Facing the Facts

I'm working on my "final" round of "Mirror Land" mixes and it's filled with mixed emotions.  My initial feeling is total relief that it's finally going to have a period after it, done, complete-o, etc.  The second emotion I have is similar to losing an old friend, one that's been hanging around for quite awhile that's hard to say goodbye to.  Third, whereas I'm pleased with the overall result, it's still not "perfect" even after all of this time.  Hmm.

The "Mirror Land" EP ended up being my training ground, the EP where I basically tried to kick things up a few notches, learn some new tricks, and so on.  The number of iterations that I've done on this is literally absurd and I won't even share the actual number apart from saying that it's greater than 100 mixes per song.  I could probably tinker with these for the rest of my life but why bother?  Also, I finally reached the point where I think everything that I can make better in the mix is done and now I'm starting to scrutinize the actual recording more, which is never a good road to go down this far along in the process.  No, it's much better to just cut and run and I learned that a long time ago, although you wouldn't know it from the number of iterations on this one.

I'm thinking I'll be submitting these for mastering at the end of this week.  I'm not sure how backed up the mastering engineer is so it could still be another 2 weeks before the release.  Obviously, I have multiple projects being juggled so I have no fear of being bored in the meantime.

Once this is completely wrapped up, the challenge now moves onto a new plateau, the one where I need to figure out how to do all of this in a rather "quick" method.  The Defrost Nixon album is the first to go through this test and I guess we'll know how well this plays out fairly soon since that album is supposed to be released in about 2 months.

In the meantime, I decided to face the facts which seem incredibly daunting to me.  I wrote down yesterday all the releases that I would like to make.  In case you're not aware, I think I'm a bit of an anomaly, not that I'm the only person who probably has a bit of this situation but I do think it's unusual and I would think most people aren't as far along as I am.  I started writing "albums" pretty much from the get go, back in 1990, and not having a good method of recording them back then nor the cash to go to a studio (or any support whatsoever), rather than getting discouraged, I just kept writing album after album.  In writing everything down yesterday, I have 17 original music albums to my credit...and only 2 to this date have been released.  At the end of this year, I should have a total of 4...so, um, 13 to go, if I'm to catch up.  Yeah, exactly.

Most people would have given up by now.  Hell, most people would have given up after album number 3, but alas I'm a bit different.  This all made me stop and think a bit, and let's also keep in mind that I'm not including all these EP's for those aren't complete "albums".  In short, I have a sh*t load of material, more than anyone I know and probably more than many professional musicians/writers.

Considering my age and all, I think the only way to attack this is to try and release about 4 albums per year.  Now, to be fair, some of these albums are half to 70% recorded already (luckily) but at least 7 of them haven't even been started.  Recording, mixing, and releasing 4 albums per year while working full time sounds pretty ridiculous, no?  I think the truth of the matter is that I'll absolutely have to share the mixing love with someone else or I'll never get through this, and/or I'll drop trying.  So, ironically, after tons of rounds of trying to learn mixing to a semi decent degree, I guess I'm still going to have to turn some of it over to someone else.

So, what's the plan?  I guess the short version is to pretty much have my entire album backlog available for listening within the next 5 years.  If I can somehow figure out how to do this and not perish from this Earth beforehand, I think I should get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the person that released the most albums ever, no?  I guess we'll see.  It'll be interesting to see where this all goes...hopefully somewhere.

In the meantime, if you're so inclined, please pick up a copy of "Mirror Land" and/or a t-shirt, and maybe get one for a friend or relative as well.  Honestly, any little bit helps in this endless parade of trying.  One thing is for sure and that's that I'm a damn stubborn individual who doesn't like to give up or have material go to waste.

Finally...a Different Kind of Weekend

It's been a long, long road to this point but I was finally able to have a new kind of weekend, one where I wasn't sweating over mixing all day long, especially the same songs repetitively.  Instead, I dabbled in quite a few areas including exploring the overall gist of Final Cut Pro, a new arena I just might be entering fairly soon.  Yeah, I know...like I need MORE to do, right?!

I've obviously always had an interest in video and film in general but audio has been my main focus for longer than I can remember.  I mean, it's been so long did I ever have a different focus?!  Hmm.  Well, I can't be 100% sure.  Still, I think the need for a more regular presence on YouTube and such is quickly going to become a priority so I decided to download the program and start dabbling.  Initially, it didn't seem too terribly frightening, and it occurred to me after a bit of thought that I think audio in general is much more scrutinized than video, or at least simple short videos/music related videos.  This gave me a bit of comfort, to be honest, and made the hill not seem quite as steep.  Honestly, I wouldn't mind learning a bit about video, etc.

I also finally started diving into the artwork that I'm going to need for all these upcoming releases.  The "Mirror Land" artwork has been done for years; no joke, years, a bit to my embarrassment...but at least it's done and just needs some touch up here and there.  Defrost Nixon has not had any artwork ideas and since that album is now looming on the near horizon, I was starting to sweat a bit about that one.  And, then there's also "Wrecking Ball" which I had not been able to get any decent photos for on my own, nor did I get any real promising leads from putting out an SOS to friends on Facebook.  So, the sweat was starting to form there as well.  Needing one album cover is bad enough but two?!  Ugh.

I literally went through 98 pages of stock photos on the Adobe site and picked out about 25 possibilities for the "Wrecking Ball" album.  It took me about 2-3 hours to do this and then I started playing around with mock up's for the album cover.  I'm fairly pleased with my initial designs so my anxiety went down quite a bit.  I don't usually like the idea of using stock photos and such but I think this time I might have to bend unless I just happen to run into some rubble out and about that I think will work.

Even better news, though, I started doing some mock up's for the Defrost Nixon album based on the photo shoot we did ages ago.  I knew I had limited photos to work from and since I'm no longer in MN it would be tricky to add similar photos without getting on a plane, etc.  My initial designs failed to entice me but then I happened upon something that I really liked, from a completely different direction, and I dare say that I may have the front cover mapped out.  I'm now in the "marinating" stage for both album mock up ideas, basically revisiting every day or so to see how I feel about them throughout the week.  I at least no longer feel so under the gun about this.

It was pretty nice to work on something other than the "Mirror Land" mixes this weekend and I'd almost call it refreshing, as strange as that might be to say.  I'll be posting about the EP in the next few days, most likely.  I'm eager to get this one wrapped up finally.  I'll soon be dabbling in merch as well.