We've unexpectedly passed another milestone today as the first complete set of mixes for all 13 songs emerged from this afternoons session.
Mr Wizard got his dates wrong, Theo was unavailable and Rosie didn't think he'd make the brief review session we envisaged, leaving it to yours truly and Pete to do the final tweaks. MUAHAHAHA!!!! Feel the Power! Now I can add in all the secret accordion solo's I have been planning.
Or not.
Great! So where does this leave us? Well, we have scheduled a Drum and Percussion review day for Theo, we'll all be listening to the initial mixes and making yet more notes. Pete will be doing the same.
That means we wont be finished next week, but thereafter? It's anyone's guess.
I did this for the Agent Orange Justices art Exhibition in Sydney opening at The Mori Art gallery August 7th 2012 , till the 11th Day street , it's all about the horror of genetic propblems caused by the use of Agent Orange!
Boy was I looking forward to this session. Fettler (Michael Kerin) came down from the mountains to add some Fiddle to a few songs. Fettler is without a doubt the scariest Yoda Like musician I've played with and we're honored to have him do some stuff on the album. Of course, with Rosie, Fettler and me, that meant there were three 'Michaels' in the studio, no wonder we all use nick names :-)
One of the songs we wrote around the time of our first Tamworth adventure (Texas Rosie, courtesy of...well..Rosie) had a spot where we thought Fiddle would be grand, so we asked Fettler to come down and add some...but while he was here we thought we'd try a few other ideas.
Now I have to caution you, Dear Reader, what you hear in these excerpts from the recording sessions, are all the ideas (most of the ideas, some i am keeping as a surprise! There will be cake!).
The final product may be completely different, that's what the mixing process is all about.
After we had done the stuff we thought we should do, we gave Fettler a run at anything he felt inclined to try. Whilst listening to even In A Lifetime, Fettler opined that it could use some more mandolin and proceeded to demonstrate by playing his Violin like a Ukulele. Great! Let's do that! So we sent him into the recording booth to try it.
The guy is just a monster player.
With those ideas recorded, we're pretty much at the end of Principal Recording. The only main component left to do is the additional Percussion that Theo wants to add. So now, we start mixing and adding any last minute fixes (was that solo quite right? Should those vocals be tweaked? Is that Harp out of tune?), plus we're waiting on some added keyboard ideas from Charlie and Mitch.
The mixing has started and will take...as long as it takes (good grief) but the results we're hearing are worth the wait. As always, I will keep you posted on progress over the next sessions.
Another milestone today as we added the backing vocals of the lovely Kate D and Mika H to the stuff Jo has recorded, thus completing the Three Power Kung Fu combination necessary to unlock the Southern Belles!
Level Up!
This is all starting to sound pretty interesting. We're definitely at the Lily Gilding stage, so we are going to have to be careful not to disappear up our own fundamentals, which is hard, when you have so many potentially good choices. Yikes.
Fettler will be in the studio on Wednesday to add some fiddle to a couple of tracks. It's all happening, kids.
I love the Brackets & Jam nights. They have a community spirit that's marvellous to experience.
There's also the Lentil Burger (yum!). Rosie had beans. Hurrah for fibre!
Even though we arrived in the evening, you get a sense of how pretty the location is - a mud brick cottage at the top of a 'mountain' (citation needed) in a bush land setting, with cleared lawns around it. During the day, the view must be spectacular.
The music was already in full swing when we arrived.
Johnny Devilseed and the Birdman were great, the Drum Jam was ...well...watch the video.
Here's a moment of the drum jam
We've played the 'North' Brackets and Jam and i tried to stir up a bit of Brackets rivalry in the crowd (Fail), they're all too darn nice. :-)
Some of our regular attendees are starting to hear songs from the new album that they haven't heard before...or as Steve said - You've been playing that one for ages :-) Yes Steve, we have, but it takes us ages to get the flipping thing released!
I had some good reports on Feel So Blue. Nice. I also enjoyed the comment from an unnamed Person (STEVE!!) - 'Ya know, I'm actually looking forward to the next album'
I thought that was a funny-cos-it's-true moment so I shared it with Rosie on the drive home. Turns out, each one of us had the same conversation and each one of us replied: "So are we' :-)
A good vibe night. If you're on the central coast, or near it, it's a good night out for live music, healthy food (I had Chai. I am now officially a Hippy) and live music, with a crowd of happy people gathered together to enjoy themselves in a startlingly Australian manner, reminescent of an old bush dance. Community vibe is alive, ya just gotta go look.
Cheers to Steve and Bernie, Noel, Gary, Anna and all the Brackets & Jam Crowd. We look forward to going back up there in Summer.
