Blog: Actual Mixes, Mixed!

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After our adventures in Leicester on Friday night I found myself home by lunchtime and with the house to myself for the rest of the day, so did what any hot-blooded all-American teenager would do, and THREW A PART-TAY!

Oh no, hang on, no I didn't - i made myself a cup of tea and went upstairs to LABOUR over four-track and computer for seven hours. ALMOST the same thing.

Most of Saturday was spent on She Tastes Like Sugar - after BACKING UP and moving files around on to new memory cards I appeared to have LOST the version of this I'd started a week or so ago, so BEGUN AGAIN. Several hours later, with a MUCH better version done, I found the original again - AIN'T THAT ALWAYS THE WAY? That done I set to the guitar solo, which took a LOT of doing but, i must say, WAS WORTH IT. Ooh, it is GRATE - if you've heard any of my guitar solos before, it's basically like THAT, but more so. A LOT more so.

Full of excitement and STILL with the house to myself I decided I might as well have a go at MIXING. Until now I've been bouncing down and mastering on the four track itself, but this a) is a bit hit and miss b) doesn't allow for fade ins, EN MASSE or on individual tracks and anyway c) doesn't allow much flexibility in stereo, effects or anything like that. I've been meaning to try it out on my main computer for ages, but was AFEARED as to how difficult it'd be - actually it was PEASY. For some reason I appear to have ALL the correct gadgets, gizmos and ITEMS needed to do all this, which is NOT my usual situation - I downloaded a WAV Extraction Program onto my Work Laptop, plugged in the four track, and EXTRACTED each individual track as a WAV. I then put all those files onto my Portable Hard Drive which I carried next door and plugged into the Big Computer. I FIRED UP Acid Pro, imported them all into THAT, and then had a VERY jolly hour or so compressing, applying EQ, CREATING ENVELOPES and all that sort of thing. It was ACE!

Sunday saw me concentrating on A Million Ukeleles and Hey William. I'd already started a version of THE LATTER but it wasn't really going anywhere (not anywhere GROOVY anyway) so begun again and got on MUCH better. I wanted to get some GOOD UKELELE on it but had all sorts of problems with the chords until I realised "HEY! I know someone who's a) GRATE at BANJO b) is going to do some OTHER stuff for this album and c) would probably do this LOTS better than me!" so decided to ask him, Mr P Wilson, to do it instead.

FIRED UP with this idea i moved on to A Million Ukeleles, which the aforementioned LEGEND OF INDIE has already worked up a BANJO and MANDOLIN part for. This was LOTS of fun to do - i spent a while trying to work out basic drums and then a REALLY LONG TIME with pen and paper trying to work out the proper program for them (Drum Programming: generating warm feelings towards Real Drummers since 1975) - it's lovely my four track, but BLIMEY the drum machine could be better.

Mind you, one DEAD GOOD thing about it is that it has an 808 drum kit, which sounds MARVELLOUS - I've done a couple of songs with other kits where, because of the type of song, it sounds FINE, but anything SLOW-ISH makes the fake drums sound ROTTEN. THUS, using LOGIC, it turns out that the fake version of a fake drum machine sounds the LEAST FAKE OF ALL, so I've been using it quite a bit, it's lovely. That sorted out I ROCKED through the song, which is LONG but also Quite Groovy, before transporting BOTH songs to portable hard drive, mixing them, and emailing them to Phil.

It was a GOOD weekend's ROCKING... and then this morning I recieved an MP3 of Tom "Tiger" McClure's work on Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine: it is AMAZING. He's done a PILE of strings and ALSO some VOCALS which are... well, just BRILLIANT. It's all turning out REALLY nicely - i am EXCITED!

posted 20/8/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

i keep reading 808 as 303 when you talk about yr drum machine and imagining you knocking up some [ahem] kicking acieeeed beats for dem yout' etc...
posted 21/8/2007 by CarsmileSteve

i keep reading 808 as 303 when you talk about yr drum machine and imagining you knocking up some [ahem] kicking acieeeed beats for dem yout' etc...
posted 21/8/2007 by CarsmileSteve

That's EXACTLY what it will sound like... except with UKELELES. It'll be MEGA!
posted 22/8/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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