In the Nixon Trenches

It's been awhile since I've written anything and again it's simply because I'm busy, busy, and busy.  In fact, I've been so busy that in my heart I still think it's March...and yet it's only days away from being June.  When you're extremely "busy", well, time flies at a ridiculous pace and literally your life flies before your eyes.

I took my usual Memorial Day week off from work which was earmarked for working on the Defrost Nixon album and I've been hammering away at it every day since Saturday.  To back up slightly again, this is an album that my old band Defrost Nixon more or less recorded or started back in 2011.  We did most of the album at that time but then just dropped it, for reasons that I actually don't recall now.  I think the main problem was my own limitations in mixing and so I thought the whole thing sounded like crap...and it was actually me that was more of the issue.

Now, having said that, I have had to do some re-recording but for the most part I've been able to keep everything I have.  There have been internal fights, however, over the sound of drums and so on, and I frequently swear out loud at myself when I can't get something to work like I'm hoping.  I'm sure the neighbors think I'm completely nuts...although I'm sure we crossed that barrier many years ago.

I have 9 days off so I'm basically tackling a different song every day.  Now, it's a 12 song album but three of the songs are more or less kind of already glued together so hence I'm keeping my focus on the other nine.  I'm mainly working on making refrains sound bigger, fuller, and more exciting by adding secondary guitars and such.  I'm four songs in and so far I'm actually quite pleased with the results.  I'm also spending a large amount of time each day doing mixing on the track du jour which helps me understand how much or how little to add.  I just got done adding a nice little piano part to "Humor for a Lexophile" and it's amazing how something so simple can completely change the track.  If you're like me, an awful piano player, I can't overemphasize the importance of Midi (geez).

I dare say that this is going to end up being a pretty damn good album, in my opinion, at least.  By Sunday, I'm not by any means thinking it'll be all done but I'd like all the core parts narrowed done and hopefully recorded.  I'm sure there will be some stragglers but that's to be expected.

I still need to find the time to finish up the artwork for "The Effects of Connection" EP.  I think I should stop doing pre-orders since I'm terrible at the follow up.  I'm going to do my best to squeeze that in some time this week as well.