Closing Time is Always Hard

Well, I'm at least not listening to "The Effects of Connection" EP 100 times a night anymore, and thank goodness.  I was about to go completely crazy.  I was frantically trying to track down the "issue" a couple weeks ago and I literally spent every evening upstairs after work listening to the tracks over, and over, and over.  It was quite ridiculous.

Now, the bad news...  I still have not resubmitted the tracks for mastering BUT the plan is to send them tomorrow night.  I did one more minor tweak today which I believe is the last one (fingers and toes crossed, and possibly eyes as well).  I will say, if nothing else, this has been a very good yet difficult learning experience, and I did actually fix every known issue that I can.  Now, there are issues I can't really fix, to be honest, but I'm not going to tell you about those because, well, you probably won't even notice them.

I pretty much knew that I would have to learn how to mix my vocals the hard way since I've primarily been doing instrumental work for so long.  That's the downside of instrumentals, mind you.  It's weird but it is a completely different animal in more ways than one.  In any event, I think I finally figured out what I have to do with my vocals, and along the way learned about 12 other tricks that I can keep in my back pocket.  Learning is good, of course, but I just wish it wasn't so dang painful at times.

I'm actually back to working on "Mirror Land" again, and provided that my vocal techniques hold up, maybe, just maybe this one can get wrapped up in the next two weeks.  One can hope, right?  I wouldn't stake my life on it, mind you, but hope is something I can risk.  And, that's the new for now.  I'll post again hopefully in a couple of days with the masters in hand stating that the songs have finally been posted.

Yet Another One of "Those" Weekends

Believe it or not, I've been fighting with "The Effects of Connection" mixes literally every night since first turning it in for mastering, now about two weeks ago.  It ended up that fixing the issue with the drum track in "Two Step" brought a whole 'nother slew of issues to light, and I've been working on those ever since.  I've now lost count of how many hours I've put into these mixes just since thinking they were "complete".

Having said that, I spent another fairly full day working them today and listening to tests, etc.  I finally got my head around what the actual issue was about two days ago and it didn't end up being at all what I thought it was.  I still can't explain it but it seems to be caused by sibilance, and this is very strange because I didn't think this particular track had any issues in that department.  It ends up that I learned something yet again the very painful way.

I'm hoping to turn in the new mixes either tomorrow night or Tuesday, at the very latest.  I simply have to be done with this, and by now I've exhausted every avenue I can so it's just going to be what it is.  It's one of those deals where I could spend the whole year tinkering with them and it just isn't bloody worth it.

I'm hoping to get back to other mixes tomorrow at long last.  Pretty much everything has been on the back burner since I've been in emergency mode.  Provided no more disasters occur, "The Effects of Connection" EP should finally be released by next weekend.  One can only hope.

I've Got the Mastering Blues

Another busy weekend, still working on the same #$%&'in mixes.  Sigh.  But, alas, I'm uploading new versions right now and I think (keyword = "think") these are the "ones".

Greg, the mastering engineer, actually did a great job with what I gave him on Friday.  He did, however, email me a bit of a WTF email, pointing out some issues in the mixes.  One of the issues I did actually know about but made a rather dumb assumption, basically that it was unfixable, and so I hadn't paid any attention to it last week.  It turns out, though, I had done a boost along the way via EQ and that was why it was so very out of whack now.  Duh.

The other issue I was minorly aware of but had written it off as normal.  Well, folks, it's all a learning process, but of course I hate to waste Greg's time while I'm learning the process.  He's a rather nice guy, though, and patient, so hopefully he won't charge for me for a do over.

Other than that, I did get around to doing a fresh mix on the "Mirror Land" EP which is definitely coming along.  I'd like to say that it should be ready for mastering in 2-3 weeks, depending upon how well I stay upon it.  Once "...Effects..." is officially done, I should be able to give my full attention, no doubt.

I'm going to be very honest; I'm actually amazed that these tracks for "...Effects..." sound as good as they do.  I have a feeling 10 years down the road that I'll look back on this and say, "I have no idea how I made it sound even that good."  Hmph.

Mastering Delay

Just a quick update since I didn't get around to posting this weekend.  I had a choice of going through basically 4 different people for mastering "The Effects of Connection" and I had decided to try someone new, basically since mastering in general is still a bit of a black box and I don't fully understand what I should expect from the process.  I made a choice on a mastering engineer based only on word of mouth from someone that I don't know/have never met, but upon reaching out to the engineer himself, he seemed like a good fit theoretically and he was more or less local.

I delivered the mixes maybe 2 weeks ago?  I've lost count, sorry.  In any event, the first crack at it was pretty horrendous to me and also raised a couple red flags.  Now, I'm not going to make any judgements about his actual work or experience because like I said above the whole process is still a bit of a black box in my viewpoint.  And so, I made some adjustments to the mixes and we did a round 2.  It was better but after listening to it over the weekend, coupled with a few details about the master itself that seemed just odd to me, I decided to pull the plug and instead book a session with the guy/company that I previously had gone through.

Mastering engineer #1 was okay with that but ended up taking a third crack at the mixes just for the hell of it.  This time around it was pretty good but there were still minor things that seemed alarming, not to mention items that I couldn't quite get my head around, such as why certain elements of the mix were being blown out of proportion.  On top of it, I also couldn't wrap my head around how I could possibly plan in my mix for these things since they sound fine in my version, and it's only the mastered version that has the issue.  It more or less made me question both his process and gear, to be honest.

Long story short, I have a session booked with my usual engineer for this Friday.  I decided to make a few tweaks in the mixes, simply based on the previous rounds and because I had the time and ability to do so, but that's pretty much where we're at.  I believe I'll have round one of the masters back late on Friday so we'll see if this take flies.  If so, the EP will be posted on Bandcamp this weekend.

In the meantime, I worked on the artwork piece and literally threw something together basically from nothing.  It still needs more work but the core concept is there, at least enough to post to Bandcamp if the release comes out this weekend.

That's the news on this front!  I'll post an update sometime this coming weekend.