I ran so late last Sunday that I literally didn't even edit the work that I did, and I more or less just made notes and closed the sessions. So, the first thing on my agenda this weekend was to go over what I had done in a blind panic and hurry. A bit to my surprise, pretty much everything that I had worked on the previous weekend in a rush was usable, although I did change directions on a couple items.
I think my production skills have greatly improved because in the past I would simply keep beating my head against the wall, trying to get some elusive perfect take for something. These days, my head instead asks, "Wait, since this isn't immediately working...is there a different way to use this?" Thus was one of the backing tracks from last weekend, where it wasn't really working to my tastes but I instead decided to try a completely different idea which I ended up kind of liking. I did end up recording a new take of the part today, only because one of the notes in the line was slightly off and the portion ran just a bit too long, but it was literally only a few minutes of work.
I listened to this set of 8 tracks from the album for the first time yesterday since reworking them. These are basically the songs I worked on over the break and I try not to listen to songs on my stereo before they're really put together. And so, last night brought about that initial listen and, to be very honest, I was slightly disappointed. Ah, but the good news, again, I'm getting better at this, and I made very good notes and I had a pretty strong sense of where the issues were. And so, today, I reworked all the mixes from my notes and listened again, and now we're in the ballpark. So, to reiterate...2 passes is all it took to get us close to a finished mix. If you've been following along with my trials and tribulations for the past 20+ years, you'll know that this is pretty much unheard of for me, so again I'm getting better at this at very very long last.
In fact, I'm confident enough at this point that I just penned some deadlines for myself. Now, the real trick is to stay on task for doing the actual work. That's what usually gets me, whether it's life's distractions, health items, or simply being exhausted after work and getting into a bad rut. If I can manage to keep my head in this, there's really no reason why I can't get this work completed reasonably on schedule. I guess we'll see.
If things do go well, I have an incredibly busy year planned out for catching up. It would be brilliant if I can stick to it. Fingers crossed.
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