All that Fazz

My eye appointment this morning at the crack of dawn (well, to me, at least) went almost exactly as I had predicted:  there's currently no retinal tear, keep an eye on it (pardon the pun), and let them know if anything changes.  I swear that I could write the scripts for doctor related dramas.  As much as there isn't a tear right now, it could happen at any moment...but maybe not, if you're lucky.  Yes, it's very comforting.

On the plus side, my eye dilation didn't last all day so I was able to get back in the studio.  In fact, I think the tech actually missed getting the whole drop in my eyes, and given the situation I wasn't about to complain.  I have no idea why they have to give you so much of the fluid if they only need to look in your eye for no more than 30 minutes.  It seems absurd to be blind for hours when you only need 30 minutes worth.

I continued working on blueprinting "This Town's Not Big Enough (for You and I)" and spent a good 2-3 hours on it.  In the end, I think I got it all down and I'm liking the overall feel of the track.  I did an interesting bridge part that has a certain James Bond theme sound to it, and then over the top of that I wanted to play something very iconic Morricone styled, rather "Hang'em High" like but not exactly that riff.  The part I came up with sounds pretty good but it was interesting since it required that I stretch my fingers, from index to pinky, over 6 frets.  Given the fact that I have trigger finger going on in my pinky, it was an interesting thing to do but somehow I managed.  Of course, this is just the demo version but who knows...I might just use this part going forward.

It's pretty cool returning to the world of the Jazz Machine material and so far I'm really liking it.  Ironically, though, I'm still fighting internally with the actual name "the Jazz Machine".  I feel like I'm not doing myself any favors with that name, and basically anyone not into instrumental or jazz is immediately turned off by the name, and then true jazz people are equally annoyed since I'm not playing actual jazz (I tend to call this stuff "fazz" or fake jazz).  Maybe it should be the Fazz Machine?  No, that sounds kind of idiotic.  I don't know...I'm still pondering.  If I can come up with a better name, I may still rebrand it.

I also finally revisited the song "Across the Desert" from the "Lost Weekend" remix.  This is the track that I've had the most difficulty with remixing so far and I wanted to see if any of the newer techniques that I've more recently learned will help me out with the overall sound.  I think they helped a bit but I won't know for sure until I listen to it later.

It's hard to believe it's already Wednesday (sigh).  With only a few days off left, I have to really start thinking about what else I'd like to get out of this week.  Summer isn't looking too terribly promising for getting music done considering my Moh's procedures, eye issues, and everything else, so I really need to give this some thought.

We're in Manchester

No luck on getting an eye appointment today but I do have an appointment tomorrow morning at 7:20am.  Now, I usually don't get up that early on work days so...  Nothing like setting your alarm during your time off but, then again, it's for a pretty damn important cause.

I got off to a late start today, mainly with being on the phone to the doctor's office and other things.  It's pretty hard not to focus on an eye issue when you see it constantly.  Still, what can I do, and I must trudge onward, no matter how difficult.

I had a pretty good practice session today and I'm finally playing more up to speed.  My trigger finger is so far cooperating enough that it's not limiting me.  I have found that I need to keep that finger (and hand) pretty much in a half grasp shape all day long, or at least that seems to help.  The more flat you keep your hand the worse the issue seems to get.  Of course, when I'm asleep, I can't completely control my actions so there's always a bit of pain in the morning when I try to flex it.  Still, it's not getting in my way so far, thankfully.

I finished working on the bass for "Younger Days of Manchester" and just got done listening to what I've got so far on my stereo.  I'm pretty pleased and I think I got exactly what I was going for.  I don't know what it is about this song but it's been stuck in my head pretty much since I came up with the raw idea about 2 years ago.  It's really cool hearing it finally become real.  Next up will probably be the solos and such on that track but I'm not sure when I'll actually do that yet.

I also started working on the next song called "This Town's Not Big Enough (for You and I)".  I really like that title, and the song had a certain "Ghost Town" Bill Frisell vibe to me when I came up with it.  Since I had almost no time to prepare going into this recording week, this song still needs to be completely fleshed out and I usually don't spend recording week time doing these things.  I made a bit of progress on it but I'll have to revisit it tomorrow and see what I think.  I'm thinking I'm going to do a weird bridge in the track, maybe add some sound effects, etc., but nothing is for sure yet.

More tomorrow.  I need to go to bed so I can get up when the rooster crows...

A Find

I had another good day of mixing, working mainly on "Effects of Connection...", cleaning the tom tracks and other odds and ends.  Cleaning tom tracks has got to be the most mundane task of all recording tasks, and it's enough to make you want to gouge your eyes out after awhile.  Because of this, I pretty much never do more than 2 tracks of this nature in a day because I don't think frankly I could handle it.

"Effects..." is coming along well but I won't get too excited until I listen to what I've got on my stereo.  I think I've got a good mix going, though, so I guess we'll see.  If I have what I think I have, I may be able to wrap up this EP sooner than later.  I've said it before but I'll say it again...I love the Focal monitors, and they're truly night and day from what I had before.

I then had it on my agenda to revisit an older song of mine that I couldn't remember if I had actually recorded it last year.  After a bit of digging, sure enough, I did start the recording and decided to give it a listen.  I quickly applied some of the reverbs and EQ that I've been working on as of late and I felt like the song sounded pretty solid, at least as a starting point.  Now, what I'm going to do with this track is a completely different question...

It was then that I found a folder called "Live Acoustic" on my Mac.  Now, I've seen this folder before, mind you, but I always thought it contained the live acoustic tracks from my handheld recorder that I threw together one year as a so called Christmas Gift to some friends.  Upon going into the folder, though, it wasn't that at all...it was a series of 7 tracks that I recorded via ProTools in my basement using good microphones...AND all live.

So, I quickly applied some of my modern mixing approach to the track and I nearly fell out of my chair because...well...it sounded damn good!  I was in complete shock.  I barely even remember recording these tracks, to be honest, but I remember driving around in my car listening to them back in MN for a brief time.  I doubt I ever let anyone else listen to them, or maybe two people may have heard them at the most...not sure.  They were probably done not long after I switched to ProTools, especially based on how I had the sessions setup, and quite possibly to familiarize myself with using it.  So, after hearing one of these songs sounding fairly stellar, I went to the next one...and the next one...and the next one.  It was then that I asked myself, why have I not used/released these tracks?!  The thing that really got me was that they're live tracks, albeit live acoustic, mind you, and they still sound pretty great overall.

I'm going to bounce these songs to a flash drive this week and give them a whirl on my stereo as well.  If they sound as good as I think they do, and that's only with about 1-2 hours of fiddling with the whole lot, I may just release them as downloads on my Bandcamp.  Needless to say, I'm hopefully going to have somewhere between 2-4 mini releases fairly soon.

Next week I'm going to plunge head first into blueprinting the new Jazz Machine album tracks.  I probably won't solely work on these during my week off but I'd like to get as far with them as possible.  3 of the tracks are demos that I did right when I was finishing up "...Miss You Most..." so they've been sitting around for a little while.  I also stumbled upon a demo for a song idea, in a completely different folder, mind you, that's based around some loops that sound very Joachim Cooder-ish and hence I named it as such.  In revisiting it today, I'm pondering if I could use this on the new Jazz Machine album.  It's not what I originally intended, mind you, but could be doable, and if so it would be quite different.  I guess we'll see.

Mix Me

I finally got around to digging into some mixing this weekend which was a welcomed thing.  It's funny...the more I go along, the more I actually like mixing, and I guess it's just a matter of getting more comfortable with the process, understanding the wide scope of what you're trying to achieve, realizing your options, etc.  After dabbling with having Peele work on "Effects...", I'm not sure that I'm even going to consider outsourcing any mixing in the near future since I feel like my mix for the song is better than what he had.

I've made a decent amount of progress on drums lately and I purchased two pieces of software that have so far really helped.  Fiddling with them this weekend proved both interesting and kind of fun, and the whole process now shows a lot more promise than before.  I'm also poking around for different mic techniques for recording my guitars.  It's amazing how, if you read 3-5 articles, everyone will tell you something completely different, and sometimes even completely contradict one another.  No wonder this stuff is hard to get your head around.

I also think I made a decision about "Yet I Tried for You", the song that I worked on with Seth Tiven.  This is the one that MWP wanted to basically throw out and then rerecord in a pro studio, and to be honest that just didn't sit well with me since it's actually one of the best sounding recordings I've gotten so far.  And so, I think I'm going to NOT put that on list to work on with Marty, and instead I'm thinking I'm going to release it as yet another 2 song EP, possibly backed with a newer song called "Gettin' By" which is kind of an off shoot of the Wrecking Ball album.  I'm going to instead think about writing 1-2 new tracks for the Marty project so that I can preserve what I've got so far.  The beauty is that "Yet I Tried for You" is fairly far along in mix quality so I just need to work through Seth's parts in order to make the track sound rather full and then possibly add a couple simple elements to fill it out.

In other news, I guess it finally all caught up with me...I have multiple spots on my head and face of skin cancer.  Ah, yes, I always knew this would come back to bite me.  I've probably had about 1-2 dozen really bad sunburns in my life where most of my head was burnt, normally due to something not of my own fault, like going to lunch with coworkers and having them decide to sit outside...and not having a hat available.  Yeah.  I'm apparently going to spend every Wednesday this summer at the dermatologist's office getting these removed and it sounds like it's going to be a real blast, meaning scarring, etc.  If nothing else, I'll probably look more tough once it's over.

Also, I just got word that my white with black trim Rickenbacker is finally done and I need to pick it up this week.  I'm curious to see what it looks like for the guy working on it made it sound like the color match and finish repairs would be completely unnoticeable.  I'll post a pic if I remember.  As for my amp head, it's still sitting in the shop in MN and I've had a heck of a time getting Jeff at Savage to get this both fixed and back to me.  Luckily, I wasn't planning on using it for my upcoming recording week.

The TV in the family room also finally took a dive back in early March.  After waiting 5-6 weeks for it to be repaired, and watching an old 40" in the meantime, the TV was deemed not fixable and so I had to spring for a new one.  The only good news is that the resolution on the new TV is considerably better than the previous, as is the sound through the speaker, but I now have an old non-working TV sitting on my patio since it's not exactly easy to get rid of a 65" TV.  Luckily, it's a flat panel and you barely notice it.  You'd think as a society that we'd have a better method of getting rid of and/or recycling these things but...  It has been nice getting back to regular "movie nights", though, and they just weren't that great when having to watch the 40".