days 7-?
well, new year’s came and went in my blog without much in the way of commendation. much in the way of anything, really.
the last few days have seen a flurry of activity with the soon-to-be-released CD. we recorded i don’t know how many songs, spending roughly 8 hours a day on it. when you factor in the reality of my situation at home, namely that i’ve been sleeping on average 11-12 hours a day, you realize how little else i have been doing.
i did go out friday night for bowling and pizza (BOR-ing), and saturday night for dinner and a movie with my friend amy, but other than that human interaction with anyone besides david has been virtually non-existent.
anyway, so we recorded a bunch of songs. 12 to be exact. the last was recorded saturday night at 1am, merely half a day before we were scheduled to pack up the studio and drive david and his drums back up to gainesville. i stayed awake that night until 7:30am (a fuzzy, drizzly sort of dawn greeted me sunday morning) attempting to successfully mix and master the songs.
you see, it is one thing to mix a song, and another to mix a song on an album–the reason being, of course, that all the songs must be related correctly in terms of volume and flow. you can’t have a quiet song be, overall, as loud as the grand finale of a rocking, hardcore song. but this process of mastering the songs–making sure the levels and EQ for every piece are the same–is a long and tiresome affair of listening to part after part after part and making tweak-like adjustments.
to make matters worse, i’ve got nothing that could be remotely considered ‘mastering equipment’, whether hardware or software. in fact, the program i used to master the songs was called “leon’s free software audio mastering program”. obviously not the development monstrosity i’d have hoped would produce the software i use. but whatever.
sooner or later, as i grew more and more tired, my accuracy in listening grew abysmal and i went to bed. of course, i had to wake up (what seemed) soon after that to start taking down the studio.
i hadn’t thought about it before, but as we rolled up the cords and placed the mics back in their cases, i felt a pang of sadness. despite all the grueling work and frustration, recording was fun. i could definitely make my living doing it.
all that’s left now is a few final mastering touches, and the cd will be done. i spent last night in gainesville with two people who, as you know, have been instrumental in making the album–chris nyffeler and jason killingsworth. we discussed band names, album names, album art, and track sequencing, and i feel more confident that this project is actually going to be finished, and successfully.
every time i listen to it i will think “i wish i could have done that better”, or “i wish i wasn’t a quarter cent flat there”. but whatever, i think it’s the best set of music i’ve ever put out, and at the best quality. the production will also be the best–real replicated (not duplicated) CDs, jewel cases, shrink wrap, and the rest. that’s what makes this project a success in my opinion–not that it is perfect (and when could it ever be?)–but that it is better in every respect to anything i’ve done before. and what more can i ask? especially given that we were working on an utterly laughable timescale. no one records a full-length album in 2 weeks. 2 months is closer to the correct scale, though in reality it’s probably even double that.
conclusion: we had fun, we recorded good songs, we recorded them well if not perfectly, and we have a healthy ambition for pursuing the project through to its completion. i wasn’t always sure of this but now i am: i won’t mind a thousand copies of this album floating around the world. and though i’m not certain we’ll even come close to selling that many, i definitely hope.