A Plan

My Saturday night listening was pretty positive so I was mildly excited.  It's always a good feeling when things are working as you'd hoped.

Sunday was spent...wait for it...basically reopening the lid on the "Mirror Land" EP tracks and starting over yet again.  Yes, this is probably the 5th time I'm starting over on the mixes, although admittedly it's not completely from scratch.  I've picked up so many new mixing techniques in the last year, trying to fill in some gaping holes in my work, that I knew I was pretty much going to have to start again when the time came.  Mixing is kind of like a Jenga puzzle; if you move one block, well, pretty much everything is out of whack again anyhow so starting over just made the most sense.

It actually took me 2 hours per song to get everything rerouted, setup, labeled, played around with, etc., in the first two mixes.  I certainly knew going into it that these mixes wouldn't exactly come out the other side "done" but the goal here is to make things cleaner, clearer, and fatter than before.  In listening to the tracks later that evening, I accomplished it in most arenas while overdoing it in some others.  I guess it's to be expected.

I was actually blown away by the vocal sound on "Optimism".  Wow.  I need to write down how I got this tone because it's pretty interesting, and this was the main track that I was fighting with the vocal on for months and months.  I feel like I might be onto something here with these settings, albeit a bit bizarre.

"Only With You" ended up being a bit overdone with the new compressor, basically squashing the heck out of the acoustics and giving the track way too much high end.  It's funny how these frequencies affect your ear, literally to the point of annoyance so that's all your brain focuses on.  The vocal on this track continues to give me issues but I'm going to try and borrow some of the techniques from "Optimism" to see if I can finally wrangle it in.

I also did another mix of "As Evening Brings Tears" for the radio edit version, trying to tame the bass slightly, something I should have done with the original mix.  The song is definitely brighter now, which is good, and once the bass is sitting a bit better I think it'll be ready to roll.  I'm arguing with myself if I need to lower the kick drum (the answer is probably 'yes').

It's now the middle of September but I'm going to try, and provided I stay on it it should be doable, to get the 2 EP's and most if not all of Defrost Nixon done by 12/31.  It'll be a ton of work but that's my goal.  If nothing else, I want these 2 lingering EP's off of my back at long last.  Wouldn't that be nice.

Maybe Mixing Isn't So Bad...?

I was of course gone all last weekend and a few days before, and then I had yet another Mohs on Wednesday so today was the first time I could actually fire up the Mac/ProTools and see where I left off.  I started by editing the parts I did on "Never Say Never" last week, the ones that I literally finished in a hurry and shortly after headed out to the airport.  Sometimes, when you "record and run", the results are a bit disappointing once you return but these seemed right on target.

I bounced "Never Say Never" first but I still have to listen to the results.  Next, I did a new pass on "The Worst Salesman Ever", creating a few new busses and trying to clean things up a bit.  I'll be highly interested in listening to the results of both tracks, something I'll probably do in about an hour.

Next, I did some investigating on "The Effects of Connection".  Basically, the song is ready to go except for some minor boominess that's occurring only during the pre refrains.  And so, I did a bit of digging, something rather new for me, and made an attempt at trying to correct it.  I'm not sure how I lived before I got the EQ with the visual readout.  I mean, my goodness...that was like working in a hole, never knowing what the heck you're trying to do.

I then decided to dig up a handful of in progress acoustic tracks, mainly ones that I know I wasn't pleased with after the initial recording, and wanted to see if I could mix them enough to make them go from thin sounding to full and satisfying.  The results were fairly positive and I dare say that I'm just starting to really get the hang of this mixing thing.

Last up was finally working on the "radio edit" (really, the "video edit") for "As Evening Brings Tears" from the "...Miss You Most..." album.  The video has been done for quite a few months but I've been dragging my feet on getting the radio edit locked down.  It ended up being good because I could again use some of the new techniques that I've discovered over the past 6-12 months to see just how well they work.  My initial test and review was also positive.

I'll probably start working on a few other Defrost Nixon tracks tomorrow and maybe even do a bit of light "fill in" recording since I still have the mic's setup.  I'm not sure how possible it is to get this album fully mixed and ready for release by the end of the year but it may actually end up being close, that is if I stay on it.  It would be a huge win for me to get both this and the "Effects of Connection" EP out.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yep, 'Never"

I'm way behind on keeping up with this blog.  My intent was to make an entry every single night of the past week after daily recording was done but I simply didn't have the time.  I wish I could figure out how to add about 4 hours to each day.

Recording actually went pretty well this week.  As previously stated, I worked on Defrost Nixon corrections, mainly three tracks that have been giving me issues for the past 12 years.  One of them ended up being a fairly simple fix but the other two took some time.

I spent a heck of a lot of time just working on guitar tone, something I haven't done well in the past.  I have to say that guitar tone does seem to be key in many circumstances, with the old "if it doesn't sound good going in, it's not going to sound good coming out" perspective.  You can do a lot with EQ but you can't always fix all around bad recordings, apart from re-recording, which is of course how I even got here in the first place.

"Usurper" happens to be the opening track so it's pretty important, of course, and it's a song I really like and always have.  We used to practice this one a ton and it always sounded good live but getting it to sound full on the recording has been a real challenge.  I decided to try something new...using the compressor in the guitar chain, thinking that might help, and so I went with that.  It's still TBD if that was a good choice or not.  From here, I need to work on adding keyboards because I think that's the missing element.

Next, I turned to "Never Say Never", what I'd call one of the "singles" on the album, so again it's a fairly important track.  This main guitar part has been a mega thorn in my side for years because I either a) don't get enough power from it or b) the riff gets lost in the distortion on the guitar.  I tried different settings, different guitars, and on and on.  What I ended up with after all of that testing and such was a wall of distorted mess.  More on that later.

"The Worst Salesman Ever" was the easiest re-record since I knew exactly what I was looking for.  One key element, though, was that I quickly learned that I can NOT use the compressor in the chain since the dynamics get lost.  Whoops!  Well, I always learn the hard way, of course.

I also did a bunch of mixes and some minor riff work on "The Effects of Connection", the damn EP song that was supposed to be out last December that Peele initially was mixing.  I'm happy to say that I think I finally got it, and I'd dare say that it sounds way better than Peele's last mix.  Hold on to your hats...but I probably will have at least one minor release before the year is up.

After listening to these songs quite a few times, analyzing them, and so on, I finally realized that I needed to re-record the guitar on "Never Say Never" yet again.  I think I'm up to maybe #5 now?  Yeah, it's that ridiculous, and even worse I ran out of time and had to do it on Thursday just before heading to the airport in order to head to MN.  Talk about pressure.  I simply carved out an hour's worth of time and ran through it cold.  Hell, I can play the part in my sleep at this point...

After that, I quickly packed and headed to the airport with the intention of letting all these songs just sit over the weekend and revisiting next week.  I think I might have gotten a good enough sound finally for "Never Say Never" but who knows.  I guess we'll see.  Regardless, it was a fun recording week but very stressful due to time constraints, and unfortunately I wasn't really able to see any of the US Open in a comfortable manner.  Oh well...

Finally...Back at It (Whatever 'It' Is)

Ah, finally...  It's seemed like forever that I've a) picked up a guitar or b) spent any time at all in my studio this summer.  After having a fairly productive Memorial Day weekend/week off, I've basically spent almost no time whatsoever in my studio all summer, which also doubles as my own personal space.  It's nice to be back 'home'.

Of course, it won't be for long since I have at least 2 more Mohs procedures on the very near horizon.  Still, I'm going to try and manage my time better from here onward.  The year is fast approaching its close and I once again have nothing to show for it, and I'd love to change that if at all possible.

My recording week this time around is going to be cut short due to a trip out to MN to see the John Zorn 70th birthday fest.  I caught the 50th and 60th in the past, and both of them were quite memorable and extraordinary, and hence I'm making the trip out to MN for this one.  It'll actually be my first time back since leaving 7 years ago.  All I can say is thank goodness it's not being held in the middle of winter.

Recording week started at a decent pace but it's so far been more of a mixing versus recording week.  Since I don't have a ton of time, it just made sense to work on the Defrost Nixon corrections, all of which have been sitting around for over a decade at this point.  The likelihood of wrapping up this album by the end of the year is starting to look grim but I guess I'll at least give it a shot.  I'd love to have this one released and over with as a Christmas present to myself.

I began by catching up on where I left off and so Day #1 consisted of a lot of that, bouncing some mixes, listening, taking notes, etc.  I was less than pleased with the couple of mixes I heard on Saturday night.  And so, yesterday, I did a bit of research and found an EQ technique that I decided to try, and in last night's listening it seemed like it might have done the trick for the issue I was having.  Well, I'll be a monkey's unc...  At this point, I've grown immune to personal shaming in learning of 'new' things that are just technique I haven't used before, and I refuse to really beat myself up any more over it.  In the end, all that really matters is that the work gets done.

There's a lot of internal debate going on in regards to which guitar parts should or need to be rerecorded, and whereas you'd think that's an easy decision, it isn't always.  For the moment, I'm still fighting with what I've got already and I'm going to make one more mix to see what they sound like, but if it doesn't cut the mustard, per se, I'll be getting out the Rick tomorrow and rerecording.  If this happens, it's fine; it's just one part on 2 songs, after all, and if it sounds better then it's worth it.  These parts just happen to be the main guitar on each song so they are rather important.

More later!  I'm just getting ready to start the day as I type this.