It was time to return back to work after having 2 weeks off. My time off was fairly productive but I don't have anything huge to report, unfortunately. My first week off left me in a rather bad mood, and then by the second week it was a bit too late to be super productive. Still, I made decent progress on the "Lost Weekend" tracks and worked through all of the drums on the Defrost Nixon album except for one, of which I plan to do over the next couple of days. I will say that the Defrost Nixon album will need a ton of guitars re-recorded and quite a few vocal touch-ups as well, not to mention just some additional instrumentation here and there.
I actually stayed away from the "Mirror Land" EP in the end. I'm not sure that was a brilliant idea but I did revisit it tonight and was pleasantly surprised by my latest mix of the title track and the third track. "Optimism" still seems to have issues and I've finally decided to just try to re-record the main guitars this weekend. I'm actually pondering if the 12 string electric should really be a 6 string in the end. I guess we'll see. I also want to work on the drums a bit since I finally now have a better sense on how to do that. It seems that you need to not run a gate before the Trigger 2 software for it doesn't appear to like it much. I'm not sure what video I watched that recommended doing that but it ended up not being the greatest advice in the world and took me awhile to figure out what the issue was.
Bass boominess is getting better but now I'm starting to worry that I'm washing out the bass a bit too much. Ugh. It's a constant struggle. I guess until you're really extremely well versed in mixing everyone must constantly deal with these emotions, especially when it's your own material that you're working on. I could see how if it was someone else's song that I might not feel quite as invested in it.
I'm also slowly making my way through the Spirit Award films and other 2022 releases. It's nice to be back in movie mode again. The thing that I love about being in SoCal or anywhere warm during the winter is that there's so much to look forward to right after Christmas. For example, the Spirit Awards usually start somewhere during the break and run until early February, and then the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament runs for 2 weeks shortly after that in early to mid March. I used to despise the months of January through pretty much April in the Midwest but SoCal is quite different in that way. In some ways, the spring is now my favorite time of year when it comes to activities.
I also received the 1988 white with black trim Rickenbacker 360 today. I'm fighting over it mentally since it has one decent sized chip in the paint right in the front of the guitar, right where your arm rests. It's that kind of thing that usually bugs me. There's also a large chip on the headstock as well as a small crack in the finish near the pickups, along with multiple surface scratches on the front and back. Overall, it's in pretty good condition for its age but I'll admit that I was hoping for better. The case is fairly immaculate, though, and I guess that's saying something. I'm thinking of calling Guitar Center tomorrow to see if I can get some money taken off of it due to the blemishes. I have only 3 days to decide whether or not I want to keep it so I have to figure this out rather quickly.
In the meantime, I've been fighting with my main "player" guitar amp, a Savage Schatten, for it doesn't seem to be working correctly. It's almost brand new, been used for probably about 1 hour total since I got it 6 years ago, but for some reason it seems to be missing the very high end frequencies. A guy locally said it needed new tubes which makes close to no sense to me but I went with it...and it doesn't really sound any different, in my opinion. So, I have a feeling it'll be sent back to Savage in MN for evaluation, and with the price of shipping these days it's kind of frightening.
I finally put away "Penguin" and have moved on to Devo's "Freedom of Choice". I know, a strange next choice, no? I really did like "Penguin" quite a bit and I personally don't know why it's considered a bit of a clunker for I dare say that I may like it even better than the former albums. I know...sacrilege. I have learned that I am truly a Bob Welch fan and I really had no idea. I don't know what it is exactly about his writing and sound but I definitely dig it.
No comments:
Post a Comment