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.