Guitarists are Odd

I guess I've crawled into a shell away from blog posts and perhaps I'll be changing that soon for various reasons.  Mixing issues, complaints, etc. have thankfully gotten to a minimum these days, and whereas I still haven't physically released anything (a little bit intentionally), I'm more or less lining up 3-4 releases that can come out pretty much one after another, simply awaiting the proper moment.

Today, though, I wanted to talk about something I just can't get my head around.  I decided to place a few instruments up for sale recently and this always inevitably leads to a minor annoyance in life:  weird emails.  Yes, that's right, weird emails about what you're trying to sell, in this instance guitars.

The biggest one that completely boggles my mind is the always inevitable "how much does it weigh" question.  I mean, place any electric guitar up for sale and I swear you'll get one of these within a matter of days if not hours.  "Hey man...how much does it weigh?"  T'is a curious question, really.  Now, I know guitar weight is a "thing" with guitarists, enough that places like Sweetwater have been listing the weight of each instrument they sell right in the listings, and I can only assume they did that because they probably needed a whole department previously to handle the flood of emails asking "yo...what does it weigh??"  I can just imagine someone asking their friend, "What do you do for a living?"  "Oh, I answer emails about how much guitars weigh."  You can almost picture the facial response so I can clearly understand making the decision to just post the weight up front.

Here's the backstory for those who don't know - along the way, somebody made some comment about how the amount of sustain is directly related to the weight of the guitar.  Now, is that true?  Hmm...  I'm sure there's some grain of truth to it but HOW true is it?  That's a different question altogether, and I'd politely argue that the difference in sustain between guitar A weighing 8.14 pounds and guitar B weighing 8.41 pounds is probably, er, not noticeable to the human ear.  Just a guess, mind you, but...

Guitarists are just a strange bunch, in my opinion, and yes, I am a guitarist...but I simply don't understand this type of guitarist.  I mean, if I like a guitar, I BUY the guitar...I don't immediately ask, "...what's it weigh?"  Even weirder, I have never ever in my life ever heard of anyone saying "I really liked that guitar...but if it only weighed .25 pounds more I would have bought it."  Seriously, never.  So, dare I ask...what's the point in asking?!

I'll also go so far as to say that I've never to date had someone ask me the weight of the guitar and then actually buy it.  It's almost like there's a group of people out there with nothing better to do than to respond to various ads asking "what's it weigh, dude??"  It's just strange and the receipt of such an email basically goes hand in hand with "this is a waste of my time" since it'll inevitably go nowhere.

Almost weirder, though, but it's arguable, is the other question you'll receive repetitively:  "yo dude...interested in trading for (some bizarre instrument)..."  A real head scratcher for sure.  My answer is always the same, in my head at least - "...sure, I put this item up for sale because I want some random guy emailing me asking if I would trade this item for some bizarre random item I've never had eyes on in my life..."  Now, let me think about that...hmmm...er, no?  The response:  "Are you sure?"  "Er, yes...very sure."

It's because of these two email questions that I always hesitate to post items for sale, but alas, when you need to get rid of something, you more or less have no choice.  Still, buckle the seatbelt because on average you'll get at least 3-4 of these emails before your item sells.  Life is weird; guitarists are even weirder, apparently.

It Used to be About "Music"

I'm always hunting through all the garbage on YouTube to find decent mixing and recording tips from people who actually know what they're talking about.  In doing so, I've run across a lot of "how to make money in music" videos and they all seem to have one thing in common:  they're not about music.

Whether it's Rick Beato, Mary Spender, Joe Gilder, etc., they all seem to talk about getting musicians heads around the modern day 'music business'.  A common thread is that they start out with the question most of us have which is "how do I get my music heard in today's f***ed up world?"  What I've gathered is that, well, no one knows the answer because they all end up making their money in doing online classes, YT videos talking about whatever topic, reviews, and so on.  And, then they all talk about it like "duh, here's the solution...you just need to embrace it."  Hmm.

Here's the problem...  All of that's fine and dandy in my opinion IF that's what you want to do...create videos for YT talking about the latest guitar pedal, how to record vocals, some new trick for thicker bass and drums, endless odd cover song variations, and so on.  But, guess what...you're music is still not heard; in fact, I'd argue you're taken less seriously as a musical artist by doing so.  I mean, does anyone own actual albums by Rick Beato?  Yeah, I didn't think so.  Instead, he's thought of as some guy that has a lot to say on other people's music and how to go about doing things but I don't think anyone actually cares about his actual musical work.  To add more injury to the situation, we celebrate the guy for doing so.  Again, hmm.

Now, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against Rick Beato or Mary Spender, etc.  My point is that if you want your music heard, what they're doing 100% does not accomplish that task...so rather than all of us rolling over like a bunch of dead dogs, saying in defeat, "...okay...you're right...I give...I'll do YT reviews...", instead we need to band together (pun intended) and come up with a way to make this work to our advantage.

I actually have ideas on how to try this but the problem is that it takes money, and I don't have any :)  We need someone who's got extra funds to invest, who cares about these things, and is willing to try something both new and old.  Let's face it...the old model, with all its flaws, worked better, no?  This new Spotify streaming model, pretty much everything since what I'd call the Napster fiasco (remember how promising people thought that was?  Well...), has been a pile of you know what and we've all been hurt by it, both musicians/creators and listeners.  We all suffer...so why not put our heads together and do something about it, and actually try something productive?

That's the thought I'll leave you with today.  I'm open to any and all ideas but I'm pretty sure no one wants to watch me do videos on how to play R.E.M.'s "Driver 8".  Geez.

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.

F***in' Finally

I've been off of work the past week and doing nothing but recording.  This may seem like a strange decision due to so many pending mix projects but it had some minor brilliance to it, and now that the week is coming to a close I feel really good about the decision.

To recap...  I have worked my *ss off the past two years, doing everything I can to play catch up on how to mix, arrange, etc. when it comes to original songs.  This may seem odd considering my age, how long I've been trying this, and so on but it was very necessary, and whereas it has created countless delays on projects, they have all been carefully made choices due to a variety of factors.  The most obvious one is that as I turn some page in learning  how to mix, depending upon how major of a learning curve was just made, it then begs the question if you need to go back and alter your in-progress mixes.  Again, these aren't choices that are taken lightly.

I really have a "slope" in life, as I put it, meaning the "importance curve".  For example, when learning to do anything, you'll make minor progress and major progress, and it simply comes down to how greatly this progress effects whatever you're doing.  For example, bringing it back to recording, if you record a cheap acoustic guitar with a cheap microphone you'll get X output; if you then bump up to a good mic, you're output quality may go up, say, 30%?  But, if you upgrade to a good mic and a better guitar, you may get 50% - get the idea?  Such is how I have been making choices with mixing, and if I learn something that I feel is high on the curve, I opt to go back and redo my work.  The goal eventually is that all that major progress will be inherent knowledge and I'll only be left with minor steps forward which won't warrant redos.  I don't know if this makes sense or not but that's the biggest reason for all the delays, mainly that I learned something new that really shook me to the core and I couldn't ignore changing the in-progress stuff.

Coming back to this past week, partly why I wanted to get back to recording something new was a) to do recording again, where I could try out some of my newer techniques and methods to see if things record/sound better, and b) it seemed like the perfect time to put some of my newer mixing knowledge to the test with a clean slate.  I therefore decided this week would be about recording the "Yet I Tried for You" EP which has been in the works for a few years but I refer to it as "new material" versus things that, say, I wrote 20+ years ago.  It'll also be the first "new" vocal work I put out in ages, again versus material I wrote when I was young.

The result?  Well, it almost brought me to tears, frankly.  I think I may have FINALLY arrived...and what a f***ed up journey it's been, let me tell ya.  In looking back, I think I have made every single mistake a person could make in trying to record their own music.  Seriously.  I was going over some of it last night and even I was astounded by how many dumb decisions I have made at times, whether in how I went about recording, what mics I used, what gear I bought (and sometimes was greatly led astray by it), what gear I was recording on, how I was trying to arrange things, and so on.  To finally at very long last hear something come together both quickly and easily, and that also sounds professional...it's just beyond words.  In fact, I was working on a riff part yesterday and had a moment when I couldn't even get my head around the fact that I was listening to my song!  It sounded so good that I had a momentary lapse and thought I was listening to a pro band's release.  Wow.

Sure, things have been greatly delayed but I'm personally okay with it given how things have gone.  I've turned enough corners now that I think I need to just close the book on "Mirror Land", the Defrost Nixon album, etc.  They are what they are...because at this point I'd probably re-record the whole thing and clearly I don't want to do that (again, that curve I was talking about...it's just not worth it).  If things go well, and I think they will, the new "Yet I Tried for You" EP should be ready for release just after the first of the year, and that too would be a new record for me in turn around time.  I'm really excited to share this one with everyone.

Overdue Update

I've been greatly neglecting this blog for quite some time now after being pretty diligent about writing almost weekly.  In truth, I haven't had anything too incredible to report so I've kept my thoughts to myself.  I also try hard not to jump the gun and announce things that won't come to fruition, although that's still not one of my high points obviously.  I guess in some ways I'm an optimist and think things will go more smoothly than they often do.

2025 has been quite a year.  I've worked harder this year than any year previously, and in all honesty I'm exhausted, burnt out, and so on.  I do need a break.  I pretty much knew this would be a tough year and my hope would be that I'd get through it and the path forward would be somewhat easier.  I think that's sort of coming true, which is the good news.

I'm thinking right now that the "Mirror Land" EP will finally come out right around Thanksgiving.  I've had more delays than I can count at this point and the number of iterations and mix changes is beyond belief.  I hope I never have to do things in this manner again...but the whole goal was to put myself through a self induced training course on how to do mixing at least somewhat better.  Why you ask?  Because I have way too many things written to release and I'd never be able to send all of this out to someone else to mix for me.  That's pretty much been my dilemma since 1996 and it's only compounded 100 fold over the decades.

The latest delay was a retooling of the bass.  Not unlike the vocals that I did a deep dive on back in early summer, this was kind of similar and the end result seemed worthwhile, hence I went with it.  Also, the song "Optimism" wasn't behaving anyway so I knew I'd be working on that for a few weeks anyhow so why not see what you can accomplish on the other ones as well?  At this point, I'm pretty much back to a "I like what I have" spot but if I wait too long I'm sure my approach and techniques will once again be out of date, and the whole loop would start all over again, so my intent is to just cut this and run, calling it what it is.  Time to move forward, I think.

Having said all of that, am I pleased with the outcome?  Well, yes and no.  I learned TONS.  Is it perfect?  No, but I wasn't ever going for perfection.  Does it sound as good as if a pro mixed it?  Hell no, but again that's not really my intent either.  All I really want are the songs realized to a decent potential, and personally I think much too much is made of "perfect" mixing.  Hell, we all lived just fine with the recordings of the late 70's early 80's from bands like Squeeze, the Clash, the Police, etc.

So, "Mirror Land" should be released very soon, like in the next 2-3 weeks.  The Defrost Nixon album will be shortly after and right now I'm thinking the release will be right around January 1st.  In 2 weeks, I'm working on recording the "Yet I Tried for You" EP, a 4 song EP of "newer" songs, and I expect that to come out around February.  The only other thing getting squeezed in right now is probably the "Lost Weekend" remix which should also be more or less released around February/March of next year.

Things that got bumped in 2025 are the "Wrecking Ball" album and the remix of "It's Raining Elvis Fish!".  Both will now be for the first half (hopefully) of 2026, and if I have any luck at all the new Jazz Loop Machine album will get squeezed in there as well.  As a sidenote, I'm hoping to have some serious work down on the house in 2026 so if that does indeed happen, the rest of the year will be up in the air since I won't have access to do much recording or mixing during that timeframe.

That's the news over here.  I'm really hoping each release sounds a bit better than the former, and if that does happen, then I'm on the right track.

Yet Another (Another)...

Another week off has come to a close.  I must say that I feel really good about the "Lost Weekend" remix and it truly went very well this week.  I'm not done, mind you, but all the preliminary work IS done and now it's just a matter of listening to it repetitively and making any necessary revisions.

A lot of memories have come up for me this week when working on this album.  I have a feeling I'll be writing quite a bit about it as the project progresses.  That was a really interesting part of my life, 1997 - 2000, and it's kind of amazing to see how long ago that was now because it only feels like maybe a decade ago to me personally.

I'm feeling really good about my newest template and mixing plan overall as well, and I'd dare say that it's working.  Hell knows, it's been a very long time in the making.  Now, to be honest, most albums aren't quite as easy to mix as this one but still.  I truly feel like I turned a page and have put my lessons learned to good use.  I kind of feel like I finally graduated the "course" and earned my diploma.

I guess I need to start thinking about the artwork for the release.  I'm certainly going to do something similar to the original album cover but I think the booklet and/or tray card will be completely different since I was never super pleased with my designs from back then.  I've found working on album artwork to be much more satisfying over the past 5 years so I'm not too terribly stressed about it but I do want to start thinking about a plan.

Also, I've been pondering heavily what work I'd like to get done for the rest of the year and then also what I'm putting on the docket for 2026.  It's quite a list, let me tell ya, and it should be interesting.

It's Happening

Well, it's finally happening...the long planned remix of the "Lost Weekend" album.  Wow.  I'm actually really excited about it, whereas usually the idea of remixing past work might make one's eyes glaze over.

To make it even more exciting, it's actually going quite well.  I'm kind of using this remix as a test to use my "lessons learned" literally from this entire year so far and the past 2-3.  I've tweaked (simplified, really) my mixing process a bit with this one, thinking this will be my new way of doing things going forward, and so far it seems to be working quite well.  I'm quite excited to see (hear) the outcome.

I started working on this remix project about 5+ years ago.  The first thing I had to do was painstakingly go through each track and fix the anomalies that I always disliked, basically things that I wasn't able to fix back in 1999 because I was working with digital ADAT tape.  Now that pretty much all audio is being done via computers and/or has been converted, with extensive GUI based editing, there were tons of items that I wanted to fix.  I spent an enormous amount of hours on the song "Pleasure Oasis", for example, just trying to get the singing on key and more full.

Once I completed that editing, I actually started the remix back in 2022, and I promptly stopped working on it because I wasn't liking the results.  It was partially what prompted me to do the deep dive on mixing that I've been doing now for the past 3 years.  Since I feel like I finally got where I wanted to be, hence it was time to pick this up again, and honestly I'm really glad that I stopped 3 years ago because I would have been rather upset with the results.  At the time, it felt like I was trying to push a square peg in a round hole...and apparently I was because I'm basically whipping these songs into shape all in about 2 hours per song rather than the countless hours I was doing back then.

It's funny because this really isn't a "remix"; it's kind of a first mix.  I say that because I realized that I didn't really "mix" this album the first time around, I simply worked on leveling and panning...nothing else...which is partially why it sounded quite shabby.  It'll be interesting to see what this sounds like given the full treatment.

As previously reported, I'm also finally slowing my pace, which was absolutely necessary, because I have put in more hours on mixing in the past 2-3 years than anyone could possibly imagine coupled with working a full time highly intensive day job.  It's nice to finally not feel so pressured and under the gun.  Hell, I'm even able to relax a bit during this week off and watch a bit of tennis.

I think the remainder of this year is going to be quite fascinating because I think what's going to happen is that I'm going to be releasing a new album/EP every month.  I now have multiple projects all in that "hardening" phase and so it's just a matter of closing each one out, one by one.  It's rather exciting, to me at least.  I'm also now able to, for the first time in probably 3 years, think about being creative again and not only worrying about engineering.  This is also a welcome mind switch.

I can't say for sure but I think the release order will be along the lines of the following:  the "Mirror Land" EP, the "Petty Cash" EP remix, the Defrost Nixon album, the "Acoustic 3 Song Sampler" remix, the "Lost Weekend" remix, the "It's Raining Elvis Fish!" redux/remix album, and then the "Yet I Tried for You" EP.  Yes, I actually believe all of this will be released by the end of the year...no joke.  The one that's been held up is the "Wrecking Ball" album but that'll be my main focus for literal mixing between now and EOY so I predict that will ready to be released hopefully early next year.  I'm actually already planning my release schedule for next year and any physical recording I intend to do for the remainder of 2025.

Next up on my "things to do" list, I'll start focusing on videos for select songs.  I haven't been able to spend the time on that as much as I would have liked but I feel pretty comfortable in that realm already, at least enough to get started and be productive.  It has been a really long time since I released something but I think that's all about to change dramatically.

Thank Heavens...

I think I've finally calmed down thankfully since I couldn't handle much more panic a few weeks ago.  I thought I was finally done with the "Mirror Land" EP on June 25th and then I noticed something glaringly wrong with it that sent me down a path, spiraling out of control, deep diving, etc.  This was also my third time thinking I was done with the EP which only added to my overall panic in general.

Around July 1st, after having already spent countless hours digging, trying endless things, researching, and, well, panicking, I had another one of those moments where I kind of silently said to myself, "you know, self...maybe you just don't have the ability to successfully mix vocals".  I think I needed to have that discussion so that I could actually then do a 180 degree turn, brush it off, and instead just dig a bit deeper, get my attitude in check (I was near a nervous breakdown at the time, trust me), and then reset my own internal deadlines for everything.  Once I did that, things started to calm, and in all honesty I've pretty much always done my worst work when I'm super panicky so calming is absolutely necessary.

It's now August.  Yeah, sure, I'm late again, not that it matters really because it's not like I'm turning this release into a record company or anything like that, it's just my own personal "deadline", if you will, that I'm once again late on.  However, I think I'm finally through it...and I'm thinking I might finally be basking in the light at the end of the tunnel.

To be very frank, the WHOLE idea for all of this was to mix my own work due to being such a prolific writer.  Now, I had zero idea what apple I was biting into 2 decades ago, and it wasn't until I kept failing miserably over and over that I started to comprehend the depths from which I'd have to dig.  I've come a very long way over the past 3-5 years and I dare say that I'm pretty proud of my achievements; I just wish I had tried to climb and conquer this mountain about 20 years ago.  I also wish I had chosen better technology along the way.

Putting that aside, "Mirror Land" is once again "done" but is in the hardening stage.  I think it's mission accomplished because the whole goal for 2025 was to end up at EOY to be pretty proficient at mixing but I knew going into it that it was going to be terribly painful...and it certainly has been.  There may have even been a stray tear here and there, that's the level of pain we're talking.  Vocals especially have been a disaster for me up until now.

Last night, though, I started revisiting my in progress mixes for the "...Fish" album.  With song #1, I hit play, listened to where I left off back in May, and quite frankly thought it sounded pretty awful.  I went to work, started reworking the vocals, then some of the music, etc., and within 45 minutes I couldn't believe the difference.  Wow.  I really have come a long way even since earlier this year.  That's progress.

With vocals, I have done such a deep dive that it's nearly ridiculous.  Where I started 2025 and where I am now is a million miles away.  What was the real issue?  Self induced, and that's what hurts the most, but with something like mixing that is not that unusual, in my experience at least.  The beauty about ProTools and mixing in general is that it offers you a world of options at your fingertips; the horror is that if you really don't know where to start, you can really box yourself into a corner and not find your way out for eons.  It's just the constant tinkering, listening, researching, comparing, etc., that'll help you get out of that corner but you do need a lot of stamina.  It's certainly not for the faint of heart.

I'm not going to say that I'm now "Mr. Mixing Engineer" or anything but I DO feel that I'm on the road to a really good place, meaning taking probably a day per mix versus, well, months.  As I always say, it's not necessarily how smart you are but knowing the "tricks"...and there are a hell of a lot 'em with this sort of thing.  It is August so half the year is gone but I still have 3 full albums to finish by year's end.  My hope is that by the time I work through all of this that I'll be exactly where I want to be at long last.  Fingers crossed and one can only hope.

Damn Plugin's

Today's minor blurb is about using new plugin's and, well, finding the right time to actually use them.  I, probably like everyone, have fallen into the awful trap of researching some audio issue online and then finding a slew of supposed "expert" YouTube videos about how to handle some issue, etc. (even though the videos are most likely from goons that know about as much as I do but simply speak in an authoritative manner), and then taking some plunge into using or buying a new plugin.  I'll just admit up front that I've fallen into this trap multiple times and it almost always gets me into trouble.

I'm actually currently digging my way out of one of these very traps, basically due to purchasing the Fab Filter Pro-MB plugin and throwing it into a bunch of mixes a bit too blindly.  Now, to be clear, I'm not picking on the plugin whatsoever...I'm the issue here.  I can tell you first hand that the plugin is a super valuable tool; I can also tell you firsthand that if it's not used well it can cause pure havoc on your mix without even realizing it.

So, what I've found is that I have been training myself when to simply say "no, not right now" versus thinking I need to play around with something immediately.  If it isn't terribly obvious, working through final mixdown of a song or project is probably not the right time.  Having said that, it's not always easy to say "no", though, and I'm always stumbling upon videos that make some recommendation that's supposedly "mind blowing" but I simply try to save the link with the intent of looking at it later if I'm in the middle of something crucial.  If I don't resist, there's usually a bit of pain.

In true audio engineering form, though, the opposite can also be said, and that is if you feel the mix has an issue and it simply needs to be addressed, well, take a deep breath and prepare for delays because otherwise you're going to lose sleep over NOT addressing it if you push forward.  This is also a lesson I've learned the hard way.  So, yes, some issues do need to be researched and require the patience to work through regardless of what delay they might cause, that is if you're trying to get the best result available to you.

Balancing these issues I think is the real trick and I'll openly admit that I'm still not the greatest at it.  I think when mixing, especially if it's taking a rather large amount of time to get it done, we just want to finish it and move on.  Ah, but can you live with the results?  Well, that's another story, and that's usually what I ask myself in a very serious manner.

I guess I honestly should always write at the top of these posts or this blog in general that nothing I ever write here is for the actual pro audio engineering world.  This is more for those people like myself who have figured out that the only way they're going to get their material out there is by taking the plunge and attempting to learn at least some of this on their own.  And, oh what a plunge it is...my goodness.  Prepare to take in quite a few gulps of water as you learn to dive!

Quiet, Not Quiet

It probably seems like I've been quiet for nearly a month.  Well, it's been anything but quiet over here, unfortunately.  Honestly, there's been too much going on and unfortunately a lot of its been drama based.

I'll spare the sob story of what I've been working on, mind you, but needless to say I've had yet another really great deep dive into vocal processing.  Wow.  Who knew vocals could be so dang tough?!  I mean, there are inherent reasons why I'm dealing with these issues, mind you, but just coming up with a strong overall vocal strategy going forward has been a bit of a dauting task.

Rather than going over the same ol' same ol', I'll just report this:  the Defrost Nixon mixes continue to evolve.  At this point, I think have 2-3 songs that I could almost say are "done", and then perhaps all of side 1, with a few minor exceptions, is slowly approaching a more complete phase.  Side 2, well, that one still needs work and I'll be fighting with it more this week, when I have time, that is.  Time has actually been a major problem over the past month, hence the ongoing delays.

On the horizon, my annual Labor Day week off is starting to loom and so I need to plan just exactly what I intend to accomplish during that time period.  The "Lost Weekend" remix was the original plan and does remain on the docket, however I believe I've made the choice to throw in recording 2 new acoustic based songs, literally brand new material that has popped up recently without trying.

It's strange because I've hit a point in music and guitar where I can literally not practice at all and still be pretty good.  Wow.  I never thought this would happen...ever.  Even stranger, it seems like each time I DO pick up a guitar, I end up writing a new song.  Not a bad place to be, mind you...

I also was toying around with yet another alternate tuning yesterday that I stumbled upon.  I'm growing quite fond of alternate tunings but there's of course one major downfall to them...it makes it really confusing to keep in your head what tuning you're in, and therefore you have that many more variations that you have to memorize.  Needless to say it'll probably be awhile before I pick up an alternate tuned guitar and play as if I know what I'm actually doing because you inevitably forget and start trying to play in standard tuning which, well, doesn't work :)

I may also have written the basis for a new piano song.  Yeah, it's been strange.  Maybe being stuck in this ridiculously long engineering stage has had some benefit to my writing?  Perhaps.  I have written about 7-8 songs in the past 3 months and without trying.  Thank goodness for handheld recorders (seriously, a must!).

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.

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.