The Fish Swims...Sort of

My annual Thanksgiving week off started quite well but as usual ran astray.  Mixing the "...Fish" album was going very well during the beginning of the week, and one track is officially done with probably 2-3 only an iteration or two behind.  There are definitely some problem tracks, not to mention some that were put aside purposefully due to a larger amount of necessary reworking, but mixing for the most part remained positive.

I usually take actual holidays off, in this case Thanksgiving day, as well as the day after Thanksgiving, just to kind of have some relaxation time.  And then, I received awful news from a friend that you basically never ever want to hear, and I have yet to really get my creative or productive self in motion again.  I won't go into details because I don't believe these things belong online, of course.  Regardless, it was hard to simply turn on the gear and start plugging away as if nothing had happened.

I know I'm going to kick myself next week for not pushing through and being productive but, well, sometimes you just crash, for lack of a better term.  Today is Sunday and my last day off before restarting work tomorrow and so I'm faced with the dilemma of trying to restart things, even though they're going to stop later tonight regardless, or simply blowing off today as well.  I'm contemplating a bit of both; maybe looking at a couple of mixes but also venturing out to the La Paloma Theatre at 2pm for a showing of "Stop Making Sense".  Would you believe that I've never seen this film?  Well, I was never really a huge fan of the Talking Heads so that's why I wouldn't have watched the movie in my younger days but have developed an interest in them over the years.  I guess we'll see if I do in fact venture out.

I guess the good news is that I also take 2 weeks off over Christmas so I have more time ahead of me for music.  Still, I was hoping to have "...Fish" almost wrapped up by then so that I could instead focus on Defrost Nixon.  Sigh.  This has pretty much been the way of 2023.

I was also dabbling with the idea of purchasing another Lowden acoustic, two of which are more or less on Reverb.com right now at "reasonable" prices (I say that term very loosely because Lowden's are super pricey in general).  I ended up talking myself out of it, at least for the moment.  Money is tight, mainly wrapped up in endless housing projects that are on the horizon, and so the idea of shelling out quite a few dollars for a guitar that I don't need seems not the wisest choice.

That's the news for now on the music front.  I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend.

Nobody Likes a Fish

I've been hitting the mixes for the past couple of days, mainly the "...Fish!" redo's.  I've already said it two or three times but I'm incredibly shocked by how well these tracks already sound in their redone mode and I probably should have wrapped this up a few years ago.  Having said that, my mixing technique is way better now so maybe it's not so bad that I waited.

The "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" album was originally released around 2009, I believe, and was met with incredibly poor reception.  It didn't really shock me because I wasn't very happy with it either, and after a few listens I myself thought it was near unlistenable.  The whole idea at the time was to record something quickly after the TFTO fiasco, basically to try and prove to myself that I could both do it and also that it could actually be done with the gear I had.  Rather than "ruin" another set of originals, I opted for an album of Robyn Hitchcock cover tunes, songs that I had always wanted to record anyhow.  In this manner, if it was total trash, well, who cares (well, sort of).

I had barely released it when I started working on the redo's.  It was the first time that I had ever submitted anything for mastering so I had no idea how much that process would improve the mixes.  Much to my dismay, it didn't help much at all, in fact it just made badly mixed and put together songs sound concrete.  The whole thing was very depressing, to the point that I vowed that I'd fix it.  And thus, yet another backlogged project was born.

Ironically, the original release was fairly on target time-wise.  I think it only took me a year or two from start to finish, which is probably the part that I should have dwelled on at the time since TFTO took up to 8 years and was never actually officially released.  In any event, I looked at the whole album and started making notes about what I would change.  When I originally recorded it, my intent was to keep it simple on purpose; it ended being the wrong approach.  I also wanted to try mixing an album fairly dry, getting away from the heavy reverbs I always liked.  That also backfired and instead I realized that my preference is, well, my preference, making things much more lush.

The idea of rereleasing this album will probably spark zero excitement due to what the original sounded like but, ironically, I think once people hear this version their opinion will greatly change.  Still, I may do some reworking of the track list here and there, of which I just started fiddling with a couple hours ago.  In general, I think these mixes will be done very quickly since there's not a ton that needs to be tweaked.  I suspect I may only have to do 3-4 passes on each which would certainly be a new record for me.

In general, I really like these tracks, hence my pushing forward.  I now have to think about what I'm actually going to do with this album, though.  To release it on CD, which would be my preference, might cost quite a bit due to the cover song royalties.  There are certainly equal royalties due for online downloads but they're much more easy to control since you pay a little at a time.

I had asked a friend of mine to come up with an outfit for a version of the big mouth bass doll so that it looked like Elvis.  I asked her to do this about a decade ago, of which she completed it fairly quickly.  The fish has been sitting in my room ever since, still waiting to be photographed.  Maybe at last it'll see the light of day and we can change people's opinions of "the Fish".  One can only hope.

Never Really Done

I did another round of mixes today on the 4 tracks that I was working on/looking at 2 weeks ago.  The good news is that all 4 are done; the bad news is that at least 3 of the 4 are going in the red on certain tracks so I have to readjust all the levels accordingly.  When doing this, it usually throws things off again slightly, which means probably 2 more round of mixes on those songs.

I have yet to really figure out how to simply lower all the levels properly in ProTools.  There is an "All" group, which I've tried, but that lowers literally everything, including even the Auxes.  In my simple tests, it also threw off the levels slightly.  I usually lower all the levels manually that aren't Auxes and that aren't busses but this also tends to have a minor affect on the overall sound.  There has to be an easy way to do this but I'll be damned if I can find it.

Once that's done, then I move on to the next round of crazy which consists of double checking the mono mixes, putting in finishing touches like fade outs and such, and then listening to the mix on multiple systems.  Once all that passes, it's ready for mastering.  If you're following along, you can probably tell that this all can take awhile as well.  And, of course, then I can spend a few hours on artwork.

The other bit of bad news is that I really wanted "The Effects of Connection" EP completed in its entirety by Xmas, meaning mastered, printed, and so on.  Now, if I worked really diligently and such, and I got a bit lucky, I could maybe...just maybe...meet that date.  It would take a lot of work, though, and it would be fairly stressful.  Would I make it?  Honestly, not likely, and therefore I don't think I'm going to put myself through that pressure.  Hell, I've waited this long so...

Besides the "Effects of Connection" EP, I think I have the radio edit version of "As Evening Brings Tears" finally done as well, which means that it can be synced with the video once it's been mastered.  That's been a long time in the making as well.

The last track in the group is one song from the "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" redux, and I must say that it sounds pretty damn good, way better than the original.  And so, I guess I'm opening that vault again as well.  The mixes in general have been going better so hopefully that's a trend that continues.

Since my eye is still recovering, I've not been working terribly hard at this stuff, mainly because my bad eye seems to throb with tremendous pain most evenings now.  It's hard to push through it, plus I feel that looking at a computer screen isn't helping much either.  Still, I'll get done what I can and keep pushing forward when my body permits me to.

With these four tracks done in the preliminary stage, I can now once again go back to the "Mirror Land" tracks.  The last time I worked on them, I was trying a new compression plugin on the acoustics and I pretty much feel that it ruined each mix so it'll be either removed or softened.  Apart from that, I still hope to get these completed by the end of the year as well.  One can only hope.