend" album, the Defrost Nixon album, the yet to be fully recorded "Yet I Tried for You" EP with MWP and Seth Tiven, and the new Jazz Machine album.  It's a little bit of every sound under the sun, really.  Sounds ambitious, huh?  I do agree but there is a decent chance that I can do this...with a little bit of luck, that is.  They're all mainly mixing projects only except for the latter two.  No matter what happens, it should be an interesting year.

Schtuff

I was able to work at a more leisurely pace this weekend on various tasks including mixes.  My work week last week was near hell; the previous week was just as awful, if not worse.  I've basically been near collapsing after my work days and it's quite incredible that I've found any energy at all to actually work on music related stuff in the evening.  A quiet weekend without major commitments and/or house chores is just what the doctor ordered.

I finally got around to looking at the CD text for "...Miss You Most...".  I actually went to the website and sent in a request to have the album info updated about 1-2 months ago (I lost count).  I just never got around to re-checking it.  Well, I did just now and it wasn't updated, which was pretty much what I figured.  I found an alternate way to upload the info directly from Windows Media Player and that's actually uploading as I type this.  Fingers crossed that this approach works.  It's really annoying to put in your own CD and see both your name spelled wrong and the album title cut off in the middle, and therefore meaning something slightly different.

Mixing was pretty interesting this weekend.  I did a ton of work and decided to start over on all three tracks for the "Mirror Land" EP.  It's unofficial right now if that was the correct approach but I'm remaining hopeful.  More on that later in the week, once I've evaluated the tracks.

I will say that "Two Step", my Throwing Muses cover song from long ago, is sounding fantastic, in my opinion.  That's great because I know I thought it sounded like pure cr*p for many mixes, and then I decided to do a bit of re-recording, including the guitars and main vocal (I did it probably about a year and a half ago), and it seems like it was the right approach.  If all of my mixes sounded this good, well, I'd be in business.  It kind of suggests to me that I wasn't compiling my songs well in the past and that very well could be part of the issue with the "Mirror Land" EP.

I also believe that "The Effects of Connection" is ready to be sent to Peele for mixing since I finally got around to working on that a bit.  I'm highly curious to see how that goes.

If nothing else, I should have at least 2 tracks ready to go by year's end.  I have more time off coming up so I'm hoping to hit both the Defrost Nixon mixes as well as return to the "Lost Weekend" remix.  It's also on my agenda to start putting together "Sorry, I Forgot to Mention This", the new Jazz Machine album.  Lots of fun stuff afoot.

Excited

I just spent an evening doing some light recording and some light "test" mixing, and I must say that I'm rather excited.  The recording went really well and was super easy.  I simply needed to add two short solo-ish pieces to two different tracks, both of which I'm trying to wrap up in the next 30 days or so.  I was shocked to see how much better I'm playing these days.  I mean, I think I've finally, after all these friggin' years, reached that point (or have begun to reach that point) where I can play pretty much whatever I want.  Now, I'm not trying to suggest that I'm some master guitar player, mind you, but I never set out to be that.  I can, however, pretty much pick up a guitar, plug in, and simply play a solo without really even thinking about it, and if you were on my shoulder throughout the last 30 years or so, you'd understand why this is so exciting.

I remember watching a Pink Floyd documentary where there was footage of them making "Dark Side of the Moon", and David Gilmour is basically sitting with a guitar in hand playing different pieces off the top of his head over the music I think for "Time".  I completely marveled at this back when I saw it, perhaps about 25 years ago.  How the hell does he do that, I wondered?  Well, I think I can finally do that.  Wow.

I actually feel rather "legit".  It's a shame it took almost my entire life to get here but better late than never.  Of course, I still have a billion miles to go ahead of me if I want to continue down this road but, at least for now, I'm pretty tickled at where I'm at.

After finishing up the recording session, which went so well that there were only 4 passes at each part and literally no editing (another shocker), and I think the whole thing took only about 25 minutes, I then decided to play around with some mixes of old cover tunes that I've recorded over the years.  Most of these have never sounded good.  I mean, no matter what I've done with them, no matter what machine I've mixed them on, they always sound rather awful to me.  Ah...but I've recently stepped up my mixing game a bit, found a few new plug-in's that I really love, a couple new tricks, and of course the best thing I've got in my back pocket...my new monitors and headphones.

Now, when I go to purchase something, especially something that's a bit on the pricey side, I tend to think in terms of what I currently own and then ask, "...are these 3 times better than the <enter name of current gear here> since they cost 3 times more?"  Well, my Focals do cost 3x the amount of my old JBL's.  Do they sound 3x better?  Absolutely.  I mean, there's no contest here at all.  Had I known how much better these were, I would have bought them years ago.

So, here was the challenge...  With all these new tricks and such, can you take a track that you haven't even listened to in years and make it sound good and listenable in one session?  The answer = yes!  I did about 5 songs and every single one of them came out positively...again, in one session!  I mean, I can't begin to tell you how exciting this is.  It's literally a game changer.

Also, I recently found the "Dreamy" verb hidden in the UA 480L reverb plugin and I've been experimenting with it heavily.  It's also a real game changer.  I used it in every mix tonight and it's just so perfect for my sound.  I'm super excited to revisit the "Lost Weekend" mixes over Christmas break for I think it's going to be very positive.  I also firmly believe that I can turn mixes around at least 5x faster now than even 6 months ago, possibly even faster than that.  I mean, I can get a mix sounding good in one session?  It used to take me about 30 on the D8b; my mixes from the last "Jazz Machine" album took me about 10.  I can get this down to 1 maybe?  Holy sh*t.

I kind of figured that I just needed to let the dust settle a bit after finally deciding on stereo speakers and getting these new monitors.  I have been purposedly avoiding any heavy mixing because I wanted to adjust in a calm manner but I think I'm ready to roll.  The dust has settled, now let's get this stuff done.

I'm also super excited about starting work on the new Jazz Machine album.  I think it's going to be awesome.  I think both my playing AND mixing should be way better this time around.  How cool would that be?  Wow.

Recording Week Wrap Up

Recording Day 5 went pretty smoothly with laying down the last of the tracks that I had on my agenda.  All in all, the "Beautiful Silence" tracks are sounding really good so far but of course this is only the very beginning.

I took both Thanksgiving and Friday off, more or less to just laze about the house and catch up on a few other odds and ends.   After riding my bike post the recent tune-up, I also caught up with a couple of old friends via Zoom that I hadn't talked to in awhile which was very pleasant.  I also did the usual late night video game playing with my sister which usually ends up with a slew of swear words here and there due to whomever we end up playing with at random.  Modern games are interesting and quite amazing at times but I still sort of long for the olden days of PS1 or before, if I'm completely honest. 

The weekend was mainly about ticking a few boxes on my long outstanding task list of songs.  The biggest agenda item was doing some additional recording on "The Effects of Connection", a one-off track that was originally a Defrost Nixon song that'll hopefully be mixed and released fairly soon.  It's a true B side but it's actually perfect for sending to Peele to work on, to see what he can do with it, and so on.  I also finally got the radio edit blip done for "As Evening Brings Tears", basically the cut down version for the video which is just about done and edited.  The blip was literally a blip...I think it was 3 whole seconds of audio.  I actually called the recording tracks "Guitar Glue" since it's just there to glue two other pieces of audio together where it was spliced in order to shorten the length of the song.

After that, it was time to put the microphones away, take everything down, and then move all the other junk back upstairs to the studio.  It's always a sad thing to do but I will have 2 weeks off in December so hopefully the mics will be coming out again soon, although I really plan to be doing more mixing at that time.  I'm also hoping to start blueprinting the new Jazz Machine album over Christmas break as well.  Lots of fun stuff afoot but nothing yet finished and ready to print, I'm afraid.  Hopefully soon.

Recording Week Day 3 & 4

Recording Day 3 is really easy to talk about since nothing really got accomplished whatsoever.  I had a bunch of random errands to do and so I embarked on driving around town which mainly took up the majority of the day.  I had to drop off my bike at the Trek store and then I ventured over yet again to Guitar Center for a new power cable since Focal sent me a defective cable (yeah, go figure).  While I was in the area, I decided to stop at Crumbl and check out the newest high end cookie maker.  For the record, the cookies aren't as outrageously priced as you'd think since they're the size of small cakes but I will say that they're nowhere near as good as Batch & Box.

Once I got home, it was late enough that it wasn't really worth trying to do any new song recording.  I instead opted to start tinkering with the redo of the main vocal on "Only With You", the track that's more or less holding up the "Mirror Land" EP since there's a bit of distortion on the vocal that simply bugs me every time I hear it.  In attempting to redo it, I ran into the exact same issue...unwanted distortion.  And so, this completely blew the rest of the day as I frantically did research, trying to figure out where the issue was coming from since none of my meters are showing in the red.  Grrr.

Day 4 went much better.  I actually laid down 3 more tracks from the "Beautiful Silence" album, songs that I'm calling "Silhouettes", the "Hey You" song, and then the title track of which I started late into the evening.  I finally finished around 9pm and then edited the track the next day.  I find that I play a bit better at night usually, and considering that the title track is both delicate in nature and a bit on the tricky side, I opted to just try to knock it out.  It's also considerably quieter in general at night so it seemed like a good choice in order to minimize the noise level on the recording.

I ended the evening by starting to watch an indie film called "Alex/October".  It was a painful way to end the day since the film's script and dialogue simply do not work on a believable level.  Oh well.  I guess that's how screeners go sometimes.

Recording Week Day 2

I'm not sure why I'm calling these posts "recording week..." since I won't be recording all week.  That's false advertising right there, although I think false advertising these days can't simply be called "advertising".  Okay, let's not go there right now...it's too early for that.

Day 2 was actually highly productive since I laid down 3 new songs for the "Beautiful Silence" album.  It takes about 2-3 hours per song, and that just means setting up the session in ProTools, finding the right tempo, getting the mic levels set, and then only recording the base acoustic track (usually 3-4 times) with a scratch vocal as a guide.  Doing the composition track, where you compile all the best parts into one track, takes about 30 minutes to complete.  If you're doing the math and following along, you can probably imagine how many hours go into a completed song since I'm only talking right now about the bare minimum.

These three tracks are pretty important to the album, especially "Can't Let It Go", one of my fav's of the new material.  It's a fairly simple song and there won't be much going on so getting the base acoustic part correct was highly important, both in sound and playability.  I was quite shocked to see that the track clocked in at just under 7 minutes in length!  And, here I thought it was one of the shorter songs on the album.  Go figure.  My playing so far has been pretty impressive and I've finally turned the corner of being album to play much quieter, more expressive, and so on.  I'm liking it.

I also worked on a song called "About the Time I Met You" which is one of my first real takes at trying to do something very early Floyd-ish ala the "Meddle" album.  The guitar part is so simple that I didn't know if I wanted to pursue the song at first but there's just something nice and pleasant about it.  I'm not sure it'll end up on the album since it's kind of in the wings but it's there if needed.  Either way, it'll be released at some point.

The last track I worked on has no name and I've simply been calling it "REM-ish Tune", meaning R.E.M. of the "Around the Sun" or "Automatic for the People" sort of sound.  I think I'm the only person in the entire world that likes "Around the Sun" and even the band has apparent distaste for it.  I'm not sure why because I think it's fairly wonderful except for a few small bits here and there.  Anyhow, my song just has some sort of feel to it that reminds me of those albums but I still have no idea what the song will end up being about.  Sometimes, it just remains a mystery until the end.

I finished the recording session at 11:40pm, believe it or not.  I got a late start so I simply decided to pound away into the evening, trying to stay on track.  It's also quieter in the neighborhood in the evening so I sometimes prefer recording with open mic's at that time.  I'd like to get as much of this album blueprinted as possible this week, especially since I have countless other things to work on.

My day ended with starting the screener "Fresh" that I requested a couple of weeks ago.  It started quite fun and light and turned very dark and disturbing quickly but I think I overall like it so far.  I also will admit that I like getting screeners and such from studios, and at least posing like I'm someone to be reckoned with in the film industry (even though I'm obviously not).  It's amazing what a hundred dollars membership a year will buy you.

Recording Week Day 1

Day 1 was pretty productive and went as planned, which tends to be a rarity, to be honest.  I've learned over the years that if I don't start with a bang that my entire week can quickly fizzle.  Since this week started well, I'm remaining hopeful.

Half of the day was really concentrated on the prep.  My day job work had been really hectic all week long as usual so there was really little time to prepare during the week.  Therefore, Day 1 consisted of moving tons of items out of the studio space and off the floor, changing strings on two guitars, setting up the mic's, and so on.  I did finally lay down the acoustic part on "Never Say Never" which had been on my agenda for the past 2-3 months and then laid down the base acoustic track for a very, very old song that used to be called "Mistress of Radiance".  I have no idea what it's called now; that's still TBD.

"Mistress..." is a funny song for me because it's literally one of my oldest and from the very first group of actual songs that I ever wrote, actually from the late 80's.  Now, that group of songs came after writing only in my head (not on an instrument) multiple melodies and such throughout my late childhood years, and then after my very first songs on guitar when I was initially learning to play of  which a) I haven't played since that era for good reason and b) wouldn't ever subject anyone to since they're painfully juvenile and amateur.  After getting through that awkward phase of guitar and childish writing, I came up with an initial group of songs that I just never did anything with, and that's where this one comes from.  Of course, these songs are also rather juvenile, I mean, the original title says it right there, but I've been reworking the lyrics, some of the melodies, and even a bit of the playing style to make it sound more up to date for my work.  I started tinkering with this one about six months ago and was surprised that it actually sounded decent in its reworked form, and hence it has found its way to a recording after a few decades of sitting idol.  I'm not sure what I'll be doing with these tracks yet but I did decide to finally just start getting them down on tape...er, disk.  See?  I'm showing my age right there.

I didn't get enough practice and warm up time before this recording week so I am admittedly struggling slightly with my playing but I think it's good enough to go forward.  I also recently blew the muscle sheath in my pinky finger on my fingering hand and so I'm now also right in the middle of battling constant trigger finger issues in that finger.  I started with trigger finger only on my middle finger a few years ago which surprisingly improved a bit over time but my pinky right now is pretty tough and tight.  I do believe I'll have to get hand surgery at some point in the near future but I'm putting it off as long as possible.  Fun.

I ended the day with the usual On Patrol Live, some video game playing with my sister online, and then with a viewing (or at least starting) of the film "To Leslie" of which I received a screener for.  I was less than impressed with it, and that's disappointing since it sounded right up my alley.  Oh well.

Prep

I don't have much to report except for the fact that I'm in "prep" mode.  I have next week off and so I'm gearing up, both mentally and physically, to do some pretty heavy recording after not doing any for quite some time.  I've spent most of this year mixing, polishing, studying up, learning new techniques, and so on.  I'll openly admit that I'm quite eager to get some actual recording accomplished.

Prepping is always a ton of work, not surprisingly.  There are many decisions to make, songs to write down, pieces to work out, microphones to connect and place, strings to change, and so on.  I also usually have to do a decent amount of moving items around since I seem to always have my studio floor covered in various "junk", things that I for some odd reason decided to acquire and/or simply have no other place to store.  I've found out the hard way that a clean floor is pretty essential when you're trying to move around with a guitar strapped to your chest while wearing headphones, dodging cords, etc.

I've been arguing with myself about what songs to focus on.  Since I want to do actual recording, I'm thinking I'm going to focus on the "Beautiful Silence" album.  I wrote most of these tracks about 3-4 years ago and so they really do need to come to life soon anyhow before they start to fizzle for me mentally.  I'm actually really excited about this album since I think it's really quite something, although it's fairly simple in nature.  It'll be a very interesting vocal follow-up to the "Opsimath" album, and it's hard to believe that I finished the writing of that one just about 20 years ago so I guess I'm fairly due.  I'll also be dabbling in other "ponds", as they say, including starting work on some of the compiling stages of the next Jazz Machine album as well some random ancient one-off songs that may or may not end up on an EP...who knows.  And, of course, there will be mixing going on.

I'll probably be blogging quite a bit next week so don't be alarmed.  I usually have a lot to say once I get into the trenches.  Hopefully, they're not too dirty this time around.

I'm a Mod

I have been pondering and lusting over the idea of buying a Fender Custom Shop Telecaster in Daphne Blue for probably 2 1/2 decades.  I've gone through multiple iterations of wants over the years, more recently switching to the Telecaster Thinline '69 style, which they did happen to make in the right color for a small amount of time.  This argument has continued to fester in my head, like I said, since around 1998.  I even inquired with Sweetwater earlier this year about ordering a Custom Shop Tele but was once again put off by the price tag.  I mean, seriously, 4K on a Tele?  It just sounds absurd and I know, just know, that if I spent that much on the instrument, that it'll get into my head to never play it because, well, it's just too damn expensive to ever touch.

Therefore, I finally broke my stupor and broke down by going in a different direction.  Yes, that's right, I opted NOT to do the Custom Shop guitar and instead get it from the still fairly new Fender Mod Shop, as they call it.  The Mod Shop basically gives you an American Standard instrument of your choice but you get to choose the color, the neck, the pickguard, the pickups, and so on.  In short, it's basically the "custom shop" of old, meaning pre this bizarre era where guitars cost 4-10k, especially if you want someone to make it look like you've been playing it for the past 50 years and abusing it (still a bizarre thing to pay a large amount for, in my personal opinion).

I also got a bit of a deal on the thing which is actually what finally tipped me over the edge; they're running a 10% coupon right now, and that actually adds up nicely on the price tag.  In fact, it was so tempting that I also purchased a Mod Shop Fretless Jazz bass, the other instrument I've been pondering for the past 2 years.  I actually picked up a used MiM Fender Fretless Jazz bass not that long ago, just to try it out, and I was impressed enough that I thought I'd upgrade.

Strangely, both instruments arrived one day after the other.  In fact, the bass completely freaked me out since I wasn't expecting it for another 15 days or so.  I immediately fell in love with the look of it, though, and the sound is way better than the MiM that I'm now selling since I got to choose the pickups, and so on.  It finally prompted me to pull out my old bass amp which has been sitting in a box in my garage since I moved to CA.  I've thought about pulling the thing out many times but the thought of moving all the boxes and such just scared the hell out of me.  In any event, it was a good move and I can't say how nice it is to be able to just plug and play a bass at a moment's notice, rather than plugging it in via ProTools, finding a setting, grabbing headphones, setting up a session, and so on.  It's just much nicer this way.

The Tele came today and I feel pretty ecstatic with it as well.  It's Daphne Blue, like I said, but it has a roasted maple neck so it's rather dark, and then I got Texas Special pickups on it which I've never actually played before (they're usually Fender Custom Shop oriented).  I was pretty impressed with how many more guts they have over my American Standard pickups and it was immediately noticeable with only playing a couple of notes.

So, yeah, I guess I greatly approve of the Fender Mod Shop.  I mean, you're literally getting a Custom Shop guitar but at American Standard prices...which is pretty amazing.  I predict that if the Mod Shop really takes off, they'll raise the prices by at least 1k per instrument.  I'd get in now, if interested.

Both instruments will absolutely be prominent in upcoming recordings.  In fact, the fretless bass is really going to be used heavily on the new Jazz Machine album, partly why I wanted it.  I think fretless just sounds better with that style of music, plus I love doing a lot of slides when playing bass.  I can't say enough how flat wound strings on a bass really help that situation (I had never used them prior to a few months ago).

Also, I finally got around to listening to the "Mirror Land" mixes that I did about a month or so ago and I was pretty impressed.  I feel like I'm finally evening out the bass in the mixes...which is huge.  I know it's taken beyond forever but hopefully there will be a payoff.  Also, my cover of Throwing Muses "Two Step" will soon be available for download on Bandcamp for free because I can't rightfully charge for it without paying royalties, and my new mix of it is sounding pretty good overall.  I think maybe even Kristin Hersh might approve.

Of Drums and Mixes

I don't have anything too major to report right now since I'm just starting to get back into the swing of things.  I did pull out some mixes this weekend, do some touch up work on 1-2 and reopen a couple that I haven't looked at in ages, and also made a ton of notes in an effort to wrap my head around what exactly I was doing over a month ago and what I should be doing now.  My studio room is still a bit of a shambles but it's slowly getting back to normal.  Supposedly, a big piece of the remaining house remodel work is to be done sometime mid week and that should help me out considerably since I'll once again be able to move things around.  It's hard to move around a large bedroom sized space when there are countless items on the floor.

I did finally have time to investigate the typos and mis-information for the "...Miss You Most..." album.  I did submit the changes online so I guess we'll see if they actually do get updated, etc.  I'll try to burn the disc again next weekend and hopefully all will be correct (fingers crossed).

I finally got ahold of Peele Wimberley, the original and former drummer for the band the Connells, and I'm hoping to work with him on drums for a new 4 song EP that I've had in the works for awhile.  For anyone keeping up on this (and if so, I don't know how), this is the EP that I started with Seth Tiven of Dumptruck a couple years ago.  Word on the street is that Seth is working right now on recording his guitar parts so I should have an update on that fairly soon.  Not to keep name dropping but this 4 song EP, which will most likely live under the song title "Yet I Tried for You", is the first thing I'll work with Marty Willson-Piper on completing so I'm planning on sending it out to be mixed by a pro.  I'm highly curious to hear the difference.

I know I had other news I wanted to share but my mind is now completely blank.  What could it have been?  No clue.  Ah, the pleasures of getting older.  If I think of it, I'll post it.

New Endeavors

I'm moving on, as they say, although no major milestone has yet to be turned over.  I actually took the last week more or less off from musical adventures since I think I needed a break.  We're also finishing up some of our house updates and I allowed myself to focus on that solely rather than polluting my brain with mixes.  I also recently got a semi-promotion at work and I'm onboarding two new contractors.  The task of onboarding is fine but I was given very little direction so there's tons of note taking, emailing, meetings, escalating, and all the while trying to do the job I used to do.  In short, it's exhausting so I'm near collapsing at the end of my shift and the idea of trying to be creative seems completely ludicrous.

I did have my second Skype meeting with MWP (Marty Willson-Piper) today and it went extremely well.  I think we have a plan, which is fantastic, and a very workable plan it is.  I'm terribly excited about the possibilities.  I also reached out to two other pro level musicians from bands that I grew up listening to and have huge respect for in hopes of collaborating on some level.  I'm feeling good about the direction overall and I think it'll kick things up a notch or two for me in general.

I'm also intending to start posting band ads locally to see if I can get something started.  I've been toying with a couple of band ideas for quite some time and I think now might be the right moment to start dabbling.  More to come on this in the future.  I can only imagine that finding the right members will take quite a bit of work but fingers crossed.

Lastly, I think the time might soon be approaching to consider starting an actual website once again, this time done "correctly", and if so, this blog will most likely be moving to that site.  I don't want to jump the gun but I do foresee that happening in the next 6 months or so.  Merch may also be on the near horizon shortly.

I'm Moving in Stereo

I'm sort of watching the US Open Men's Final as I type this but only slightly.  I'm interested; I just can't seem to keep my focus this US Open period.  I guess I just have too much on my mind in general.

Yesterday ended up being quite a fluke for me.  I did manage to finish up my redo's on "Interstate Blind" which came out nicely, I think, but in the process I managed to hurt my ears and had to stop all work because of it.  It's taken almost 24 hours for my ears to calm down.  Dumb me for forgetting to put in my ear plugs when I was testing out my larger amps.  Just plain dumb and not advisable.  I simply must be more careful in the future.

It's been a decent week off and I did make some rewarding progress but it didn't really come in the form of actual recording, unfortunately.  I spent the beginning of the week mainly focused on mixes and particularly the issues I've been having with my mixes.  I do believe I made some breakthroughs but it's not quite all the way to my satisfaction, as of yet.

Also, I found that the internet database info for the "...Miss You Most..." CD is a bit messed up and I had to send an email to find out how to correct it.  It seems whomever entered the info online both misspelled my name as well as called the album "I Miss You...", literally with the '...', like they were too lazy to type it all in.  Nice, huh?  Yeah, don't get me started.  I believe it's a simple fix but I'll have to wait to hear what the deal is.

And so, on to speaker-land...  As previously stated, I purchased a Denon DRA-800H receiver so that I could have the USB input on it which is what I was after so I could easily try out mixes without burning them always to CD.  I made the mistake (or good fortune) to also purchase new speakers, the first set being Polk R500's.  They felt really small sounding to me, and even after buying a subwoofer (which I'm pretty much deeply against having), the overall sound just wasn't what I was looking for.  They did, however, show a ton of the blemishes in my mixes surprisingly.  Wow!  And so, I then purchased Klipsch RP 8000-F's which are flat out enormous and heavier than you could ever imagine and returned the Polk's.  The Klipsch sound big, full, and are the most critical sounding speakers I've ever experienced, meaning not only do my mixes sound harsh and exposed of every issue but so do all actual professional CD's.  I mean, it's completely bizarre!  It made me wonder why anyone would want speakers to sound like this.  Are we trying to ruin music in general?  However, I also learned that if I can make my mixes sound good on these critical speakers they'll probably sound good anywhere, no?  They are huge, though, and I must say that I don't really enjoy listening to music on them so they're not exactly ideal.  Hmm.

Thus, speaker set #3 enters the picture.  I know, this is getting absurd, right?  I am now trying out Polk R600's which are the bigger brother to the previous Polk's that I tried.  These actually sound pretty good to me but my problem with them is that they don't actually accentuate mix issues like the Klipsch.  I would much prefer to listen to music on these, however, so I have a bit of a dilemma here that I'm not entirely sure yet on what I'm going to do.

To make things even more complex, I just happened to stumble upon a  receiver by a brand called Outlaw Audio that seemed right up my alley since I'm rather old school in my thinking.  This is on its way now and I'll have to reevaluate everything once it arrives.  It's just about the only receiver I have found that will allow you to run an outboard EQ through it (I guess this is considered taboo these days) and it also doesn't require the USB port to be searching for a WIFI connection, of which this 'feature' actually caused the Denon to need a complete reset just last week which frankly scared me.  It also wasted 30 minutes of my time that day, trying to diagnose the problem.

Now, I am proudly not a so called "audiophile".  In fact, I think the whole thing is a bit on the silly side and meant for people with simply way too much money.  It does seem, though, that the audiophile logic is that they want mixes to sound critical and a bit harsh, supposedly exactly like they originally sounded (which I do question that thinking, to be honest).  Older speakers ala the 80's and 90's were designed to smooth things out and accentuate certain aspects of mixes, thus making them sound better on particular systems.  It's just another example of how I don't understand modern thinking and/or technology, and why anyone would want to make albums deliberately sound worse is simply beyond my thinking.  Albeit, it may help me in mixing, so...

Coupled with all of this, it dawned on me that I really need to investigate just getting better studio monitors, of which I did actually do.  I purchased the Focal Trio6's at a decent price but unfortunately the person who I bought them from didn't package them well, and so one of the speaker cabs has a few issues in terms of scratching, etc.  I have found the monitors to be a major step upward, though, and coupled with some of the work I've done on bass and drums in general over the past 2 weeks, I do attribute them to bringing my mixing skills hopefully to a new and better level.  The whole goal, after all, is to get music done, from start to finish, in a much quicker and more reasonable fashion.  Hopefully, I'm starting to go down the right path.

So, there you have it.  A lot of useless info, no less, but these have been my recent adventures in so called "Hi-Fi".  Now, back to the match...

Back to the "Old"

It's an interesting activity to do, going over your old half done recordings and such.  I always play this guessing game where I try desperately to remember approximately what year I started a recording and which iteration of gear it was done on.  Some of these tracks have been transferred from system to system a couple of times. Due to my memory not being what it was, I usually can't really pinpoint the origination of a particular track anymore.

I will say this...  It's about 100x easier to record electronic music versus mic'ing guitar cabinets and such.  I mean, it's night and day.  I spent a good couple of hours this week going over my electronic based "album" and/or fake band name "The Caution Children" material and was shocked by how good the quality is.  Why?  Well, it's all simply a keyboard plugged directly into a recording device.  Even with it being transferred over multiple times from system to system, it really does hold quite well.  If I was to listen to an old guitar based recording, which I often do, mind you, I usually cry slightly into my drink and write down in my notes something like "re-record all the guitars for they sound beyond belief awful."  What's the moral to the story?  Electronic music is fairly simple to put together in comparison.

Now, having said that, I must say that there's a fun to electronic based music that you just don't get in guitar based work.  I view the two different styles in completely separate veins, and things that I get from guitar based work I don't really get it from crafting electronic based tracks, and vice versa.  They more or less fill two different holes within me.  I think the quiet decision to finally reopen the vault on the Caution Children album is perhaps a good one since it seems to warrant some immediate rewards, especially since it does in fact cater to a completely different part of me.  It also kick starts me back into actually putting music together again versus just mixing and other technical BS.

Getting back to the actual tracks that I listened to, I was amazed by how little seems to fall into the "re-record" category, even vocal-wise.  Now, having said that, most of these tracks are not complete by any means but the core of the song is there so I can make a fairly good judgement on it.  I only have half an album right now, though, with two more songs that I originally wrote back in the dark ages that may or may not actually see the light of day.  I simply need to play around with them and see how I feel today.  I did come up with the basis for a brand new song just last week so I probably now have 6 out of 10 total.  Oh, and did I mention that I wrote the original group of songs for this back in 1993-94?  Yes, no joke.  That's how old we're talking on this one.

A bit to my surprise, it's now September and time that I have a serious talk with myself since the year is slowly slipping away.  What do I want to get accomplished before the year ends?  Well, the "Mirror Land" EP needs to be released, no debating that one.  I'm also working daily right now on the "Lost Weekend" remixes which are coming along but have a ways to go.  I'm still arguing over how much I should consider actually rerecording on that one, that's a bit of an internal struggle for me, to be honest.  I have a feeling I'm going to lean towards the rerecording of certain tracks but it probably depends how they sound overall after I tinker with them.

And so, I still anticipate the EP coming out, hopefully fairly soon, and then the "Lost Weekend" remix before the end of the year.  Can anything else get done?  I think I can make some decent headway on the Caution Children album but then there's the "Wrecking Ball" album which also should get completed really no later than within the next 6-8 months.  And, let's not forget "Defrost Nixon" and the new Jazz Machine.  Like I said, I have some decisions to make clearly for I'll be lucky if only one of these can also get squeezed in.

That's my rambling for this morning.  I'll be posting about my adventures in speaker and monitor land over the next few days.  That's been a trip unto itself.

Crazy Done

And so, the 'deed' is done...  I now have my first real live officially printed CD in hand.  I received them a little over a week ago and, much to my surprise, the packaging inside and out looked pretty spot on.  Apparently, I had a lot of worries for nothing about the packaging, although I'll still say openly that the proofs looked a bit off but evidently that's just how they process the files.  My only complaint, if any, is that the cellophane overwrap is a bit strange feeling and not the usual that you'd expect on a CD but that's a pretty minor and nearly irrelevant thing, at least in my case.

The bad news is that no sooner did I receive the CD's but I noticed yet another strange anomaly in the mix itself.  Sigh.  I've also been working fairly hard over the past 2-3 weeks trying to learn more about mixing bass, definitely my weakest point in my mixes, and I've already moved on far from the "...Miss You Most..." mix, knowing that it's fairly flawed in those areas.  It is what it is, at this point, and there's no going back now.

Now, I knew all of this going into it for it's just part of the 'process'.  That was partially the idea of even doing the "...Miss You Most..." album, to literally go through the entire process, start to finish, from writing songs to recording to arranging to mixing to designing the artwork, etc., and know full well going into it that at times you're going to fall flat on your face.  I guess this is what we call learning.  I knew there would be issues so I'm not exactly shocked by it but I won't deny that it does annoy me that I learned of this latest mix issue at this point, even when I had an additional 7 months of listening to the CD to find it.  It's just funny how that kind of thing happens.

And so, now, I have literally a few hundred CD's lying in my bedroom with no home for them to go to.  It's okay for all I'll probably just hand them out at random to people, again, partially my intent from the beginning.  Meanwhile, I'm still working on the "Mirror Land" mixes and trying to apply some of these new techniques that I've been reading about.  So far it's going well, actually, and most of the EP is sounding pretty good at this point although a few more minor tweaks still need to be applied.  I absolutely DO need to get this wrapped up fairly soon or else I'll probably go completely mad.  It's just not normal to take this long to mix 3 songs.

More adventures in hi-fi coming soon.  I'm off all this week so I'll probably be making a few updates in order to share various details, such as all that I'm learning about speakers.  Who knew speakers were so complicated?!

Perhaps

It's been yet another interesting week and weekend.  I did do a bit of mixing and I must say that I consistently feel like I take one step forward and then perhaps 2 1/2 steps backward.  The second guessing drives me a bit crazy, and I'm constantly asking myself why something doesn't work as I intended it to.  Also, there are just a ton of frequencies that I cannot hear well in my monitors and headphones so there always seems to be a slight surprise when listening to something on my stereo.  If mixing isn't the most frustrating part of music, then I don't know what is.

In other news, and I certainly don't mean to name drop, but I finally got around to Skyping with Marty Willson-Piper about a possible collaboration.  He's one of two ex-lead guitarist's for the band the Church, a band that I heavily grew up with right alongside others such as R.E.M., Dumptruck, the Dream Syndicate, etc.  Interestingly, apart from R.E.M., I would say that the Church's work is basically how I learned to play guitar, and I played/practiced their early songs literally for years, sometimes still.  Marty in particular has always been a bit of a guitar hero for me and I especially liked his solo work which partly gave me the idea of not being constrained to one genre, along with another favorite of mine, Wire.  I learned a few years ago that Marty was offering his services to people like myself in order to create and craft better albums, book studio time, etc., and so it's been on my agenda for quite some time to dip my toe in the water.

He's an incredibly easy guy to talk to, and in fact we chatted for just over 2 hours.  I think this will be a good fit for me since the things that he offers are right up my alley.  Overall, I'm just trying to fill in the gaps of being able to create music faster and more efficiently, using better techniques, and so on.  His biggest advice right off the bat was to actually give my music to someone who specializes in mixing rather than trying to do it myself, and, well, I don't disagree.  I know it's a big limitation of mine, trying to do it on my own, but I have so much material lying around that there's no way I could really afford to always hire someone.  Plus, some of these older and, say, shabbier or more questionable recordings, probably aren't worth sending out, and so hence I keep dabbling in this mixing arena.  In any event, I need to do some pondering about how exactly I want to collaborate but I do think this is something that will happen in the near future.

I feel like I made a bit of headway on the 4 mixes that I'm actively working on but they're still not quite there.  Strangely, now I feel like "Optimism" is the best sounding one, and all along it's been the worst.  Funny how that happens.  Ah, the joys of mixing.  I know I'll be doing a bit of re-recording on some of these songs but I just haven't been playing enough as of late to even consider attempting it.

Lastly, I got my new business cards in the mail.  I will openly say that the trim line is definitely NOT where it's supposed to be so it threw my spacing off a bit.  I'm sure no one else will notice but, well, I noticed right away.  Of course, this scares the living hell out of me in regards to what my CD's are going to look like which should be shipping sometime this coming week.  Shivers...

Onward?!

I'm happy to report that the CD order is finally complete and will be printed in the next week.  The ETA for shipping is 8/23 so I'd imagine I'll be receiving them about 5-7 days later.  On one hand, this is a huge relief...while on the other hand who the hell knows what it's going to look like.  If nothing else, at least it's over (or at least it better be over) and I can move onward finally.  I will say that this whole start-to-finish CD project has been quite the learning curve, especially doing every single piece of it alone.  Now, if I can only shorten the whole thing by about 60%.  Hmm.

In other news, I also finally printed business cards.  Yes!  I'm actually knocking off tasks from my extremely long list.  I've had that one on my list at least for 3 years so I'm pleased to have that done.

It's neither here nor there, mind you, but I will say that trying to get a home remodel done while you're trying to a) mix b) write c) practice and d) basically do anything creative is pretty much impossible.  The remodel began the second week of June and looks like it will continue for at least the next month, although we're definitely over the hump at this point with the noisiest and most distracting work behind us.  It's been quite the experience, however.  If you're ever considering a remodel of the interior of your home, I'd highly suggest you prepare for all of your creative tasks to come to a screeching halt.

I'm hoping to dive head first into some mixing this week, basically trying to promise myself to get a handle on "Mirror Land" especially ASAP.  At the same time, I realized this weekend that I'm just really itching to work on something musically (not mixing) and so I think I've made the decision to finally return to the Caution Children project, basically the moniker that I chose to use ages ago for my more electronic based work.  I wrote a series of songs back around 1994, almost all entirely in my head, and they've been sitting pretty much ever since.  I started recording some of them in the late 2000's but got distracted, didn't like how it was going, etc., and so I haven't touched them since.  I went over those tracks this weekend and was pleasantly surprised.  Why start on something electronic now?  Well, it's easier than working with microphones and all of that, and like I said I'm really itching to work on something creative without it being too terribly difficult.  Perhaps this one will come to light yet.  In the meantime, I have a bunch of prep to do for the new Jazz Machine so that one should start ramping up in the next few months as well.

That's my news for now.  With a little bit of luck, maybe I can get "Mirror Land" and off of my list fairly soon as well.  Here's to hoping...

Who Would Have Thought That...?

You may have noticed that I haven't had a post in awhile.  This was not forgetfulness but actually intentional, so intentional that it simply kept getting put on hold day after day and then week and week.

Allow me to explain.  I've been trying to get these CD's of "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" out for literally months now and I'm about at my wits end.  First, if you're following along, that is, I uncovered issue after issue with my masters.  Now, that's not on the mastering lab at all...it's on me, simply for being new to this whole new process.  I will fully say that Greg over at Rare Form Mastering has been incredibly kind to me and has never balked once about my asking for a redo, nor has he charged me for it, and we're talking after months of this.  So, yes, major kudos to RFM for being both kind AND patient.

So, I finally got the master the way I wanted it.  I mean, what the hell, right?  Then, it just so happened that I made the stupid decision to switch stereos in the middle of wrapping this up, and so when listening to the final master the bass sounded very off, and thus my paranoia once again went through the roof.  Just what I needed.  Ah, but, I did get over it, made a few tweaks on the system, and finally calmed down (thank goodness).

All that was left was the artwork and the actual printing.  I waited until 8/2 to place the order for the CD's.  You'd think that placing the order would be the big part; um, no.  In fact, every day since then, I have had countless email exchanges with the CD duplicator/printer, trying to get the artwork to sit correctly in their templates.  As much as the person that I've been talking to has been pleasant enough I can't say that he's been too terribly helpful.  In fact, every question I've had so far has pretty much been met with the same answer, "Well, I'm not a designer, I don't know.  But I can get you one for $65 an hour."  The funny part is that I've never once asked an actual "design" question.  Instead, they've all been about their template, their expectations, and so on.  I did get the feeling early on, though, that this whole thing is overly vague and complicated in order to pay their designer $65 an hour.  So far, I'm resisting.

Thus, this has been a sort of sick and twisted game thus far.  They took my money on 8/2 but I have yet to even have this thing in motion, and even worse, I've spent almost every night making tweaks, sometimes sitting an additional 2+ hours at the computer after doing a full day's work on the computer for my actual job.  It's been a real blast so far and I've pretty much garnered that, no matter how many tweaks I make on this, it's still going to be one of those things where I finally submit it and who knows what the hell I'm going to get in return.  Yes, great stuff.

The world has gone mad, as Marillion once sang, and I think I'm losing it along with it.  My hopes were that I'd simply wait to make this post until I had good news but, well, to much time has passed.  Who knew that releasing one album on CD was so damned difficult?  I guess I should have (sigh).

New Adventures in Hi-Fi

I decided recently to take the plunge and upgrade my stereo system.  Now, this doesn't sound like a big deal at all except that my stereo system is literally 30+ years old and has been with me for most of my life.  I mean, it's become literally "family".  My CD player alone is the oldest piece of actual electronic gear in my home and is literally only the second CD player I've ever purchased.  I got my original JVC CD player for Christmas in 1986, and that one promptly broke within 2-3 years.  I then got a replacement JVC CD player somewhere between 1988 - 1989 and that one, folks, is the one I'm STILL using to this very day.  I mean, the amount of hours on this machine is unfathomable!  They clearly don't make gear like this anymore.

In any event, it's not on my agenda to replace the CD Player since it's still working perfectly.  Instead, I wanted to finally buy some decent speakers and a good quality receiver since mine is from around 1990 - 1994 and does indeed make a bit of noise.  After a bit of research and such, I decided on Polk R500's and a Denon DRA800H.  I was quite excited about this purchase, and I painstakingly removed the old gear last weekend and setup the new stuff.  And, when I plugged it all in for the first time and played a CD, I...well...didn't hear a damn bit of difference.  Hmph.

This brought me to referencing the manuals, playing around with EQ (I have an old school outboard EQ unit that I play through), and trying a few different things.  It improved the sound a bit but then a fairly new CD with some major sub bass frequencies made the tweeter start rattling.  Ugh.  More tweaks, about 10 more random CD's and songs, and I pretty much decided that the new gear really wasn't that different from what I had so I might as well return it.

It was then that something bizarre happened.  First, I listened to the entire "...Miss You Most..." album since I'm finalizing the masters before submitting the CD order.  I'm actually down to the very last bit, where I'm having Track 5 raised in volume just a tad in order to even it out, and after that we should be done (finally).  The "...Miss You Most..." album really didn't sound much different from my old system so again I kind of dismissed the whole thing.  And then, I threw in a "working" or bad mix and oh my goodness...  It was like the stereo system was literally telling me in big bold letters what was wrong the mix!  I'm still not sure what to think of this but it was terribly obvious that the mix was horrid and it even seemed to point to where the issues lie.

I started flipping through all kinds of mixes, most of which I know pretty well which ones are decent and which need serious work.  This new stereo never lied and always showed me very obviously exactly what sounded horrid.  I've never experienced this before.  Could it be that my old system all these years has masked such blatantly obvious issues in my mixes?  I'm now thinking so, and perhaps this has only added to my mixing woes all along.  Hmm.

I need to play around with this system a bit more but I must say, if this really WILL help my mix process, I guess I may not be returning it after all.  Who freakin' knew?

And People Supposedly Love Apple Products...

I got my "...Miss You Most..." masters back today and again the tunnel of madness quickly surrounded me.  I think I described in a previous post how I have this 2 second noise in Track #2 that was showing up in the left ear, even though it's panned to be in the right ear.  The whole thing was driving me nuts and I've wasted literally hours on this issue, at least 20 mixes on it, and not to mention having to bug the mastering lab as well in order to redo the song, even though the error has nothing to do with them.  I simply couldn't get my head around how or what exactly was happening but I tried simply moving forward, thinking maybe I'd figure it out later on.

Upon downloading my new master file, of course the very first thing I did was to play it on my Mac.  I mean, I know that the placement of that sound was in the right ear because I literally listened to the track multiple days in a row and at least 20 times before sending it off, and every time the sound was in the right ear.  Still, being the paranoid sort that I am and now also being overly protective, I immediately listened to the mastered track for this very purpose...and low and behold, the noise was in the left ear.

Wtf......????!!!!!

I mean, that's not even possible!  Again, I've spent the last 2 weeks listening to this track over and over, on different days, etc., just to make sure that I'm not crazy.  And yet still, undeniably, the mastered version played with the sound in the left ear.  For at least 30 minutes, I sat completely bewildered and stunned, nearly speechless but too angry and confused to keep from muttering obscenities under my breath.  And then, I shifted into diagnostic mode.

I spent 2 hours on this ultimately and it wasn't until I literally copied the very same file over to my laptop and listened to it there that I started to piece it together.  Why?  Because when listening to the exact same song file on my laptop, the sound was in the RIGHT ear.  Yes, chew on that a minute...

It was then that I realized I had been duped.  All along, Pro Tools wasn't the issue (even though I was bad mouthing it), my Mac itself hadn't grown a ghost in the machine or gone insane, and I hadn't completely lost my mind and started imagining things.  It was the beyond belief stupid new version of iTunes called "Music" on a Mac that's the problem!  After doing a bit of experimentation and some searching, yes indeed, it's this idiotic music program from which my Mac defaults to playing audio files AND burning them to CD.  To put it as simply as possible, since I had been making different mixes of the same song over and over, it saved one of the earlier copies into memory and every time I literally clicked on the specific file that I wanted to actually play, it instead was "thinking for me" and played the old version that it already had available.  Now, I know this sounds completely insane but I found other people online with pretty much the same complaint, although it wasn't their own music that they were having the issue with.

Even MORE bizarre, I deleted all of my playlists, created a brand new one, manually moved each track over to the new playlist, burned the playlist to a CD, and then played the CD...and still it somehow copied the old version of the song onto the disc.  I mean, complete INSANITY.  What the freakin' logic is behind this "feature" is beyond me, and this is probably the stupidest computer related app issue I have ever encountered in my entire life...and that's saying quite a lot!  It's also wasted at least 20 hours of my time and other people's time, and nearly given me a heart attack in the process.

So, there you have it, folks.  I'm not completely nuts.  For those who defend Apple products as being far superior, in the words of Monty Python, I simply blow my nose at you.  I won't throw my Mac out the window, per se, but I'll certainly never be using Apple "Music" again...ever.  Simply put, be forewarned for you don't want to go through what I just went through with this.  Ugh.

Don't Trust Computers

I've spent much of the last 2 weeks working on the "Mirror Land" EP mixes in both the evening and the weekends.  I ended up doing a small bit of recording for "Optimism", and after giving it a few days of listens and tweaks, I think it ended up being a good move.  The song now has a ton more power than it had before and doesn't sound quite so flat.  However, the vocals still sounded dull beyond belief.

I therefore had to go back to the drawing board on the vocals, and after doing some deep analysis of some pro recordings and such, I scrapped all of my reverbs and started over.  Thankfully, the results were what I was looking for.  I think I've finally reached the point where I'm just doing small tweaks and such on these mixes and perhaps, just perhaps, I'm headed down the final stretch (could it be??).  I've certainly spent way too long on these three songs...I mean, my goodness.

The real kick in the arse, though is the small stereo glitch in "Tonight, You Reached Me" that I needed to fix.  I've now done about 4-5 re-bounces of this mix, and I've even listened to it intently while it's bouncing, so I know for a damn fact that the "Pigeon" sound is indeed playing in the right ear at the beginning of the song.  And then, once the bounce is complete, the freakin' sound is once again playing in the left ear.  It's like what I'm hearing isn't being bounced down to a file and I cannot for the life of me get my head around this.  It's like there's a ghost in the machine that's insistent that the "Pigeon" needs to be in the left ear!

I even created a brand new track for just the beginning part, did the bounce, and still it was in the wrong ear.  I mean, you just can't make this stuff up.

Finally, I messed around with the output source in the Bounce window, and actually ended up choosing the same option again (the physical output), and this time it worked as intended.  Was it somehow having some sort of issue with this?  I have no clue.  What I HAVE learned, though, is that you definitely need to listen to all of your mixes with headphones, mind you, and make sure that your automation worked as intended, and also that it actually mixed what you intended it to mix.

In short, never trust a computer...ever.

A Couple of Days

It has been a rough couple of days for me.  First, after figuring out the minor glitch in the mastered version of "...Miss You Most...", that was enough to make me a bit fidgety and upset.  Then, to make matters worse, I burned my most recent versions of the "Mirror Land" EP last night and nearly fell out of my chair for it was very bluntly quite awful.

After 24 hours of stressing over it, doubting myself, and so on, I carried on and worked on all three tracks quite a bit today along with my daily LW tasks.  I burned new versions down to disc and some of it's thankfully quite a bit better, and some of it not so much.  I'm having a really hard time getting my vocals to sound normal, and why I don't know, but I think I just figured out that it may actually not be the vocal that's the bigger issue.  I dare say that I think I'm going to re-record the damn guitars on "Optimism" after all, at least in a trial to see if it helps.  I also think the drums aren't really the greatest so I need to work on those as well.  Ugh.  I swear...will I ever get this damn song done?!

Since I was burning stuff to disc anyway, I decided to burn the entire new mix of "Lost Weekend" down and give it a listen, just to see where we're at.  I have to be honest...I was terrified considering how things were going with the EP.  To my surprise, most of these mixes sounded pretty spot on, and I only made a small amount of notes for changes.  I'll go through countless minor changes, mind you, but the overall sound was actually quite good (whew).  The biggest glaring issue I see right now is that my work on the drums for "Interstate Blind" didn't go so well and I think it's back to the drawing board on that one.  I have a sneaky suspicion that I'll be trying to put down a new cleaner drum part and that's no easy feat for a track that's not aligned to the grid, as they say.  As for the new versions of "Pleasure Oasis" and "Ruin", I think I managed to achieve what I set out to do on both accounts (minor pat on the back).  I spent tons of time on both, doing everything I could to make those sound much better than the originals.

I also happened to remember a very funny tidbit about the "Lost Weekend" sessions, and how I didn't remember this a few days ago is beyond me since it's one of the better stories.  Back then, I used to leave my studio room door open and allowed my then two cats to roam freely.  They would often watch me while I recorded and such which I found kind of fun and amusing.  And then, one day, I was working on doing a punch in/out on a track for "Cantina" which was almost wrapped up.  I had a guitar strapped on and was standing in front of a microphone, waiting for the right moment to punch in the correct part, and just then my cat Tallulah wandered in, looked at me, wondered what the hell I was doing, and then promptly leaned her paws against a piece of furniture...except it wasn't a piece of furniture...it was my ADAT recorder.  Because I was playing the song back in record ready mode, she managed to record enable 4 tracks of audio and, um, wiped it out, all with a cute look on her face, having no idea what she had just done.  Needless to say, I had to re-record those tracks (who knows what the original sounded like at this point) and I made a practice of keeping my studio room door closed and designated as a "cat free zone" ever since.

That's it for now.  My mixing week comes to a close tomorrow.  I'm sure it'll be another day of stressing over the "Mirror Land" EP which is still my biggest priority and obstacle.

A Mix Mash

The remixing of "Lost Weekend" has been going very well this week thus far.  I dare say that I'm just about at the place with it that I had hoped to be, which is basically the tracks sound as they should, are laid out, cleaned up, are processed, sitting fairly well in the mix, etc.  It's basically about 3/4 of the way to completion.

On the negative side, I had a bit of a setback today that's making my head spin slightly.  As previously stated, I'm getting ready to submit "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" for CD printing and have been working on the finishing touches of the artwork.  In doing so, I just happened to listen to a bit of it via headphones last night and, low and behold, I heard something that I shouldn't have.  It's pretty small, mind you, but one of the sound "effects" on "Tonight, You Reached Me" played in the wrong ear.  Um...?  How can that even be?!

I therefore did a bit of research on this today and, sure enough, I didn't imagine it...it absolutely plays in the wrong ear, meaning the left side versus the right side.  This caused me to dig through my mixes and try to track it down.  Well, nowhere in any of my mixes is it on the left side.  So, what the hell happened?!

I basically put 2 and 2 together and figured it out and it quite disturbs me.  That particular noise on that song plays on the right side at the beginning of the track but then moves to the left side during the middle of the song via automation.  This can only mean one thing, that the automation failed when I pushed the button and "burned" the mix.  I can only guess that my old machine was out of CPU power or something like that and ProTools crapped out on that particular track.  This means that I 100% have to be waaaaay more careful in the future, and I have now learned, once again the hard way, why they say always listen to your mixes before submitting them.  I simply thought they meant listen to the setup of the mix, which obviously I did; I didn't realize you have to listen to the literal mix due to computer issues.  Ugh.

This means I now need to debate whether I should send off a new version back to the mastering lab and beg their forgiveness for pestering them yet again.  This will also put me at least 2 weeks back on the CD printing.  Fun.  I guess it could be worse.  Before doing anything, however, I'm going to make sure I give the whole album a very close listen via headphones, just in case anything else is amiss.

In other mixing news, the thing that always makes me a bit crazy is how one day you can listen to a mix and think it sounds amazing, and then you listen to it the very next day and you think it's horrible.  I mean, how is that even possible?!  Well, it is, and it's happened to me multiple times and always boggles my mind.  Mixing is tough, I tell ya.

A Couple More LW Notes

I thought of a couple more stories about the "Lost Weekend" recording process to more or less go along with my previous post.  The song "Ruin" was an interesting one, and I think it was the third song that I recorded, right after "Across the Desert" and "Interstate Blind", and there are a few stories there to tell.

The idea for the song was very old, something I more or less dreamt up years earlier while lying in bed.  I have always been a fan of the volume pedal swell thing on guitars, the best examples probably being from the "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" album by Genesis and the classic ending to "The Gates of Delirium" by Yes from the "Relayer" album, still a personal favorite of mine to this very day.  I came up with the volume pedal swell melody only in my head and somehow lodged it away in my memory.  Upon deciding to finally commit to working on the "Lost Weekend" album, I somehow remembered that idea and decided to finally give it a shot.

"Ruin" is one of the few tracks on this remix which got a heavier polishing.  I've always been unhappy with my horrid piano playing, and if I'm correct, I believe I played it without a click track, a terrible decision looking back on it.  I knew before even thinking about doing a remix of this album that I'd be replacing that with a newly updated version via MIDI and worked on that about 1-2 years ago, painstakingly having to move all the other recorded bits around, shortening them slightly and so on, in order to make it fit a consistent tempo and click track.  It was a ton of work but the end result is that you can't even tell that I did any of that...which means success, of course.

"Ruin" actually started with a very different ending that I still have a blueprint of on the recorded song, only muted so it's not heard.  It actually ended with a very heavy drum track and a haunting, doom sounding keyboard layover, and we experimented with doing different voices where someone would say "...you're ruined..."  I played with it a bit and simply didn't like it, feeling it was a bit on the silly side, and so I scrapped it, completely went in a different direction, and instead picked up my nylon string guitar, pressed record, and played a very simply outro piece which is what I ended up using.  The fadeout of that guitar bit ended up bookending very nicely with the short and fade in/out of the title track "Lost Weekend".

Of course, the real standout on "Ruin" is the child's voice intro of "...Daddy, why have you forsaken us?"  I had an idea of doing this short spoken word bit and my friend Terry (Terry #1, if you're keeping track) had a stepdaughter who seemed really outgoing.  He came over one day with her and her slightly older brother who was incredibly quiet, and after multiple attempts at trying to get the stepdaughter to do the bit, we realized it just wasn't working since the microphone was apparently making her really nervous.  At a loss, we then realized we had another child present in the room and sheepishly asked if he would be interested in giving it a shot, and much to our surprise he knocked it out in about 2 minutes with the perfect sad, melancholy tone that it required.  We were both quite ecstatic with the outcome and could hardly believe our luck.

The very last song that I wrote and recorded for the album was "After the Rain", a title that I believe I arrived at via a film that I watched at the time but then changed the words around slightly (and hence I can't figure out now what movie it actually was).  It's based on a very simple bossa nova beat on the drum machine, something I had never worked with before, and I believe I loosely got the idea for it from some instrumental album that I was listening to at the time, possibly something by Acoustic Alchemy.  It ended up being one of my favorite tunes and I think I recorded it a bit better than the rest of the album since I think I had a bit more confidence by that point.  I've always seen that song as one of the "singles" from "Lost Weekend", if you could imagine such a thing.

You may notice that film influences my musical endeavors quite a bit and that is no understatement.  Being a lover of cinema definitely has its advantages and no shortage of inspiration.

That's all for now.  If I think of anything else, I'll post it here as well.

Looking for a "Lost Weekend"

I'm off for the next 12 or so days and so I have entered mixing heaven, hopefully not mixing hell.  But seriously, it's going pretty well so far although I do have a few challenges that I'm tackling.  I've reentered the halls of what is known as "Lost Weekend", my first fully recorded album back from 2000 that's now getting a full remix and a bit of touch up without going too terribly 'George Lucas' on it.

A bit of history...  I started recording this album back in 1997, back when I had just purchased at very long last my first Alesis ADAT recorder, something I had been wanting for about 5+ years and couldn't afford.  I had been waiting to do any real recording for that exact moment since my explored excursions into recording on cassette multi-tracks seemed a complete waste of time, regardless of what some people back then said.  Cassettes had awful quality in general, let alone dividing up the thin tape into 8 segments for multi-tracking.  The end result was usually less than impressive (just listen to my "Halloween" music tape, for example.  Ugh).

Strangely, after already composing about 6 albums worth of material at the time, all vocal albums, mind you, I opted instead to record something completely new and foreign to me versus recording something already written.  Mistake?  Possibly.  It kind of all came about with a new song idea that I had that eventually became "Across the Desert", with this very heavy played strum on the acoustic guitar, and I decided to try "practice" recording that rhythm.  I liked it enough that I kept going with it.  Then, I blinked and had written and recorded "Interstate Blind", at least in its infant state, and I liked both tracks enough that I said to hell with it and moved forward with doing an instrumental album, something I knew absolutely nothing about.

It should be noted that I had not played a single lead EVER on guitar up until this point.  In fact, I commonly called myself a rhythm guitarist and had no aspirations to ever play leads, although I'm not entirely sure why.  I remember the anxiety that composing leads for this album gave me back then for I really was a pretty awful guitar player in general, looking back on it now.  I really didn't even know if I could do it or pull it off, hence the experiment.  And then, in very typical 'me' form, I upped the ante even more to make the album a sort of concept album with some very odd arty bits thrown in here and there.  It was all rather ambitious and I'm shocked that anything listenable even came out of it.

Listening to these songs today, I kind of marvel at them.  I'm actually impressed with the things I came up with back then, having no experience whatsoever with instrumental work or in recording albums in general.  I was about a year into the recording of the album when I realized that there was no way I could possibly get everything I wanted into 8 tracks, at least not without doing a bunch of bouncing of which I really didn't want to do (in hindsight, that was a good idea for I think remixing that would have been a total nightmare, if not impossible).  This meant that I had to table recording for awhile as I saved up cash, or really opened up credit on some credit card, to purchase a second ADAT machine that would then sync up to the first.  This gave me 16 tracks in total to work with and was exactly what I needed.  Some songs did have what I call "work" tracks where multiple things were recorded on the same track but used more or less just as effects, in other words not playing all the way through the song continuously.  These tidbits all had to be broken out in Pro Tools in order to do the remix.

Later on, "Lost Weekend" got transferred over to a Mackie MDR unit somewhere between 2002 - 2007 once that was my main recorder, and then it got transferred once more time to Pro Tools around 2011.  It's been sitting on my hard drive ever since, just waiting for the right moment to be remixed.

Other stories I can tell about "Lost Weekend" have to do with some of the oddities on the album.  For example, for the bird noises and such, I literally hung my AT4050 microphone out of my condo's sliding glass door and simply recorded the various noise in the neighborhood.  I was listening to that at a louder volume today and I was shocked at some of the weird things I could hear such as a couple yelling at one another, a parent yelling towards their child, various cars, and of course countless birds.  My friend Terry at the time was kind enough to help me out with the car noises and I recall using the same mic, hanging out the doorway, and I basically pressed the 'record' button, motioned to his wife to 'go', and then she motioned to Terry down the street who was sitting in his car, revving it and such.  He then drove the car by my condo as loud as he could, and thus that's how the moving car noise was done.

A different friend named Terry did the speaking parts on "Pleasure Oasis" and "Cantina".  I wrote out the various spoken parts for "Pleasure Oasis" and I recall her telling me that she went over the lines while sitting at home with her husband, who after hearing the gist of the dialogue promptly referred to it as "the porno song".  This still makes me laugh.  My friend Travis did the spoken word bits on "Interstate Blind" and I remember us laughing hysterically as we were doing the takes.  He seriously knocked it out of the park, and strangely I cannot remember for the life of me how I got that amazing distorted sound on his voice.  I wish I knew because it's perfect.

A girl I worked with named Tina did "...the grass is greener..." line on "Lost Highway" and also did some spoken bits on "Interstate Blind" that ended up not working, hence the bits recorded with Travis.  My friend Tim did some French speaking bits on "Parasite" but that didn't pan out either, and I instead recorded my own voice, most likely with that same mysterious distortion, saying "devour the parasite" (I would later on return to the French spoken word idea on the Defrost Nixon album) .  And then lastly, Terry #2's friend Saundra, who had done some professional singing, I believe, came over and did the singing part on "Pleasure Oasis".  I think she was beyond nervous for whatever reason and it more or less came through in the recorded takes.  I've since worked very heavily on trying to make that sound better for its one of the things on the album that I've never been super pleased with, and I blame myself because I wasn't very good at directing anyone back then.  I think I was just so grateful to have someone participate that I completely forgot that I needed to guide them.

What other tidbits can I share?  The title obviously comes a little bit from the movie of the same name but actually got into my head more from the David Lynch film "Lost Highway" which I had recently watched for the first time and loved.  The recurring driving theme in the film is what got the concept in my head, sort of mixed with some of the themes from the Marillion album "Afraid of Sunlight".  I think every single electric guitar part on the album was recorded directly through a Digitech 2112 unit that I had recently acquired and actually still own, although I haven't turned it on in probably 2 decades.  I was so nervous when "releasing" this album that I almost didn't do it for I was convinced that it was awful and that everyone would hate it.  Luckily, Travis talked me off the ledge and much to my surprise most people seemed to really like it.

Once the remix is fairly complete, I'm also going to dig out some old pics and start working on a new version of the CD packaging.  The "Mirror Land" EP will be released next and therefore I would think "Lost Weekend" may be out around mid to late summer.  It'll be interesting to see what it sounds like once I've got it all complete.

Decent

I had a pretty decent and productive weekend.  Mixing continues to get better, and I tried out another new plug-in earlier this week that I felt was a bit of a game changer.  Immediately after the trial of it, I was completely won over and promptly plunked down my money to buy the plug-in.  I'm doing everything I can to keep learning more and more about how to make things sound better.

I dare say that "Mirror Land" is basically ready to go now.  I worked all three tracks this weekend, adding the new plugin's and making various busses, etc., and I think they all sound pretty good.  I'm sure I'll tweak them a little here and there but I think they're done for the most part.  I cannot say enough about how "Optimism", the track that I like the most but sounded the worst, has turned around in the past weeks.  It sounded pretty bad still a few weeks ago but my re-working the mix and adding some plug-in's has really pulled it together.

I do have some release news at long last.  The new version of "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man" is being mastered this coming Friday, and provided I have all the artwork proofed and such, I should be able to submit the order for the CD's almost immediately.  It looks like the turnaround time right now on CD duplication is about 3 weeks so that means they should be in hand around June 15th.

I suspect that I'll be submitting the "Mirror Land" EP for mastering probably within the next 2-3 weeks as well.  Due to lack of funds, though, I probably won't get the CD's made until a few weeks after that.  I think we're looking at a mid to late July release for that one, and I do intend to post the digital downloads basically at the same time that I have the CD's so that there's no lag time.

In other news, I'm taking a week off in 2 weeks which will be nothing but mixing and some minor touch up recording.  My focus will solely be on the Defrost Nixon band album, which is already in progress really, and the long planned remix of "Lost Weekend".  Judging by how mixing is going for me in general these days, I actually think I'll have that one wrapped up by the end of June as well if not almost done by the end of my time off.  It would then be able to be released as soon as I have the funds to master and duplicate it.  For Defrost Nixon, I think we're looking at probably a September-ish release date for that one but it is a bit more up in the air due to the amount of work involved.  If I can stick to this schedule, though, I think I can easily manage to get the Wrecking Ball album done this year as well, and possibly a bit more, so things are progressing really well.

The bad news is that I haven't even picked up a guitar in like 2 weeks but that should be remedied fairly soon.  It's been a bit on the crazy side but I dare say that it's been rather enjoyable, and I'm greatly looking forward to getting these releases out there.

At Least Something is Getting Better

Mixing is going really well, I must say, and I'm quite excited by the material that should soon be released.  I had quite an amazing moment last night.  I literally was so excited that I almost started firing off emails to friends and such, wanting to say, "I FINALLY have an album that sounds professional!"  I mean, I was pretty damn ecstatic.  I even nearly danced.

I'm talking about the "Wrecking Ball" album.  Right now, I'm mainly focused on Defrost Nixon and finishing up the final touches for the "Mirror Land" EP, the latter which might finally be good to go (after a series of checks, double checks, various listens, etc.).  And so, that brought me to the next one on my agenda which is "Wrecking Ball".  I decided that I should pull up one of these tracks, one in particular that I've not been happy with the mix the entire time, and figured I should try some of the new techniques that I've recently learned and have been using to decent success.  This is what brought about my sudden joy, for with a few tweaks of some knobs, repositioning, and adding a new plug-in that I recently acquired, voila.  I mean, I nearly fell out of my chair.  At long last, THERE it is!  And so, then I went to another track, and another, and before you know it, at 11pm at night, I went through at least half the album and was beyond tickled with what I heard.  I had even forgotten that I had recorded some of this stuff, ironically, and even my playing and soloing brought a huge smile to my face.  I found it hard to go to sleep afterward, quite frankly.  I swear...if people don't like this album once it's released, I might just give up since it's easily my best vocal album to date, and it literally rocks (and I don't use that term really ever).

I know I've said it before but I'll say it again:  every guitarist needs a Fender Strat in their arsenal.  Shame on me for down talking about them for at least a decade or two for I did not know what I was talking about.  My Strat is my utility guitar for so much that it's ridiculous and almost everything I throw at it sounds amazing.  I also tend to use it for soloing, especially when I'm trying to get that Steve Rothery/David Gilmour haunting/echo and reverb filled tone.  There's just no better guitar for it, in my opinion, and the thing is just so damn versatile.  And, just to clarify...you need an American made Strat.  I don't say this out of some sort of American snobbery but more due to the fact that I first owned one from Japan and hence my misaligning of the guitar began.  I now simply have a Fender American Standard Strat and it cost me a whole $750 brand new at the time (my timing was great because they promptly went up right afterward).  Today, it would be the equivalent of what I believe is called the American Professional series, and while you won't get it for that amount any more, they're still rather reasonable and well worth the money.

I'll also make a shout out to a recent plug-in that I purchased from UA, the Thermionic Culture Vulture.  I have been using this thing all over the place and, while what it adds is certainly subtle, it's definitely a great plugin that I'm glad that I plunked the money down for when it was on sale last month.  Who knew that vocals, drums, and guitars needed this added distortion?!  Not me but now I'm a believer.

Mixing is certainly an interesting but often frustrating task to take on and I can't say enough how glad I am that I'm finally getting to a point where the whole process is coming together.  I guess 'better late than never', said the opsimath.

Names, EZDrummer 3, and TFF

One of the things that I wrestle with the most is how to name the different projects that I'm working on and/or plan to work on at some point.  I more or less refuse to fall "in line" with something that can really be branded, not because I'm stubborn but simply because my interest in music is fairly wide open.  I do instrumental music and vocal music, pop music and experimental, ballads and harder rock, some electronic, and even light jazzy stuff.  I'm pretty much all over the place.

So, how do you get fans when no one can ever get their head around what it is that you do?  That's exactly the question that I can't seem to answer.  Now, there are many artists out there who seem to do just fine with dabbling all over the place but then again they have a record label, promotions behind them, and so on.  When you have none of that, you tend to try to give people music that you think they might enjoy, and when your sound is all over the place, it just ventures into weird territory when you say something like "...listen to this one...no, not that one..."

As it is, I'm fairly convinced that using the "...the Jazz Machine" name was a bad idea.  Everyone automatically assumes and expects some jazz powerhouse playing and music, and then they hear me with my moody ambient instrumental stuff.  It would be funny if it wasn't for the weird looks it sometimes garners.

Oh well.  I guess if anyone has any bright ideas, feel free to float them my way.  In the meantime, I finally got around to a first listen of one of my most anticipated albums of this year, the new Tears for Fears album "The Tipping Point".  I'm fairly pleased overall and feel like 'they're back'.  In particular, the song "Rivers of Mercy" knocked my socks off a bit and took me right back to the very first time I ever heard Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes".  The whole thing brought a tear to my eye.  Brilliant stuff on both accounts.

In other news, "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man" is finally nailed down and will probably be submitted for mastering at the end of this week.  I must say that after hearing this revamped version quite a few times I may actually prefer it in the end.  Why?  I think the lack of the movie bits actually allows the listener to focus more on the actual song, and the new talkie bits, which aren't quite as overpowering, still have a quirky/funny aspect that makes me smile every time I hear it.  So, it may have taken forever but I think it worked itself out in the end.

Today also brought the release of Toontrack's EZDrummer 3 software release.  I opted in from the get go, simply because I use the software so much.  I didn't have a ton of time to play with it but my first dabbles seemed positive.  It looks like they put a lot more thought into how the product is organized, and that's good because the last version made my head spin sometimes and often left me mumbling obscenities under my breath.  I also saw some new features that made me rather excited.  I guess we'll see how it goes.

But of course...and Momix

I was really on a productive swing and it all came to a crashing halt this past week due to some useless/senseless drama in the workplace.  Sigh.  I'm trying to get myself put together again but it's amazing how these things can really affect your life.  I knew it was only a matter of time that something would knock me off of my productivity pedestal but this was about the last thing I saw coming.

I was trekking away at drum mixes, etc., though, and I was making pretty great headway.  I'll get back to it hopefully in the next couple of days, once I get a few things in order.  I absolutely have to get this "Mirror Land" EP out or I think I might just go insane.  Luckily, the artwork and all of that is pretty much ready to go.

In other news, I found someone who is willing to help me put out a video together for one of the "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" tracks which is really exciting.  I've been wanting to dabble in video anyhow but simply haven't had the time.  He's been really wonderful to work with and has literally ran with it so I'm thinking it'll be done fairly soon.  Once that occurs, I need to setup a YouTube account, etc., and then I'll forward on the link.

On the enjoyable side, we got to see the dance troupe Momix last night up in Long Beach for their latest creation of "Alice", loosely based on the story of "Alice in Wonderland".  I love Momix; I mean, I really love Momix, and I frequently refer to them as my "favorite dance troupe" which always seems to get a giggle from people.  I won't say that "Alice" was their best work but it was still quite fascinating and compelling, and I definitely recommend Momix to anyone who has the opportunity to see them perform.

We're also getting ready to start a fairly large home remodeling project.  It remains to be seen how much this will disrupt my productivity as well but I'm going to do the best I can to stay on target.  These sorts of projects always make me very nervous for a variety of reasons, especially given the scope of the work.  It looks like it'll be a 3-4 week project and I can already imagine how much noise and dust there will be.

That's it for me.  CD's for "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" will hopefully be sent out for printing fairly soon and I'll certainly keep everyone posted here once that happens.

Finally...

I finally had a productive weekend!  Yes, it's only taken me like 3 months to have one, I know...  I've been hard at work all weekend on my remaining tasks for the new edits on "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man", so that I can finally get the CD's printed, and then also worked on a radio edit from the same album ("I Miss You Most at Nighttime") since I may make an attempt at a video.  The radio edit was interesting since I've never done something like this before but I think it worked out okay.  I needed to cut about 3 minutes of material and basically chose at random.

I also finally got back to looking at "Optimism" from the incredibly overdue "Mirror Land" EP.  It's this song that's been really holding me up and it involved some deep diving into how to edit drums.  I learned a ton this weekend, more than I can say here, and it's been quite eye opening.  I had no idea editing real drums was so involved and truthfully I've had no experience up until now since I've basically used drum machines and programming my whole life.  I feel slightly enlightened and partially overwhelmed.  I can't say "Optimism" is done yet but I think I made great strides this weekend on it.  I would love to be able to wrap the "Mirror Land" mixes up in the next 30 days so fingers crossed.

I also started tinkering with the beyond overdue Defrost Nixon album.  This one is going to be interesting, and after doing a bit of research I realized it's most likely going to take some additional software.  I more or less figure that if I can get that album mixed and released successfully sometime this year I'll be looking fairly promising for future mixing.  It'll definitely be a learning experience, if nothing else.

In other news, I've taken in quite a few films over the past couple of weeks as well including some of the last on my list for 2021 (and ironically some of the best) including "Licorice Pizza", "The Worst Person in the World", and also "Nightmare Alley" which was surprisingly wonderful.  In music, Marillion's latest "An Hour Before It's Dark" has been my main play with a few jazz/instrumental albums on the side, including some of Jan Garbarek's work which I have to say I really quite like.

I've done a bit of toying with the new baritone acoustic but not a ton.  I do feel a solo acoustic album might possibly be brewing in my head, however.  I know...just what I need...more added to my list.  I must be out of my mind but I guess that goes without saying (sigh).