I decided to only tackle one at a time and I do know that I was working heavily on "Effects..." before I was forced to take a break. I cracked open that track, made the adjustments based on my notes from the last time I had listened, and then of course did a couple more minor tweaks. I spent a lot of the weekend just playing around with the short delays on main vocals so I decided to apply a bit of what I had learned.
Next, I cracked open "Two Step", even though I had previously thought of it as done and complete. Since learning about high shelving plus the delay/vocal thing, I figured what the hell, I might as well tinker. I actually spent over an hour on this track because I was having difficulty with it sounding decent in mono, and I'm not sure how much I had worked that aspect of it beforehand. By the time I was done, I thought, oh god, I just made it probably 10 times worse. Oh well, if so...simply revert to the previous version. Nothing to lose.
I also opened the radio edit of "As Evening Brings Tears" to see where that was at. I had a few previous notes of what to change and then again made a few additional tweaks.
Lastly, I decided to start poking around the "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" tracks for whatever reason, the redux mixes that I never finished. I opened "Queen Elvis" and I dare say that my jaw hit the floor. Why? Well, first off, it was a rather old mix but the way I had it setup in the session was contrary pretty much to everything I do today. So, what was the issue? The issue was...it sounded brilliant as is. I mean, completely brilliant. Was this the first time I was listening since buying the Focals? Not sure. And so, I did add a few minor tweaks and high shelving, some busses, that sort of thing, but opted not to mess with the reverbs really at all even though everything is running through one Plate verb which is pretty much unheard of for me. Still, it sounded brilliant...so don't mess with it. Big gulp.
I then opened up a variety of other sessions but didn't do any actual mixing. I figured it was time to poke around and such. I also worked slightly on the new Caution Children track, trying to get the session setup correctly and begin dabbling with the arrangement. Every time I opened another track, I tried dabbling with the vocal delay thing, just to get more exposure to it. I must say that it works freakin' brilliantly and I highly recommend it although the high shelving is really what I was missing for the past X number of years in my mixes, dare I say decades.
The thing that really blew me away, though, is that most of the "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" songs sounded pretty good, and they only need a tweak or new track here and there. What I mean to say is I could TOTALLY finish this now without it being a huge ordeal. Wait...did I just say that out loud?! What AM I thinking??! You have to understand, folks, that I have never felt this way about any of my stuff, so this simply means I AM getting better at mixing. I now have proof! Oh my gosh...I could actually start being productive after all!
I just got done listening to the 4 bounced tracks and every one of them sounded pretty much ready to go. I wrote down a couple of tweaks on each but we're talking super minor things, nothing to fret over. I'm a bit stunned. You mean..."Effects..." might really come out this year yet?! Well, hopefully this small bit of confidence doesn't spark some other new health disaster. Aye.
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