Another One Coming to a Close

It has been quite the intense week off and I'd dare say that I haven't relaxed even one bit.  I mean, I haven't been tense, per se, but I certainly haven't taken any actual time off, and for the most part I've been coming out of the music studio around 10pm each night and sometimes starting as early as 10am.

It has been a good and productive week; however, I have only gotten done a fraction of what I was hoping for (sigh).  I've been amazed at how labor intensive these harmonies have been.  I mean, wow.

Doing low harmonies is fairly new for me.  I don't exactly know why but in the past I always did high harmonies on everything but since my voice has a hard time with that these days I decided it was time to move in the opposite direction.  It's amazing the difference in sound and tone.  Having said that, though, I've been pretty pleased with the results but it's simply taken some time to get them laid down.

Today, I finally did the deep dive investigation into "Semaphore...", basically pulling apart the song so I that I can track down and fix any issues that were causing the excessive muddiness.  Between the remix and the harmonies that I recorded, I think it took me about 4-5 hours so the vast majority of my day.  I do believe I've solved many of the problems, though, but I won't know for sure until I revisit it.

I know I've said it before but I'm very proud of the lyrics that I wrote for the Defrost Nixon album and I'm so happy that this collection of songs is finally going to see the light of day.  The album overall sounds really quite good, way better than I would have ever thought back when we originally recorded it.  Fingers crossed but I'm hoping to wrap up the Defrost Nixon mixes by the end of June.

A Couple Comments

I'm more or less done with mixing for the week and have moved onto recording.  Yesterday, I started the lovely process of trying to add harmonies to songs.  It was...er, entertaining, as always.

I've met 2-3 kinds of people:  there are those that seem to be able to harmonize with almost anything immediately and sometimes these folks aren't even musicians.  It's kind of phenomenal.  Then, there are those that can't harmonize to save their lives.  And lastly, there's the in between group of which I'm a member who simply find it a struggle.

Working on harmonies yesterday made me stop multiple times due to laughter at the utter awfulness I was creating.  I don't know why harmonies haven't become natural for me but I'm certainly missing something.  I can do it (obviously) but it takes a lot of work and trial and error, and, well, a bit of laughter.

My other comment is yet another rant about Rickenbackers.  If you ever read this, Rick, please take this to heart...  These damns guitars, as lovely as they are and as difficult as they can be sometimes to play, have literally the WORST ever input jacks.  I mean, my god, I can't tell you how many times I've been burned by this.

So, once again, I decide to add a Rick 12 part, and please note that this is not centric to this particular instrument.  I start recording and I keep hearing this noise that I can't immediately place, and it's literally happening during the recording.  I only intended to do one take of this part and ended up doing three because of this noise, which ended up being smart because I figured it out during take 3...that one of the pickup's was basically going in and out audibly as I was playing.  Why?   The stupid *ss input jack.  These dumb guitars (yes, I said that) have input jacks where basically if you don't play the instrument on a weekly basis, they get temperamental and then don't want to work correctly.  Now, let's be honest...I've owned a lot of instruments in my day and I've never encountered this issue on ANY instrument other than a Rick, and almost every Rick I've owned (again, quite a few) have had this issue in one form or another, some with more severity.  I will say that the '61 Capri that I just sold also had this problem...so at least they've been consistent throughout the decades, apparently.  It really is crap when you're trying to record, let me tell you.  I have to remember in the future to make sure that I "prime" the intended guitar prior to trying to record with it which obviously isn't really easy to do or very realistic always.

I also got to use my new Fender Mod Shop Strat yesterday at long last.  I still swear by the Mod Shop stuff...seriously, watch the used categories on Reverb.com and GuitarCenter.com.  You can get them at a steal and they're seriously amazing instruments.  This particular instrument I created myself and bought new since I was after a particular color and such.  I do have an amazing 2012 American Strat for sale now, by the way.

More harmonies and Strat work on the horizon today with probably another very long day.  Tomorrow, I'll probably start on recording the countless acoustic parts I have on my agenda.  I'm starting to see the end of this project on the near horizon and it only took 15 years :s

The Ol' Wreckin' Ball

Yeah, I've been greatly neglecting my blogs again.  It's mainly because I've been incredibly busy juggling way too many things, as always.  On the plus side, things are going quite well but it is pretty exhausting in general.

I'm off of work this week and this week was slotted for working on the "Wrecking Ball" album earlier in the year.  It's great to finally start getting this album in motion; the downside is that I wish the other 3-4 things were completely wrapped up.  Still, I don't get a full week off that often so I have to choose to use it as wisely as possible and so far it's easy to see why I chose "Wrecking Ball".  I'm basically starting the mixing of these 9 songs even though I don't have the real vocal yet in 6 of them.  Mixing the drums has been going well but is a ton of work (as always).  It's been taking me about 2 to almost 4 hours on some songs just on the drums alone.  After that, the rest of the mix is about an additional 1-2 hours.  Tonight I mixed a drum machine based track and the whole thing took me less than 2 hours, although there are very few instruments on the track admittedly.

Here's the really positive part:  if my life depended upon these songs being mixed in one day each, I COULD actually do that.  In fact, if I had the real vocals on all of them, I'm pretty sure they'd all be listenable in one day and could be fairly printable if need be.  Now, that's like a miracle folks considering that most of my mixes up until now have been taking literally days if not months to get close to a listenable state.  I mean...wow.  I think I've finally turned a very valuable corner.

Now, let's be honest...I'm not going to only spend a day on these per song but I also don't think it'll take me months either.  The Defrost Nixon album has also been going in a very positive manner and I'll be doing some finishing work on that later this week and I don't foresee spending excessive hours on it.  I've basically been working like a dog though, doing two sessions a day, and probably putting in 8-10 hours each day, weekends and holiday included.  It's not exactly relaxation time and when I do get a break I'm usually working on forcing out lyrics so I can record these vocals in the near future.

2025 has so far been going fairly on schedule and has been very positive.  I hope I can maintain this for the rest of the year because I clearly can't keep up this frantic pace forever.  In fact, my hope is that 2026 will allow me to finally slow down, take a breath, and maybe even perhaps take an actual vacation, something I haven't done now in years.  In the meantime, though, I'm working my *ss off on these releases and trying to wrap things up.

I actually mixed two songs today and two yesterday, and I'm hoping to do the last two of this album tomorrow.  This will leave 4 days of recording time which should be a nice change.  More updates soon.

Finally Groovin'

Again, I haven't been very good at logging any entries here, mainly because I felt like a broken record (no pun intended) in regards to what I was working on.  It does start to feel like "Groundhog Day" after awhile when you keep going over and over the same songs time and time again.

I think my deep dive on vocal mixing is finally complete.  I did actually redo the "Mirror Land" vocal structure yet again (I've lost count how many times I've done it at this point) but I'm actually really glad I did because this latest round of changes, as minor as they may have been, really make the clarity considerably better.  I'm actually very pleased with these mixes and I've heard them more times than I can count now between my stereo and both of my cars.  This finally landed on structure has now become my "vocal chain", as they like to say, that I'm using on all other tracks going forward.

Piggy backing on the above, I finally made it through all of the "...Fish!" songs and redid the vocal chain on each onen to this new structure.  I haven't physically listened to them thoroughly but I did hear the ones that I was the most concerned about one day in my car and was amazed by how good they sounded so I'm not too terribly concerned at this point.  Even if I need to make some tweaks (fully expected, mind you), I don't think it'll be anything major or super time consuming.

I spent about half of yesterday finally cracking open the "Wrecking Ball" album, doing an initial mix on the first track which I've had some issues with both the drums and the guitars, and I basically need to make a decision on whether any of the electrics need to be re-recorded.  I spent about 4 hours on it and ended up doing an entire mix whereas my initial intent was really only to focus on the drums.  It's amazing how different things sound once you set it all up and starting tinkering.  The downside but also upside is that I realized that there's simply no way to judge what might need to be re-recorded until I do this entire process on each song, so essentially there's no point in wasting my time right now.  Therefore, I won't get into the "Wrecking Ball" stuff any further until my week off during Memorial Day week and will just wing it, re-recording whatever I think requires it.

This means back to Defrost Nixon!  Yes, I'm now juggling 3 full albums and 2 EP's...all at the same time.  I'm intending to finally close out the 2 EP's over the next 2 weeks, and yes, I'll do some sort of minor celebratory dance once that's done because it's been, well, quite a road to this point.  In the meantime, the next 3 weeks will also be Defrost Nixon heavy mixing time with the intent of having pretty solid mixes by the last week of May.  Then, I'll start mixing "Wrecking Ball" during Memorial Day week, and then after that it'll be time to bounce back to "...Fish!".  Yeah, it's a bit chaotic, I'll admit.  My hope and plan is to have all of the above done by Labor Day.

The good news it that everything is still on track for the year and I am actually feeling strangely confident overall.  I also had and took the opportunity to listen to all of my rough tracks for the upcoming "Beautiful Silence" album, which is more or less the follow up to "Theories for the Opsimath", and I was super pleased with what I've got down already.  I can't wait to be able to focus on this new album for I think it'll be really somethin'.  The "Wrecking Ball" album also seems super promising and quite possibly a dreamy album for me in regards to a harder rock sound.  Even though I'm not quite 'there' yet, I feel like the actual reward from all of this is finally on the horizon, where I can start focusing on bigger and better things.  Wow.

"Hump" Day

I took a bit of a break from the blogs over the past month, hence almost no new posts at all.  I don't have a ton to report, really, for I've been in "vocal hell" for about 2-3 months now, possibly more.  Who knew vocals were such a pain in the *ss?!  Next to drums, I'd say they're the hardest to get right.

I've had to unwind things, try again, fail, do some research, unwind things, try again, and so on in an endless loop for quite some time now.  I finally have a bit of a process down that seems to be working but I still have anomalies that I can't fully account for and so there's a lot of going back and forth.  It's quite maddening but it's all part of getting over the "hump", as they say.  Once you're over the hump, you usually don't really have to look back...but the hump itself can be rough.

I have not had the time to work on the Defrost Nixon tracks like I need to.  Instead, I've been working on the "...Fish!" mixes and I chose this partly due to that being the original plan and because it's sometimes easier to play around with something you're struggling with on tracks that you've haven't already heard 100 times in the last week.  At this point, I've gone through the entire "...Fish!" album but only about half of it has the latest iteration of my vocal processing so there's still a ton more to do.  I did find last night that one of the last tracks I needed to work on has a bunch of highly annoying noise on the vocal and I'm not sure if I'll be able to deal with it in post so it's looking like it might be a re-record...which is a bit depressing.  I've got a few more things to try but it's not looking too positive.  As for the noise, all I can imagine is that I was positioned way too close to the mic and perhaps felt lazy that day and didn't use a windscreen?!  Who knows...but the noise is highly annoying and widely across the high spectrum so not easy to remove without ruining the vocal quality.

If nothing else, I have been learning a lot but it's just by the usual trial and error, with more error initially than success.  The "Mirror Land" EP release is now almost a month overdue and it's starting to give me anxiety.  I think I need to do something to get it wrapped over the next 2 weeks at most.  Ugh.  I see some hard decisions ahead.

Easter has come and gone and now we're pushing towards May.  Where does the time go?!!  I didn't have much of a holiday for it was spent between yard work and hours in the music studio.  Day off, you say?!  Vacation??!  These are words I'm no longer familiar with...at least not until I get over this hump.  Damn hump.

Minor Rant

It's time for a minor rant (I know, you're saying "...another one??!")...  Something that drives me absolutely bonkers is the craze of posting videos on, say, YouTube where the presenter is telling people how to do something in mixing, or how to use a plugin, etc., and the source material that they're working with is literally either pristinely recorded or possibly already doctored.

I mean, this absurd and I bring it up because I just watched part of a UAD video touting one of their many plugin's for drums.  I'll tell ya that I've had a hell of a time with the drums that I've worked with so far.  I don't record my own drums because I don't have the space for it so I outsource them to a friend/acquaintance who's actually a drummer so you'd think he's got a pretty good grip on drum recording, right?  Most of the drums that I get back from him are so challenging for me to work with that I almost always resort to at least some level of drum replacement.  When watching these sample videos, though, you'd think that everyone is working with drum sounds the likes of polished Phil Collin's stuff.  I mean, it's ridiculous.  If I had that great of sounding raw tracks to begin with, well, I wouldn't be researching how to make this sound good, would I?!

All this does, and I'm sure it's the very intent of course, is make you the user feel like a dumb *ss, like you don't know what you're doing and therefore NEED this stupid plugin that they're selling.  Well, friends, this is all complete and utter bullsh*t and just marketing, at least in my opinion.  Shame on these companies and anyone who posts these sorts of videos because you're not doing any service to anyone who is trying to do something creative by making them feel bad about their work.  Grr.

Drums are really tough and they're central to the whole recording.  I've found that if the drums don't sound right, don't fit the space, don't have the proper energy to mix with the other elements of the song, you basically end up with a very strange output.  They're simply crucial and whereas I'm sure I have a lot more to learn about how to properly mix drums since I'm no expert, I don't think I'm exactly the only one who isn't working with not great sounding raw tracks.  A lot of the same words can be said about raw electric guitar tracks.  Way too many times these videos are working with polished audio and I know that because raw guitar tracks simply don't sound like that...they're, um, raw, not polished.

Here's another small piece of advice/complaint that I've run across countless times.  I don't know why more of these "how to" videos don't right up front talk about what kind of music they're working with.  Duh.  For example, I was really struggling with vocals recently and did some research, and there are countless "how to EQ vocals" videos out there.  You'd think they'd say up front "this is for rock" or "this is for rap"; I mean, the approach here is way different.  So, if you're not careful, you can jot down a bunch of notes about EQ'ing vocals and it'll end up sounding bizarre, and you're left scratching your head wondering how you could be so stupid that this doesn't work for you...when all along you're mixing country and they're talking about hip hop :)  I just don't get it.

Okay, that's my rant for the day.  My mixing projects are actually going really well.  "Mirror Land" is pretty much on target for the 4/1 release but I may be slightly late, depending upon how backed up the mastering is.  "Petty Cash" is just about done and Defrost Nixon continues to transform into something more and more listenable every day.  I'll post more soon on these releases when I have an update.

Cool Cats

This is a quick post about one of my favorite and biggest necessity products - Cool Picks "Cat Tongue" guitar picks.  Seriously, these things are fabulous and they're the only picks I use and have used now for years after finding them.  The story was that I received a handful of these as an Xmas gift about a decade ago, and I really thought it was an off gift at the time...until I actually tried them out.

I originally used Fender Mediums, just the plain jane ones, of which I purchased a gross of back around 1990.  Believe it or not, I think I still have half a bag left.  I used them for years but always had issues with them, one of them being that they're kind of large for guitars and the other simply being the lack of grip.

Let me explain that one of my many issues in life is sweating heavily.  It's a terrible trait, I tell ya, and causes a decent amount of grief all over the place.  For example, my first good acoustic guitar, of which I didn't polish daily back then, had the finish evaporate/fall off on the back of it due to extensive sweat being placed on it, mainly from my stomach area since I stand when I play.  Back then, I lived in Arizona and it's a known thing that many people try to save some dollars on a/c bills by keeping their homes warmer than expected, and for me this meant I would sweat pretty heavily when I'd practice daily.  I was heartbroken when the finish developed a cloudy spot and eventually flaked off.  Luckily, Breedlove was able to respray the back of it and I've pretty much never NOT polished my guitars daily ever since.

Guitar picks were no different for me.  As odd as it may seem to say, my fingers and thumb would sweat as I played and so the pick would always slowly rotate in my grip.  It was terribly annoying and really slowed down my progress on guitar in general.  Around the early 2000's, I discovered the Gator Grip picks which are normal plastic but have this powdered coating on them to help keep them from moving around.  I used these for years and thought they were pretty good until I found the Cool Picks "Cat Tongues".

Seriously, these picks don't move - period.  I've heard some people say that they stick too much for them but for me personally, again someone with sweat related issues, these were the exact solution I was searching for.  And, to make it even better, those original Fender picks used to break all the time, as did the Gator Grips.  These Cool Picks literally almost never break, in fact I'd say that I've only ever replaced 1-2 in the nearly 15 years I've been using them.  So, yes, they're pricey but they're built to last as well, including the grip.

Just thought I'd share!  I'm a definite believer in these picks but they're not widely available, for whatever reason, but you can certainly find them if you dig just a bit.  If nothing else, Amazon usually has at least one seller offering them.

Experience This

Nothing major to report over here except the usual pushing through revisions, revisiting and updating mixes, etc.  I did experiment yesterday with my overall drum process on a mix where it simply wasn't working and I think I found yet another hole in how I'm doing things.  Not a major one, mind you, but I'm now curious how much this will roll over to other songs.  I feel like I'm always eternally updating my overall work flow.

I did watch a video briefly yesterday on YouTube that just happened to come up in my feed about recreating the guitar sound and riff from U2's song "Wire" off of "The Unforgettable Fire" album.  It was interesting and once again brought up a bunch of mixed emotions for me but the real takeaway, besides anything having to do with the Edge or U2 itself, was that YouTube in general is simply saturated with videos about recreating things.

Strangely, I've never really cared much about sounding like someone else or playing covers.  Now, I've always said that I don't think I'm of this planet because I simply don't really seem to care about things other people are obsessed with.  Why?  I have no clue, but I'm just not.  Sill, you can't deny that the internet is just overflowing with "how to play that solo" or "get that guitar sound" or the most ridiculous of all things, the "which one is better" argument, comparing, say, two songs that have nothing really in common.  It's no wonder I'm not really into online videos in general.

What's MISSING in my opinion is anyone talking about CREATING something new.  Wow.  Now, there's an idea.  Imagine that?  It's like all creativity flew out the window years ago and now we're simply trying to be David Gilmour, the Edge, Jimmy Page, and so on.  Even the guitar pedal reviews are quite similar, rarely talking about creating something never made but instead things like "this pedal will recreate that Pink Floyd sound..."  It's all very odd, at least to a creative minded person.

Seriously, if you had told me back in the 80's that in 40+ years the predominant musical live act would be trying to recreate a band/experience from the past, ala "the Prince Experience" or the Australian Pink Floyd Show, I would have laughed hysterically saying "no way!".  In other words, a cover band.  Boy, was I wrong about that.  I get asked a lot about why I don't have my own YouTube channel, posting videos of me demonstrating how to play cover songs.  My answer - why would I want to?  I mean, I didn't learn to play an instrument to sit around and play other people's music...I learned simply in order to write my own.  Am I that strange?  These days perhaps.

Those are my thoughts for today.  Don't get me wrong...there are some great YouTube videos out there that are truly designed to help people, and I think that's great - seriously.  In fact, I reference some of those often for mixing advice and such, so I'm not really knocking them.  I'm just shocked that I don't seem to stumble upon creative minded things.  Maybe that's the channel I should start?

Dates at Last

I'm just finishing up my mixing chores for the week/weekend.  Things are going pretty well overall, and whereas they are slow going at times, my overall pace now has picked up greatly that I've overcome a few of the outstanding obstacles that I was really struggling with.

I can finally say that I'm looking at an April 1st release for the "Mirror Land" EP at very long last.  Yes, sure, it was supposed to be last April/May...but it was actually a great choice for me to really work through a ton of the mixing issues that had been boggling my mind.  I'm still fighting a bit with the rework of "Only With You" but I'm fairly confident that the April 1st date will stick.  It also will leave me enough time to make some minor changes to the CD artwork, possibly design a t-shirt, etc.

I believe I've decided upon a June 1st release for the Defrost Nixon album.  I actually expect to be done tinkering with the mixes by April 1st but I want to bake in enough time for me to get the artwork done, etc.  That one's actually going to be a bit tricky since I'm more or less creating that from scratch, and usually that takes a bit of doing and such.  There's also a music video in the works of which my friend has been working on for the past few months.

"It's Raining Elvis Fish!", the redux of my Robyn Hitchcock tribute album, is looking at a July 1st release.  This one needs a front cover as well but I know precisely what I want so it's just a matter of physically taking the photo.  I should be starting the final work on these mixes probably around mid March.

Other things that I've been working on are the "Petty Cash" EP, the "Acoustic Sampler" EP, and a few random cover tunes that I've actually never released before.  I have a few other things that I'll probably start tinkering with shortly as well but these are all in the bonus column.

For the next big project, that will be the long awaited "Wrecking Ball" album.  This will be a pretty heavy lift since I have to comb through all of the tracks, get the drums sounding decent, probably do a bit of rerecording, and then also finish the lyrics and record the vocals.  There's a lot to do here but it'll be a fun one.  It's actually one of the albums that I'm the most excited about.

Other things on the docket for 2025 include returning to the "Lost Weekend" remix, the "Yet I Tried for You" EP, and the new Jazz Loop Machine album "Sorry, I Forgot to Mention This".  Yes, there's a lot to do in 2025 :)  Of course, it always remains to be seen how much actually gets accomplished but I should do well if I stay on it, which is my plan.

Been Slippin'

I've been slippin' a bit on my blogging duties, if you will, and apparently I missed an entire month.  Hmph!  Oh well, such is life.

I've been hard at work with close to no breaks, although I did take almost a week off due to visiting family in Arizona.  I think I needed to step away for a bit anyhow but there were other goals at hand, making the trip out to AZ a fulfilling one in general.  It sounds like I'll be making more trips soon since my father is apparently planning on moving to an assisted living home, something that was news to us and that he dropped into casual conversation.  This means we need to more or less get anything out of his house that we'd want, such as family photos, etc.  You can imagine the "fun" that awaits...aye.  I don't even know what exactly is in that house, at this point.

I spent almost all of January mixing my vocals.  I know, you're probably thinking, huh?!  Well, I found a hole in my process and I had to basically go back to the root and figure out what I was doing wrong.  I knew it would take some time but I felt it was a good trade considering I was going to be doing the same thing over and over for the next 6+ months so I might as well get a better handle on what I'm doing right and wrong before taking those dives.

I believe I ended up getting out of it what I needed.  I watched a lot of YouTube videos online about mixing vocals and found that most of them don't help me but actually do damage, at least when it comes to my voice.  I've had an extreme sibilance issue for quite some time and it's amazing how the smallest EQ tweak can bring that to the forefront.  By doing a deep dive on this, I more or less started understanding where I'm going wrong but also started brainstorming on how to work around it.  There's a very fine line between removing sibilance and making a vocal sound dead and lifeless, and it's not an easy dance to do.

As of last night's listening, the title track "Mirror Land" is pretty much ready to go.  "Optimism" still has issues, and I don't yet know how but I somehow introduced another issue that I'm hoping to work through today.  I also started tinkering with "Only With You" and I'm doing it very carefully since I'd rather not blow on the track too hard and make the whole thing fall over.  I'm actually fairly optimistic that I'm finally, at very long last, nearing the end for this EP.  It's been one hell of a learning process, I'll tell ya.

The "Petty Cash" EP is moving along very well.  Most of the music is done and I'm just fighting with the vocals at this point, especially since the older the recording the more the sibilance.  As I think I may have already mentioned, I have this other weird occurrence on these recordings of tape hiss...and that's weird since this was done on digital tape.  I guess the deal is that I recorded this stuff (keep in mind this was ages ago and my first recordings) at too low of a level so the noise floor is super high, creating the hiss, probably along with the mixing board not being the greatest.  I'm doing some fancy editing here and there to try and contain it since you can't really strip it out entirely.  I'm also confident that I'll have this EP wrapped up fairly soon as well.

I've finally started deep diving on mixing the Defrost Nixon material.  Previously, I did all the setup work...and that's really what takes the majority of the time usually.  Now, I'm trying to take those mixes and whip 'em into shape for final mixes.  So far, it's not been too bad but I'm of course having some issues here and there.  One thing I've certainly learned is that hearing an issue isn't a problem; the challenge is figuring "what" the issue is, and that's much harder than you'd think.  It's not always super obvious.

That's my mixing update for now.  I need to update my other 2 blogs as well but I'm not sure when I'll have time.  I'll hopefully get to those soon.