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).
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