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.