Mixing it up at Hyde Street Studio C.
As you know, along with my own album, I'm also helping my friend Toby record his four-song EP. And yesterday, Toby and I were down at Hyde Street working with Jaime Durr, engineer extraordinaire, tracking final overdubs and starting the mixing process for Toby's tunes.
Everything is sounding killer. Which is no surprise given the quality of the Hyde Street facility and Jamie's musicality, but I confess, before yesterday, Toby and I were both a little concerned. We had been listening to the unmixed outtakes and both of us were a touch concerned that the final product wasn't going to sound very pro. Oh, how wrong we were. And there's a lesson here: if you've captured good tones during the recording process, which we did, you can
shape your sound in absolutely mind blowing ways with modern studio gear. It really is incredible. What's more, I'm proud to point out, that very little of of our mixing efforts involved pitch-shifting, or editing out sour notes, or tweaking someone's less-than-groovin' timing. Nope. We just pretty much eq'd a thing or two, added a touch of compression and selected a juicy, but not-over-the-top reverb setting. And, whump, there it is.
As for my stuff, well, it's coming together, albeit a little slowly. Part of the problem is, of course, my health, which has been shaky these past few weeks. But an even bigger issue, is that, unlike Toby, who sings and plays a mean guitar, I'm not exactly musically gifted, meaning that I'm more dependent on the talents of others to help me realize my musical dreams. But, I am finding people. Good people, so I'm excited. It's just going to take a bit of time.
In other news, I've quite writing my other two blogs -- Stumped and Stocks & Bombs -- because they were taking too much time away from my musical endeavors. Plus, let's face it, politics and investing are pretty well covered in the blogosphere, so what was I really bringing to the party, save for another opinion. And you know that they say about opinions.
