Well, day 1 of the re-mixdown was a success. We did find some minor tweaks that need to be made, but nothing major at all. Day 2 was also very good but there may be a few more tweaks from today.
Overall, very good mixes, but we had to mix the toughest, weirdest song of the batch today and that was, well, weird.
We put in another 8 hours at Sugar Hill today and Chris and I came away with three more excellent tracks. As I told him on the phone tonight, I feel like even though we’re not there yet, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We mixed three more tonight – She Calms My Nerves, A Walk Through the Valley and Clown. This was in addition to (You’re Not My) Final Song, Tell Me Why and Father’s Day on Monday.
We had a few tweaks here and there for the first three songs – all minor stuff (turn the vocal up here, fix a missed punch there). The three we did today started with Valley, which is long (6+ minutes) and totally psychedelic.
There were TONS of guitars all over the thing and the whole mix was just wild. It took almost five hours to do just that song and less than 3 to finish the remaining two. That should give you and idea of the complexity.
On first listen with crispy ears, I like it. It isn’t perfect, but it is close. The drums and bass are great and the vocals are very good. Chris may want to change a few guitars in the two weeks between Friday and our last mixdown days and I can understand. The whole mix is a little swirly and that can be tough to listen to.
Nerves is great. The drums on that turned our awesome. On first glance, it sounds like the violin needs to come up in the mix, but I’ll give it a fresher listen tomorrow.
Clown, I have no idea yet. It may not be quite powerful enough yet and there were a couple small rhythmic issues there, but nothing that can’t be fixed. It is the bonus track on the CD, so it is meant to be weird, but there will need to be a few tweaks there no doubt.
We do three more songs Friday and then have a two-week break to do track fixes and record some keyboards before doing our final two mix days the first week of December.
We’re definitely getting closer.