Don’t you like my smarmy post titles?

The past two days have been long 10-11 hr. sessions. Working early in the morning for my day job, trying to bill for at least 5 hours and then running up to the studio for noon to 10pm mixing is gonna wipe me out by the end of the week. I’m still having a blast. We’ve redone a lot of vocals and tweaked a few more. When I say ‘tweaked’, I should say ‘tuned’. Yes, I will admit to you dear reader, jeff is using pitch correction software here and there instead of re-singing some of the stuff. We’re taking full advantage of the digital age, but not overdoing it. The vocals still sound very natural – not like that Cher song heh. Paul is being extremely careful to keep it all in check.

Yesterday Trey and his bro Chris (The Brothers CaraMichael) stopped by to listen and suggest a few drum enhancements. They also helped rearrange the audio bloodbath ending to ‘Little Doll’. The song had quite a jam session in the rough mix so we trimmed it back a few bars and rearranged some of the parts so they build up nicely to the end. We also discovered and implemented several forgotten Holt keyboard parts that were even better than the original take used in scratch version. ‘So Green’ didn’t need too much help, so that one was done soon afterwards.

Jumping back to Chris, I must thank him for introducing me to Cubase and the wonderful world of computer-based multi-tracking software a few years ago . It has helped me become a better songwriter because I can try out lots of different ideas quickly. I don’t know how I lived without it before. Everything was so painful to get out or maneuver around once it was on a cassette 4-track or even the cheesy digital 8-track with only 100mb of storage. Still, I am far from mastering it in terms of getting quality sounds and mixes, hence-to-for-with the need for Paul and Artisan’s help.

We added a few more surprises to ‘Ego’ and ‘Be Cool’ today. Funny experiments mainly to ‘Ego’. That exercise was just too fun. Tye came in to the control room scratching his head wondering what the hell we were doing. I won’t spoil it for you though. They are tucked deep in the mix – nothing terribly overt. Paul also rendered a version of the song without them in case the rest of the band freaks when they hear it.

Paul has also made instrumental versions of the tunes as well, in case 2 years from now I want to have someone else sing them. Or maybe he is secretly entering the songs in a Dallas Karaoke contest with William Shatner as a guest star. “MY MY MY alchoholicalterego ego E-Go! egough. COMES stumblingintotakethe FAHHHLLL for MEEEE – AND HE’S GONE!!!” Please reference his version of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ if you don’t understand.