Friday, April 22, 2005

Emerging from the chrysalis

Last night's rehearsal went great - everyone's excited and on-fire about turning the new corner and cranking up the nitro. As we put more and more session time into the albums, it's like watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon - it just keeps getting more and more amazing. Today, I went in to do the last (I hope) of my vocal tracks and add a long-missing keyboard line to "Caught" along with tracking in some more dulcimer with Halcyon. Then, Dave and I talked up a battle plan regarding the mixing process. Much of the work is tedious, finding the good frequencies for the bass and drums, then using that as a foundation for the rest of the arrangements. There were some specific concepts that I had in mind, some "radio voice" effects on a couple of tracks that we knocked out - then we settled in to work with the reverb on vocals. "All For One" looks like the first track to get intensive mix-work done and it's shaping up to be quite the audio-toon. Bunky and I added some African-flavored harmonies at the bridge, which we hope to reproduce live because it really is a nice touch!

We still have yet to add the final harmonies with Randy, Bunky and John - here's to hoping we can do that next week, though I've already scheduled a mixing day for Monday and we're planning a "listening party" (looks like May 4th) to consider the tracks and decide what we'd like to do with the audioscape.

Tomorrow, we're headed down to Titanic Brewery to play a gig - we're looking forward to some time in a different city!

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