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.