Almost Over

My 2 weeks off is coming to an end very soon and I'm down to my final 2 days.  I'm now trying to figure out which items on my list rank highest and more or less need to get done.  As soon as I return to work on Monday, my mind will pretty much be blown due to my job, and focus even in my off time becomes fairly challenging due to the enormous stress of the day.

It's been a fascinating 2 weeks, though.  I've basically worked on any and all remaining items for the "Yet I Tried for You" EP which should be released fairly soon, hence the top priority.  This included 3 main vocals and a few guitar parts as well.  I was also able to finish writing the lyrics for two of the "Wrecking Ball" songs for that album and recorded those vocals as well.  I foresee "Wrecking Ball" being ready for release probably around September, if all goes well, hence that's also a priority right now on my list.  There's quite a bit more work still needed on that album as well.

Lastly, I recorded the remaining vocals and all the bass parts for the "Epitaphs of Ill-Fated Love" album which I started recording a few years ago.  This is an album I wrote back in 1996 and is probably my favorite album I've ever written, and whereas I was originally going to attack my back catalog in order, I realized this year is the 30th anniversary of writing the album so figured it might be nice to finally have it come to light now.  Also, I had to have a deep discussion with myself, asking the awful question that if I'm not able to get all of my music physically recorded for whatever reason, which albums do I REALLY want done?  And, well, this one is top of the list, so hence I decided to push it forward.  Some of these vocals are pretty tough but I managed to get through almost all of them with only a few minor corrections needed here and there.

I did spend quite a few late nights on the vocals.  Back in the day, it used to take me maybe an hour to record a vocal?  Now, it's pushing closer to three hours due to all the corrections.  Geez.  It's part of getting old, I guess.  Laying down 12 bass parts was also something new for me because I usually don't do those in a line, and I basically (no pun intended) played all of those in a matter of 2 days.  I find bass kind of fun, to be honest, and it's always interesting fiddling around with various lines and such.  Some of these songs seemed to have tuning issues for the bass, though, and this was a new one for me.  I have a bad habit of wanting to play most of my bass lines high up on the neck and it was causing some weird chorusing effect that I wasn't digging too much so I had to fight with it a bit more than I had hoped.

And, the dreaded unthinkable happened...probably something everyone has experienced in a studio sooner or later.  I tripped over a cord which caused one bass to fall into another...ugh.  I'm such an OCD person about keeping my instruments meticulous that I almost fainted but luckily somehow there was no visible damage at all.  How?  I have no idea but I'm certainly grateful for it.

I have one more song to start for the "Epitaphs..." album at this point, the only one involving a nylon stringed acoustic.  Damn nylons...ugh...  I needed to change the strings and meant to do so 3+ weeks ago but never found the time, so I ended up doing it earlier this week.  Of course, the stupid thing won't stay in tune yet so I've had to wait on this song.  I intend to fight with it a bit more today.  You'd think that someone would have come up with a better method of "locking" nylon strings into place by 2026, no?!  It's one of those traditional things that I do shake my head at.  I also change nylon strings so rarely that I always forget how to do it so I had to reference the videos, etc.  Pain in the you know what...but I do love the sound of a nylon stringed guitar for certain things.

I also made a FB post last night and had to edit it later on.  I was slightly ashamed to see that I wrote 2016 instead of 2026; I guess I really don't know what year it is.  As I've said countless times, time in general moves at a very fast pace once you pass 45 years old.

So, it's time to start wrapping up.  There's a lot more work to be done on the "Epitaphs..." album before it can be mixed and released, of course, but I'm hoping I can do all of it so the album can finally see the light of day by the end of the year.  Starting this Tuesday, I'm going to shift back into mixing mode and begin what I'm calling Operation "Release It", meaning finally pushing the 3-4 straggler releases over the finish line at long last.  I honestly needed a break from some of those...you can only hear the same thing over and over so many times before you start to go crazy and lose all perspective.

Lyrics

It's been a pretty fascinating time off so far and I'm now at the half way mark.  I'll say it again...it's amazing how fast the time flies by - wow.

I've so far been able to get through a decent amount of vocals and even setup my brand new song that I hope will take the world by storm shortly; yes, that's kind of a joke and kind of not at the same time.  I don't want to comment too much on this song because I'm 100% convinced someone would steal the idea and run with it, but I will say that I hope to have it done and released within about 2 months from now so it'll be the first ever "fast tracked" song for me.  Apart from that, I'm playing catch up on a couple of my older albums that have been "in progress" for a bit too long.

I've actually been spending a ton of time working on lyrics.  I have a backlog at this point of, well, maybe 40+ songs that need definitive lyrics?  I mean, it's out of control and pretty ridiculous, and I can't keep up usually with the lyric writing versus how easy it is for me to come up with song melodies.  What usually happens, unfortunately, is that I reach crunch time, where I want to record the song and, well, I don't have the final lyric, so I sit down, sweat it out, etc.  I've basically been painstakingly going through the various lyrics that I need to record and making any corrections and/or finishing them where applicable, and you'd be amazed how long the process takes.

Lyrics are super hard, in my opinion at least.  For any new song writers, lyrics maybe start out easy...they did for me...and then you start to notice later on that your old lyrics aren't the greatest, so you up your game, work harder, and that's when it becomes challenging.  Writing crappy or so-so lyrics is easy; writing good, thought provoking and rhythmically aligned lyrics, however, is very hard, and for me personally it's about 10-20x harder than coming up with music.

I actually approach lyrics these days in a very film oriented way, ironically.  I first figure out the melodies that I'm singing and hopefully a few keywords or at least similar sounding words that will form the bare bones basis for the lyric and possibly even the title.  Most of this comes from ad-libbing, and honestly, I don't think I'd ever be able to write any lyrics without ad-libbing during rehearsing so I can't stress enough how important of a skill this is for any singer/songwriter type for it's pretty much essential.  Once I get through that, I try to figure out who my characters are, what kind of lyric it is, as in is it a message based song, a story, etc., and then I start filling in key parts.  I also look for the stand out rhyming patterns that I like and/or flow well, and from there a basic lyric structure starts to form.  The ad libs again play a huge part and I often pull greatly from them because they're almost like a subconscious method of lyric writing.  Next, I argue with myself if the message or meaning needs to be more obvious, more vague, more poetic, or more on the contradictory side, the latter being a method I personally really like.  I don't really like telling people how to think...I much prefer to setup scenarios and let the situations speak for themselves, allowing personal interpretation.  Keep in mind I lean on the artier side, even though I write quite a bit of what would fall under more pop styled rock, but lyrically I usually stay in a different zone than the norm.  I also love writing an upbeat pop filled melody and then giving a dark lyric, and then vice versa.  It's all part of the lyric experience, and as I've said many times, I take lyric writing very seriously.

Keep in mind that all these elements in the final version have to play well together, match, make sense, roll off the tongue and be easily sung, be scrutinized, etc., and I think it's becoming more apparent now why lyric writing takes so long.  Again, it's a choice...you can easily just fluff it and say a bunch of nonsense but I personally don't feel good about that approach anymore for myself, and even when I'm recording old material of mine, I frequently change words or whole lines or paragraphs because the original just sounds too ridiculous to my current self.  Some of my really old lyrics literally embarrass me so they're not going onto the recording, hence I keep a pen handy at all times.

Again, I feel like I could teach a course in lyric writing...hell knows I've done it enough...but it's really a to each their own sort of thing, and everyone needs to figure out their own style, their voice, and so on.  To me, good "anything" does a dance between following certain rules and allowing your own personality to come through, and lyrics are definitely no exception.

Older but...

Wow, two entries in one day?  That must be a new record for me.  Keeping this one short but I can't help but write it right now since I'm working on a vocal and I'm marveling at a few things.

First off, it's the maiden voyage for a brand new microphone, a Neumann TLM 67.  I have to say so far I'm impressed and I'm liking the results over my AKG C414.  I bought this completely spur of the moment and on a whim so I was hoping for positive results.  It's nice when things just come together.

I guess I should say that I'm working on recording an album that I wrote 30 years ago.  In fact, this was like the "big" album for me personally in a lot of ways.  It was the most personal music I ever wrote, I did it in a completely different manner than anything I'd written before since this one was completely acoustic based, and it was the first album that I really felt 100% connected with (I think I had written 5 albums total at that time), enough that I've played these songs for years now.  I started working on these recordings about 5 years ago and figured I should return to them now since I'm finally feeling better about recording and mixing.

In any event, it's fascinating recording vocals on this because I did do a rough demo of it back in '96.  I'm obviously 30 years older now so my voice has changed but I've also suffered from chronic voice problems due to reflux, etc., etc., and if you're wondering that's kind of why I didn't really purse a music career in one form or another.  In any event, I've had to learn to fight through my vocal issues to a degree, learn new techniques, try to avoid burn out, and basically sing in different manners.  My musical tastes have of course altered greatly in the past 30 years so there's that as well.

Anyhow, two nights ago when I was working on vocals for a different song, I was marveling how much Carly Simon had influenced my singing style.  I was going through the track and editing and I kept thinking, wow, I'm really Carly-ing it up!  It brought a definite smile to my face for I had no idea I had been affected in that way.

Tonight, I'm marveling over how I not only sound older but actually in a way better and more experienced as a vocalist, and I never really thought about it but I really use a more soul-ish inspired singing these days, soul meaning like a Van Morrison kind of vibe, if you will.  I also hear a ton of Steve Hogarth in my singing that somehow crept in there, which makes sense since Marillion has been pretty much one of my all time favorites for over 30 years now.

I guess older doesn't mean better or worse...but just different.  Oddly, I kind of like my older voice for it sounds more refined.  My younger vocal sound had a ton of power and sometimes amazing soaring ability but tended to have a young person's feel to it; now, I feel 'refined'.  Yeah, I like that.

Neglect

Hell, I've really been neglecting these blogs (geesh!).  It hasn't really been intentional, and it's most certainly not that I don't have anything to say.  Someone once said that I'm a true "stream of consciousness" styled writer and I guess I'd agree because if I had the time I could easily write every single day, and, er, blather on and on about pretty much anything.  You place the topic in front of me...and I'll blather gladly.

Part of the neglect here is that time is now passing at an incredibly fast rate.  For example, I feel like it's been awhile since I wrote in this blog but it only feels like maybe 2 months to me.  Well, it's not...it's more like almost 6 months.  I've determined that time is now passing at more or less a "2 to 2" ratio, meaning what used to feel like 2 weeks passed is in reality 2 months.  This leads me down the path of pondering whether time is truly an absolute...but this gets really into a rabbit hole involving all kinds of theory, quantum physics, you name it, so I'll spare you...but still it's kind of a fascinating thought, no less.

As much as I came out of the gate in 2026 and promptly fell flat on my face with giving my final EP mixes to the mastering engineer and having him return them to me sounding awful, saying something along the lines of "these are some of the hardest mixes I've ever had to work with due to...", it's actually been a super positive year so far.  How so?  Well, this latest flop finally caused me to deep dive even further and I believe at long last fix my issues.  In fact, mixing has not only gotten better but way faster, as previously reported.  I did, however, finally decide to do about 2-3 more major overhauls on "Mirror Land" and have now basically completely remixed it for probably the 125th time, hence why it's still not out.  It's nearly done (again) but I honestly just burned out on it and needed to shift my focus elsewhere before going completely insane.

So, instead, I've focused on other songs/albums/mixes, and it gave me the opportunity to put what I've learned truly to the test and I'm happy to say my confidence level is now super high.  The newer things I've been working on are coming together super fast and sound, well, quite amazing to me at least, so I just need to reinvest the time again in those nagging projects that I've been fiddling with for far too long.

My recording techniques have actually kicked up quite a few notches as well, including my "production" ear, meaning in how to put the songs together, etc.  There are so many skills to acquire when doing music in the manner in which I do it that it's kind of no wonder why it's taken me so long to get here (sigh).

In any event, I'm currently enjoying 2 weeks off of work and recording/mixing/lyric writing/whatever every single day.  I also decided to make a few new purchases alongside selling loads of gear that I have yet to find the time to actually list on Reverb.com.  Ah, but we'll get there.

That's pretty much where I'm at.  I'll probably write more in the next few days because I have a lot on my mind right now, mainly with working on a recording project from my younger days which has opened up many memories, both good and bad.  More later.

2026 is Here, and Thanks Warren

2026 is here.  Wow.  I'm both not excited AND excited.  Part of me is disappointed because 2025 didn't warrant a single musical release from me, whereas I was hoping for about 3 of them.  On the flip side, though, 2026 will hopefully be the year I've been waiting for, really for far too long.  Here's to hoping.  Why the delay?  Well, simply trying to up my game, get better at mixing, meet a certain expectation, etc. etc.  I'd say that's the easy way to put it.

I did my usual 2 weeks off over the holidays and didn't write about any of it because I guess I didn't  need to as much as I used to.  Perhaps writing about it was a way of blowing off steam and frustration?  Maybe.

I worked on 3 different projects over the 2 week time period, the biggest being going back to the "Lost Weekend" remix.  I actually completely remixed the album again for the 3rd time (well, 4th if you count the original).  I was actually slightly horrified by the sound of my remixes from August upon revisiting them.  Now, you'd think this would spark anger and disappointment inside me but instead it just goes to show how much I've raised my own bar of expectation for my mixing work in the past 6 months, and that's not a bad thing.  Overall, the remixing was a ton of work but I'm pretty confident in the results this time around.

Yes, actually, finally, at very long last, I think I mildly understand what the hell I'm trying to do.  The great part about that is that once you get the fundamentals of HOW to do it, you can start focusing on the more FUN part of making things sound interesting, enticing, and dare I say sexy.  I think that's really where the fun is...certainly not in the constant frustration of trying to endlessly figure out why things don't work the way you had hoped.

For anyone that may stumble upon this blog by mistake (I mean, why else would you be reading this???), I can offer this bit of advice:  flipping mixes to "mono" has saved my *ss quite a bit.  In fact, it's helped me tremendously, that is once I learned what I'm listening for.  Here's an easy key, though - if you flip to mono and your volume suddenly drops, you've got some sort of phase thing going on, plain and simple, and that's a sign that something's not optimal (not albeit wrong...just not optimal).  I have been fighting with this for literally years and just now, finally, after all of this time, I can flip to mono and things a) don't sound super small and b) don't drop in volume.  Wow.  The difference is hard to put into words.

For ProTools users, flipping to "mono" is super easy although not immediately obvious.  Simply grab the included Stereo Width plugin, collapse the width knob down to nothing, and then save your own preset as "Mono".  Going forward, just leave that open in your session and press the enable button here and there to check yourself.  I don't remember what blog told me about this but it was brilliant.

The other thing that I can share undoubtedly is both a warning and a direct link to a saving grace.  The warning is that there are countless people doing PT and mixing videos on YouTube, not to mention the endless blogs, etc.  I'm not saying they're all worthless but the vast majority are people like you and I who a) aren't professionals, b) don't fully know what they're talking about, and c) sometimes leave out really important details.  I'm sure we all have seen quite a few of these, no?

Well, never your mind...you can skip ALL of this and simply search for "Warren Huart" and his "Produce Like a Pro" videos.  Warren, seriously...thank goodness you're out there and doing these videos, and if I ever meet you in person, I might just give you a bear hug :)  I think Warren is the only guy you need to watch and listen to, and guess what?  He's a PROFESSIONAL.  Ah...now there's the key, isn't it?!  I've spent countless hours watching many of his videos on YouTube over the past 6 months and it's made a world of difference, not to mention it's answered so many of the questions that I've had for years.

I had a so called friend bug me a couple years ago, trying to pressure me into doing YouTube videos on guitar playing, mixing, you name it.  I said hell no.  He responded "Well, you'll make money that way...", like that would change my opinion, and I still said "hell no".  Why?  Because I wouldn't feel comfortable telling other people how to do things like I'm some authority unless I knew for certain what I was talking about.  Now, if only the vast majority of people thought this way (sigh).  Besides, I'm NOT a professional...who the hell should be listening to me?!  Now, if I start mixing albums for people, and this goes on a while, and people start hiring me, etc., then maybe I'd consider it.  If you want to know about songwriting, however, that I can help you with for that's something I'm well versed in but it would probably be a fairly short video, something along the lines of "...there's no trick...you just do it..."  No matter how hard I try, I just can't monetize things like this; it's simply not natural for me.

In any event, I'm excited to finally share some releases very soon.  I foresee at least 3-5 this year, depending upon how things go.  Again, sincere thanks go out to Warren Huart for he's a life saver and has made this guy (meaning me) at least very happy.