The Defrost Nixon mixes are coming along quite well. I went over the parts I recorded last weekend and I think everything is a 'go'. I will say that there are still some flaws in my setup that I need to look into further but I'm at least able to work with the sounds I got last week. I'm a little annoyed with myself that I used the SM57 for "Semaphore"; personally, I haven't had a tremendous amount of luck with that mic, and/or I'm not doing the best placement of it. In general, I have more luck running the U87ai with a Royer R122, and my recording for "Marooned" went much better with that arrangement. In both cases, though, I'm heavily relying on the direct signal to carry me through which wouldn't be my preference in general.
I'm hoping to have half the album wrangled by this coming weekend. "Wrangled" means that the main sound and overall idea of the mix is there, and it also means that there could be endless tweaks for days after but they're to smaller details, just getting everything as right as possible. I also worked more on the newer versions of the "Mirror Land" EP and those are nearly complete as well. I think I've gone through about 7 iterations of those mixes this year, each time changing them due to some new technique or idea that I had just learned about. In the end, though, I think it's all for the best although it's taken all year to get these done. They've been a great sounding board for learning, though, and that was the intent all along.
This Saturday, my first official day off, I'm going to start working on the "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" mixes. My days will be filled with doing at least one "...Fish!" song per day, then making tweaks to "Mirror Land" and Defrost Nixon as needed, and then trying to also fit in "Petty Cash" and my original 3 Song Acoustic EP. Sounds busy, huh? Yeah, it will be but I seriously need to play catch up here, plus it's good for challenging myself with what I've learned. The 2 latter releases are quite simple and short in nature so they're not that heavy of a lift.
One thing I DO know is that anyone that tells you that making and mixing music is easy is completely insane :) I mean, there's no way that one person can learn how to do all of these things in a short amount of time. In fact, it's been an incredibly long process for me to simply get to a point where things actually sound good or decent. However, the only way to progress is to accept your ability at any given time and then keep pushing your own boundaries. That's been my approach, at least. The other option is to of course pay someone to do it for you, but you're taking them at their word that they know what they're doing, and in this world you never really know.
The project that got moved to next year is unfortunately the "Wrecking Ball" album. Had I stayed on task, that's what I'd be working on right now, hence my needing to play catch up. I've come to terms with this, though, and I feel confident that I can get the above 4 items done by the end of January. I've also made a decision, a big one, to try and do the mastering myself via some plugin's that I've recently acquired and find to be pretty amazing (and cheap). Then, I'm going to opt to print a smaller number of CD's since I can't justify the price of the methodology I had been following, so I'm hoping to reduce my costs greatly, enough that I can actually put things out quicker, cheaper, and w/o a ton of major concern about what I'm going to do with it, etc. And, of course, I still want to create some merchandise but I simply haven't had the time. I'm hoping to find some help in 2025. One can only hope.