Howdy Folks.
Well, that's another unexpected milestone today as we completed the editing sessions.
What does that mean?
Ok, if you cast your mind back...(oooh...dream sequence music plays)...
The first stage was the recording on location. Ah the good old days. Good times.
The next stage was adding/overdubbing additional parts.
Sometimes that meant fixing location recordings, sometimes it meant trying other ideas, sometimes adding instrumentation or participants who were unavailable during the location recording.
As you work on the captured material, it starts to take on a life of it's own. Despite what you hear, think or write, the recording process will yield its own version of your target song. Good luck, may the force be with you.
Yesterday and today were a quality control process for ideas and performance; Did that idea work? Can it be fixed, redone, re-treated or edited? Does it add anything?
This is just the start of the "hmm' sessions. Walking around, listening to the songs and going 'hmmm'.
With the edits done, Pete is moving into mixing, from there we review, tweak, rinse, repeat and then....and then...err..
Um.
oh yeah, we master it and press it. No worries. A snap.
Of course, there are still a list of little tasks to take care of along the way, such as adding in a few last ideas. Paul and Theo were keen on getting some Keyboard type sounds into one song, and for one reason or another, it fell to me today to try and emulate a Hammond Organ using my trusty harmonica. No worries, I have already been posing as a Sax, so why not try another cunning disguise.
By the time we'd laid down some extra Dobro for Light In The Distance, a few harp chords for Keeps You Moving on and made up a list of final tweaks, we began scheduling the final fix-it-days and the mixing week. That gives us one last chance to get anything else we want on there and then its mixing time.
I have studiously avoided putting a completion date down, oh no, I've been burned before. Nope. I report, you decide. No, hang on, that's Fox News. My bad.
I mean, I'll keep reporting and you'll know its done when you see the final product in your hot little hands.
Reality. Accept no substitutes.
MJEB