Turning anything around...

The remix project almost ate my brain last night.  I have been working on mainly VO things for a few days and, as such, it had been a while since I really took a listen to every track to see where I am with them.  So, last night I did just that while in my last hour of work at NY1 and had a minor freak out because nothing was sounding like I remember it sounding.  I needed that experience to happen though because it made me realize I may have been cutting some corners and making concessions.

This morning, instead of going to yoga, I opted to stay in and work before mine and Lacy's rehearsal.  I pounded my way through every track with a mind to taking a realistic look at what needed to be done on each to bring it to completion (or at least to get them ready for mastering).  There was one track in particular that was just in shambles yesterday night.  Moving MIDI and audio over from Fruity Loops to Logic so I could use new instruments and drum samples was giving me discrepancies between the project tempo and the tempo of the actual files.  Logic was reading them at 138.somethingsomethingsomething when they were bounced out of Fruity Loops at 140 BPM.  I wasn't liking the bass sound, I wasn't liking the new parts I had written on guitar, and I was getting ready to scrap the whole track and leave it for a later offering to the agency.

But something happened this morning.  Something about my mindset when I was composing.  I was already tidying up a little around the apartment and trying to set up my guitar amp to use it during rehearsal instead of using my desktop monitors so I think my mind was a little more organized in general.  I got up at around 8am to begin all of this, had a shower and a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs, arugula salad and gluten free toast and a cup of gunpowder green tea, so I was fresh and clear-headed.

Now, I'm listening to the result of all the extra tracks and the tweaks to the placement of the bass notes and even a little cleverly placed break in the drum track and it sounds AWESOME!  I can't wait to post up the new version.  This one and the others.

I also had an epiphany about one of the songs.  The mix on a song called "Song for the Awakened," that's been written and finished for years now, was really really muddy and I couldn't place it.  Really, I hadn't even begun to start ruthlessly dropping instruments out of the mix and, after showing it to Lacy, I finally just muted this one part (a secondary guitar part), and everything sounded so much clearer.  I had also had three different synths playing basically the same part, but several days ago I had decided to just use one keyboard sound that encompassed all the sounds I had been trying to achieve.  Now, the only thing left is that the bass line is a bit busy and overwhelms in parts.  So, there may be some rewriting to be done in there.

And that's just the thing.  I wasn't keen on rewriting any of it because I'm in a rush to get these songs in to the agency.  And why?  No reason.  They even told me to take my time.  So, I should, right?  I want these to be good.  I want people to want to use them.  So I'm not going to submit shit so I can say I was prompt about it.  No.  So why not take the time to craft something really good instead of saying I don't want to rewrite or re record things because it'll take time.  I should be taking time.

Hell, taking another stab at rewriting the track I was talking about earlier "Sleepwalking With You" (an older version is on my soundcloud page), turned out to be so satisfying today, I'm thinking about just not worrying if these aren't all done by the end of the week.  I had envisioned getting them all finished so that Lacy and I could listen to them on the ride to NC this weekend.  Now, I'll just see what I can get done.

I'm just glad I was able to clear my mind and turn it all around in just a few focused hours this morning.  Before I was freaking out a tiny bit about the quality of my work and whether or not I should even be submitting half these songs.  But I don't need to go down that road.  That'd be wholly unproductive to listen to those voices.

With that said, I'm going to get back to it and see what else I can get done tonight.