Mixing Progress

I felt like I was spinning my wheels on the album--doing a lot of recording but not really making any progress.   Part of my problem was mixing.  As in, not mixing enough to keep up with the recording. 

Mixing is tough for me because it involves a lot of decisions.  "Which take is better, A, or B?  Is this weak note weak enough to warrant cutting out a piece from a different take and patching it in?  Where I made this patch--is it noticeable?  Should I just give up and record this vocal line over at my next session?  This mandolin part--is this as good as I can play it, or should I try again next time?"

There's also the fact that after I've done nothing but listen for flaws for an hour or two, songs with flaws are painful and really, if you listen closely, all of my songs have flaws.

But mostly it's the decisions.  Making decisions tires out my willpower and I hit a point where I either can't decide or start deciding randomly, or making a default "safe" decision ("do it over; that way I don't have to decide if it's good enough until next time.")  Which is not very productive.  Actually, the random decisions might be fine.  In many cases the decision is difficult because I can't hear much difference between the two options; in which case a quarter is a fine decision-making machine.  Or want-clarifying machine if I don't like the way it came down.

Anyway I talked about this a bit with Alice on the trip to OVFF and she made some suggestions.  I've decided to do an hour of mixing every day, rather than aim to mix a song or x number of songs every week.  Some days I've been doing two hours of mixing with a break in between.  I asked Bill Sutton and he said he sometimes spent hours on a single track, so it sounds like no, I'm not pushing this to ridiculous extremes.

So I have preliminary mixes of Providence Skies, Somebody Is Waiting To Eat My Soul and Swan May as well as Art Feeds Life and Hold The Line which I mixed a while ago and put on Bandcamp.  Which makes a quarter of my album.  Okay, it seems to be working.

Since I'm on the subject

I mentioned having mixed Providence Skies in my last post.  Which I did, and when my album comes out it will be available in its fully mixed goodness, with bodhrans and backing vocals and rhythm octave mandolin and all.  But for now I have an Alice Day version, which I'm putting up here.

This song was inspired by a development in Eve Online, a multi-player video game that Kip plays a lot and I play very occasionally. The game is set in a universe of many star systems (with gates between them.) Some star systems are in Empire space, and are safer (as long as you know the rules of engagement, which aren't obvious, but we'll let that go for a minute); these are referred to as "high sec". Some systems are at the fringes of the empire, and they're called "low sec." And some are what are called zero-zero (or 0.0) meaning lawless. Different groups of people try to inhabit different parts of 0.0. Usually they work together to keep people within the group safe, but immediately attack anyone not of their group.

One exception, as I understand it, is Providence space, where the group that holds it lets others in, and tries to police things to prevent piracy and so on. And some people, including some of our friends in the game, are so impressed by this that when a large mob tries to overrun Providence they come in from outside to shore up the defenders for a while, even though they're not part of the defenders' group.

I thought this was cool. So this is my shout-out to the CVA, which holds Providence, and to the people who come help them from time to time.

Providence Skies
lyrics and melody by Catherine Faber
a capella mp3 here

         Dm                     F            Am
Through highsec and lowsec the warp engines sound
     Dm           C         F          Am
And through zero-zero, for Providence bound--
     F          Gm                 Dm
For Eve will forever be making it plain:
     Dm        Gm            C           Dm
You have to defend what you want to maintain.

           Dm                   F            C
   So it's X up for fleet, form up and clear comms
       Dm                         F          Am
   We need more repair ships, and ammo, and bombs,
         Dm          C            Gm           Am
   With fire in our bellies, and stars in our eyes,
          Dm         C                       Dm
   We'll scour the pirates from Providence skies!

In deep zero-zero, where trust often dies
Strangers fly safely in Providence skies;
But some would destroy that in hopes to recall 
The chaos incarnate of all against all.

Some people are parasites, taking their joy
In friendships they ruin and dreams they destroy
While some folks are builders, who hold in our hearts
A dream that is more than the sum of its parts!

Pirates are poison; no trip is too far
To hound them to death like the vermin they are!
But they are good for one thing―the way that they die
Like firework-flowers all over the sky!

   (chorus)
          Dm             C                          Dm
   We'll hunt them like dogs till the last of them dies!	

For those interested in Occupy Wall Street and its cousins

Zander Nyrond has a new song up at Bandcamp.  Download it free while the downloads last!