Tracklisting/The New Number Two - 040715

Spent the morning on AA3 re-jigging the tracklisting in the light of the decision to drop ...NUMBER TWO.

The transitions sound pretty good to me, and the total running time is down to 70.34, which can't be bad.

My ears are fairly shattered now, so I'll give 'em a rest for a day or two. I'll just check the transitions then, one last time, just to be sure.

Enjoy your weekend!

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting/A Plague On Both My Houses/Watching The News With The Sound Off/The New Number Two - 030715

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Another frustrating, and ultimately disappointing, day today...

Remixed/remastered ...PLAGUE and WATCHING... in CE5/AA3. Both sound fine and are keepers.

However, I spent practically the whole day trying to sort out ...NUMBER TWO, and having got to the 37th different mix, I decided that I can't do anything with it in its present state. I won't even begin to list all the hoops I tried to jump through to bring this track home, but ultimately I couldn't get it to work. It's a shame, because I really love the track. I gave it every chance to come through, but...

The problem lies in my choice of VST soft synths, I plumped for a couple of "distressed" sounds which seemed to occupy the same space EQ-wise. No amount of adjustment would make the various parts sit well together, so I have decided to drop the track from the album. I'll revisit it again in the future - I just don't have the time for it right now.

Of course, that now means I have to adjust the tracklisting. What larks! A job for next week, perhaps. Well, at least the album will be even shorter now...;-).

Enjoy the fine weather!

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting/Complications From A Fall/The New Number Two/A Plague On Both Your Houses/Watching The News With The Sound Off - 020715

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Another frustrating today, but maybe not as bad as yesterday.

Having reviewed the work I did yesterday, COMPLICATIONS... passed muster, the others didn't.

I spent much of the day remixing in CE5/AA3 - ...PLAGUE... is now fine. ...NUMBER proved very frustrating - I'm now up to Mix 29 and I'm still not sure if it's OK. The 29th mix is OK to sleep on overnight - if I'm not there, I'm nearly there. I didn't get around to WATCHING... at all.

Busy day tomorrow, I reckon...;-).

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting/Watching The News With The Sound Off/Complications From A Fall/The New Number Two/A Plague On Both My Houses - 010715

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Frustrating sort of day. I decided to go for a spin in the car to review the tracklisting over the stereo speakers. To do that, I enlisted the aid of my old iPod Shuffle, which I thought had packed it in a few years ago, but apparently was only resting between engagements...

Went off for a spin for an hour or more, out by Lough Derg and Terryglass and back by Borrisokane (as you do...). I reckon the "musical" tracks are fine, but some of the ambient tracks need to be tweaked,

I adjusted the EQs for WATCHING..., COMPLICATIONS... and ...PLAGUE, and they seem to be OK, but ...NUMBER TWO is giving me trouble. I couldn't tweak the EQ, so I had to do a quick remix of the track in CE5 and master in AA3. Not sure if that works so well. If I can't fix the track, I'll just have to drop it.

I'll check these four tracks again tomorrow and see where that leaves me.

Bummer...

Regards,

djp

Gomorrah/Tracklisting - 280615

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GOMORRAH

Graphics done for a prospective October release.

TRACKLISTING

Made an MP3 file of Version 3b in AA3 for review purposes. Can't wait to listen to it over the car stereo and the setup in my lounge. There may be a few tweaks to be done on a few tracks, but more in the way of EQ adjustments. I'm certainly not messing around with crossfades again...;-).

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting - 230615

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Had another go at the tracklisting in AA3. I compared Version 3b with Versions 2, 3 and 3a and found where the time had been slipping. There was one crossfade that was significantly self-indulgent. I have corrected that error and have got the running time down to 74.19, which is quite satisfactory.

I need to create a wav of the full album mix so I can give it a good ol' listen. I'm trying not to be forensic about the album at this stage, because if I start finding microscopic flaws in the tracks now, I might as well just give up. This is all part of "letting go" of the album. Has happened before, so I'm familiar with the potential for panic...;-).

Real world intervenes tomorrow...

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting/Watching The News With The Sound Off - 220615

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Back from the weekend roadtrip, I decided to give the most current version of the tracklisting, Version 3, a critical listen. I felt I needed to change the outro to WATCHING... The original version has a silly gramophone-winding-down effect which I've used on a number of occasions in the past, to the extent that even I thought it was clichéd. So I decided to fade the track out a bit earlier - edited it in AA3.

But then I foolishly thought that I could just insert the new version into the tracklisting file and then "drag" all the other tracks and keep the crossfades, Na-ahh, not in AA3. I basically had to create new crossfades, which, Murphy's Law being what it is, do not match those in the original Version 3, so even though I've shortened WATCHING... by a good 10 seconds, the overall tracklisting is longer by 30 seconds. It could only happen to me! I will now have to go back to the original Version 3 and try to work out how to recreate the crossfades. So, today's longer version of the tracklisting is Version 3a, while I have created a Version 3b to work on whenever I get the chance.

No rush. Maybe not tomorrow. Something else lined up...

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting/The New Number Two - 180615

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Organised a tracklisting (two actually) for the full album mix in AA3. This involved me using metronome audio set to the tempo of each individual track, and then lining-up consecutive tracks based on the metronome. I think it works pretty well for most of the transitions, but I suspect there will be several tweaks between now and the release date. There's been one already...;-). Running time has been reduced to about 74:40. Bit of an improvement on 90 minutes, wha'...?

The album in its Bandcamp/iTunes etc.versions won't have those transitions. The tracks will be standalone, as it were. The reason for this is that streaming doesn't like crossfading and downloaded crossfaded tracks sound crap. So you will have to download the full album mix via Bandcamp (or stream it off Mixcloud) to get the full effect.

As I was going through the masters, I found an unpleasant hiss on THE NEW NUMBER TWO. Now, I know there are people out there (you know who you are) who got to great lengths to add tape noise to their tracks to create an analogue effect on digital recordings. I am not one of those people...;-). So go it had to.

Road trip over the weekend, so I'll be back in harness on Monday.

Regards,


djp

You'll Never Miss Your Mother Till The Well Runs Dry/Me & The Fly/I Choose Indecision/Tracklisting

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...MOTHER...

Mixed/mastered 14 different mixes in CE5/AA3. The last one is the best. The balance got sorted fairly quickly, but I kept hearing these timing glitches and I think I've fixed as many of them as I could without actually re-tracking.

And that, my friends, is the last track on the album done and dusted. And to prove that point, here's a little screenshot of my progress spreadsheet, showing a very satisfying preponderance of yellow...:-

I had a lot of PC trouble this morning, which was really pooping on my party, but I eventually sussed that my problem was a Windows update which hadn't "taken" properly. Once that got sorted, everything went smoothly.

So all the heavy lifting has been done. The next step is to concentrate on the tracklisting and putting together a full album mix for inclusion as a bonus track on the Bandcamp release. I am also going to put the mix up on Mixcloud for your streaming pleasure.

Speaking of the tracklisting, I CHOOSE INDECISION isn't going to make the cut. The mix is weak, principally because of the drum parts. The track is totally rescueable, but I don't have the time or the inclination right now, so I'll revive it for a future release.

My Twitter promo campaign for ...FLY is still ongoing, but it's nearly finished now. I've been getting great responses to date, with hopefully more to come. Oh, and the drum & bass mix is in progress, so I'll see how that works out. If I like it, I'll add it as a bonus track on the Bandcamp release.

Tomorrow I will crack on with the full album mix and a spot of promo. After that, we'll see...

Regards,

djp

Me & The Fly/This Is Going To Take, Like, Forever - 050615

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...FLY

Finished the first half of my Twitter promo campaign. Second half starts tomorrow

...FOREVER

Another "window" opened for me this afternoon, so I managed to mix/master the track in CE5/AA3.

The track truly lived up to its name as it was way more difficult to mix than I'd thought. The main difficulty was trying to get the bass to sit nicely in the mix. Took me a few hours but I finally cracked it. A certain amount of judicious editing of the Ric bass parts was required.

The mix is fine. I thought I'd missed an aspect of the track in the mix that I thought was present in the rough demo I'd made a few months back, but when I reviewed the demo, that aspect wasn't there as I'd imagined it. Starting to come a little unglued here...;-).

Only one more mix to go. I won't be able to manage it this weekend and I'm on a road trip pretty much all next week, so it will the week after that again before I'll be able tackle that track, In the meantime, I'll continue with my promo efforts.

Regards,


djp

Me & The Fly/My Troubles Are As Nothing Compared To Yours/Stiltwalker In The Wind - 040615

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...FLY

I was starting to do some more promo work on Twitter, when a whopping great big "window" opened up for me, so I dropped the promo for the present. I'll get on to it over the next few days.

On top of that I got contacted with an offer to do a drum & bass remix of ...FLY. Will have to think about that - correspondence has been exchanged and responses are awaited...

In view of the whopping great big "window":-

...TROUBLES

Mixed/mastered in CE5/AA3. Three mixes in all - third is the best. Had to do a lot of emergency surgery on the Ric bass parts, but everything sounds hella tight now.

STILTWALKER...

Mixed/mastered in CE5/AA3. Two mixes  - second is best. Had to tweak the vocal parts a bit. Pretty easy mix to do, as it happens.

I have to rejoin the "real world" briefly tomorrow, so I don't know exactly what I'll be doing on the project. Promo most likely.

Only two tracks left to mix/master now. Yowza!

Regards,


djp

Me & The Fly/Mare Nostrum - 030615

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ME & THE FLY

I've been slaving away on Twitter doing a spot of promo for the EP. Should be finished tomorrow.

MARE NOSTRUM

Another one of my famous "windows" opened this morning and I managed to mix/master the track in CE5/AA3. The track sounds great.

Another "window" may open for me tomorrow, so I'm told. We'll have to see about that, though...

Only four more tracks left. Should be finished within a month, but possibly sooner...;-)

Regards,


djp

Me & The Fly/I Choose Indecision/Iye/You Have My Heart Scalded - 010615

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Greetings from a spectacularly miserable (weatherwise) Bank Holiday Gulag. Here is the news...

ME & THE FLY

Released and getting some nice comments from some nice people. You can judge for yourself right now...

In other news, I had another one of my "windows" and did some work on other album tracks, to wit...

I CHOOSE INDECISION

Mixed and mastered in CE5/AA3. Sounded alright when I mixed, but then I left it for a while and played it back - meh. My choice of drum parts didn't help things, but I'm not sure if the track works as a dub in any event. Probably too much going on with it anyway. 

My inclination is to drop the track from the album, but I'll work up two different tracklistings (one "with" and one "without") and see how I feel about the track closer to release date.

IYE

Mixed and mastered in CE5/AA3. Sounds fine to me, A keeper...;-).

YOU HAVE MY HEART SCALDED

After much consideration, I'm going to revert to the original mix, because that's how I roll.

More over the course of the week.

Regards,

djp

You Have My Heart Scalded/Me & The Fly - 240515

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...SCALDED

One last tweak to the mix in CE5/AA3. Definitely using this mix...I hope...;-).

...FLY

Finally got down to designing the cover art. Had a bit of fun locating a suitable font, but eventually got one. I can highly recommend 1001freefonts.com if you're stuck for a font.

I also found a suitable image from Wikipedia. I know, "Creative Commons" and all that, but just because I used it in this instance doesn't mean I endorse it. You can't call me a hypocrite if I acknowledge it myself...;-).

I'm having a good old think about a suitable release date. Sometime within the next few weeks, that for sure.

Roadtrip for the next few days. See you later on in the week...

Regards,


djp

FCA Boots/Gomorrah/Is Everybody Happy Yet? - 220515

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FCA BOOTS

Sorted the glitch. Remixed/remastered in CE5/AA3. Sorted.

GOMORRAH

Had to do an emergency edit on the Ric bass/Squier Strat parts. Mixed/mastered in CE5/AA3. Three mixes. Taking the second.

IS EVERYBODY HAPPY YET?

What a nightmare of a track to mix. Had to edit the Squier Strat parts and do a huge amount of tweaking of the VST soft synth parts. Mixed/mastered in CE5/AA3/AA1.5. Not sure if I'm 100% happy with it. Made multiple mixes, too many to count. I picked the least worst one, if you follow me. I spent an awful lot of time on a track that won't actually feature on the finished album. Who'd be me, eh...?

In other news, my broadband was down all day. I was too busy to check it out during the day, but this evening I got on to my ISP. During the week, I'd ordered fibre broadband and was told that an engineer would be out in a few weeks to sort things out. However, it seems that they actually turned on my fiber broadband today and my router couldn't handle it, Luckily, I had a second router which could take fibre broadband, so I got on to the support guy and found that if I connected it to the test phone socket inside the master phone socket, everything worked fine. However, the support guy told me that this would disable my landline, so I had to disconnect my alarm, because it was beeping like mad.

Subsequently, I discovered that the landline could work if I connected it to the test socket through the filter. So it seems there may have been no need to disconnect the alarm at all. Tcheh! So now you know what I'll be up to for the rest of the evening.

Shtuff...

Regards,


djp

I Can Explain...Everything/You Have My Heart Scalded/FCA Boots - 210515

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A "window" opened for me today, and I mixed both of the tracks in CE5. Mastered in AA3. One mix of ...EVERYTHING and two mixes of ...SCALDED. I'll take the second mix, thank you very much...

There's a little fix I need to do for FCA BOOTS. There's a glitch that's noticeable over the headphones but not over the monitors. I'll have a look at this in the next few days.

That's good progress made this week. Only nine more tracks to mix/master.

More tomorrow.

Regards,


djp

FCA Boots/Tropes and Memes - 200515

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FCA BOOTS

Did 4 different mixes in CE5 and mastered in AA3. I think I'll go with the fourth mix, but I have an idea for an edit which might be interesting - we'll see. It'll be based on the fourth mix anyway, so it'll only take a few minutes to try it out.

Had to do an emergency edit of the Ric bass parts and programme a new synth part - the latter may not be necessary.

TROPES AND MEMES

Did one mix in CE5 and mastered in AA3. A simpler task, even though that track is more complex than FCA. Such is life.

I'm starting to run out of time here, so I'm going to do a blitz of mixing/mastering over the next few weeks. Some distractions along the way of course - a.k.a. shtuff.

More tomorrow.

Regards,


djp

Tracklisting - 100515

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Even though I am not working off a complete set of mastered track as yet, I think I have the tracklisting for the album pretty much nailed for the moment. 19 tracks - over 80 minutes long - I know, I'm an insaniac...;-).

As was the case for HELLHOLE, I plan to create a full album mix for the album, to compensate for the fact that I cannot crossfade the tracks on Bandcamp. The full mix will be included as a bonus track on Bandcamp. This time out, I also intend to upload the full mix onto Mixcloud (and possibly Soundcloud) for streaming purposes.

In order to get my crossfades sorted "properly", my plan is to upload all the tracks as a multi-track session file in AA3 and then use metronome tracks, which I recorded today in CE5, to line the tracks up to the optimum effect. I've done this type of thing for previous releases, but only "by ear" (without the metronome tracks). This should make things so much easier - or not work at all...

I also have the tracklistings sorted for 3 EPs to promote the album. More will be revealed closer to the moment.

Big roadtrip planned for the next few days, so you probably won't hear from me until the weekend.

Phew, sez you...

Regards,


djp

Choking On Dry Bread (a.k.a. Flypaper)/Tracklisting/ You'll Never Miss Your Mother Till The Well Runs Dry - 080515

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Spent the morning tweaking the edits and dubs in CE5. And I was happy enough with that, when a window emerged in the afternoon to mix/master the track properly. Which I did, except of course I did a further significant amount of additional tweaking along the way. I now think I've got it sounding as good as I can get it. If you like dub, then I think you'll like this.

I've decided to retitle the track as FLYPAPER, since the track has nothing to do with either choking or dry bread, but also there is a large lump of vocals from ...FLY, so it makes sense to change the title. That's it - no further discussion - executive decision.

In other news, I started putting together an initial tracklisting in AA3. So far, I've got 19 tracks and the running time is around 77 minutes. I'm trying to sequence the tracks in trios of fast/slow/ambient, but I know that the last track has to be ...MOTHER, so that idea doesn't hold all the way through. I need to check that I have not added EP tracks and that I have enough spare ambient tracks to go on the EPs (there will be three, FYI). I'll have another look at this over the weekend.

Making progress, bai...

Regards,


djp

Mare Nostrum/Me & The Fly - 280415

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Big Gulag-shaped window opened up for me today!

MARE...

Spent the morning editing/dubbing-up the track in CE5. Not fully convinced that it will make the final album - I think that will depend on how satisfied I am with mix. But it should at least feature on an EP - especially after all the time and effort I put into the bastid. Time will tell...

...FLY

Spent the afternoon mixing and mastering the track in CE5/AA3. Ended up with five different mixes and I had issues with all of them, but I reckon I got them sorted on the fifth mix. Nice, big, beaty track and the title track for the first EP!

Having spent all day in the Gulag, I will be glad to return to the real world for the rest of the week, if only to give me ears a rest!

See yah when I see yah...

Regards,


djp