Wow! It’s been 14 days since my last post. That hasn’t happened in years now has it!
I crashed. Pretty hard. Physically and mentally more than emotionally although there was a bit of that. All the work on the album and trying to make it sound as good as possible, working all by myself finally got to me.
I managed to mix 6 of the 7 full length songs and the last I needed to arrange and finish the lyrics which I did but I still haven’t recorded.
I had a fierce battle with the second single that almost took me out of commission. I couldn’t get it sounding right. I made 58 versions of the song and wasn’t happy with any of them but finally settled on the one that felt closest to working.
That killed my motivation, listening back and realizing the album sounds closer to my old demos than I had anticipated at first. The progress in the first few days of recording was so massive that I got a little too excited.
But as I discovered, the more instruments you add, the more mediocre mixing skills start to become apparent.
The November 1st deadline is looking less and less likely because I found a band who is willing to add some brass instruments on one song…probably.
I also need to make a cover which is stressing me out a little. I want to hire someone but some huge uncertainty is popping its ugly head in my life now and it doesn’t feel like the best time to be spending money.
There are also more vital things that will cost money. Touring expenses. A new Microphone. A new phone where I do a lot of my video editing and blogging.
I made the covers for the singles myself, so it’s not like I couldn’t make the album cover if I wanted to. I just feel maybe someone else would make something I like more and it is so fun to collaborate with artists.
I have two shows coming up and so I am losing the ability to focus 100% on finishing the album, buuuuut I think this last song is going to be a very simple mix. I want it to be relatively sparse because the guitar playing is a lot more nuanced than the other songs on the album. It tests my abilities.
For that reason I’ve been practicing it all week without recording it. It’s the emotionally heaviest song on the album too. It hope it will leave you with a sense of inspiration and hope but it’s going to drag you through the dirt first. It’s about gaining conviction when you have lost everything else.
It’s one of the two songs I have not shared anywhere else. No live recordings, no clips, no demos. I wanted to have at least 2 songs like that even though the live versions of other songs sound quite different from the album version.
Hopefully my next post won’t be weeks away and hopefully it will have some good news!