Re-visiting Some Previously Recorded Tunes

What have I been up to lately? Well, revisiting some of my old tunes and re-working them so to speak. Last week I went back to "Another Morning (What a Drag)" and attempted to create a stripped-down mix of it for a special purpose. Recently the thought of going back to many of my older songs and just completely stripping them down to acoustic guitar and vocals has crossed my mind. I guess I feel like experimenting a bit. But even something like that can distract me from getting my album released as part of my springtime goal.  So in reality the reason I went back to "Another Morning" was for a very good reason and not just to kill time. Anyway, here is the mix that I came up with.




The last few days I have gone back to working on "Tomorrow." A music comrade had suggested I do a little more with the vocals so I added some extra layers of complimentary vocals. It was a great idea that I'm glad he suggested and I really like how the new version now sounds. I also took the liberty of moving around a few parts that for years I have left alone; reason being that I felt I had spent enough time on it already and needed to move on. So this new yet-unreleased version will sound different from the one I released on my EP in late 2011 which can be heard on Spotify if you look hard enough (or on my YouTube channel).

It was interesting going back to these recordings from 2009 and 2010. I realized I was quite reverb-happy during that time. I still love reverb but the amounts I used in these songs were pretty excessive. Additionally, I was using the built-in reverb which is very digital sounding. I exclusively now use reverb pedals or vocal pedals that have good-sounding reverb built into them. The reverb on these pedals don't sound so processed as does the one built into my 16 track Boss recorder.

So not only will "Tomorrow" sound different from the EP version but "Another Morning" will as well. Not as much however. But there will be reduced levels of reverb and I'm going to remix the drum track to mono. The current version features the drums really up front in the mix due to inadvertently recording the drums onto a stereo track. After having recorded the drums I played it back and noticed that the kick drum was panned all the way to one side while the rest of the drums were panned to the other. Needless to say that was not the effect I was going for. At the time I thought the only way to remedy that (without playing the drum part all over again) would be to double the drum track and pan it all the way left or right in order to balance out everything into the middle. But that resulted in a really in-your-face drum part. So I'm going to mix down that drum track into mono and take it from there.

In other news, I'm still working on the lyrics for the final song on the album. Stayed tuned.

New Song Finally Finished! (Almost)

Started recording "Call On Me" back in December of 2012. I'm finally at the point (I believe so anyway) that I just have to mix and master the song now. I am considering re-recording a couple of guitar parts that feature the Leslie speaker sound. I'm not 100% sure if I will but it's pretty minor stuff regardless. So here is the mix/master I came up with as of last night:





I'm actually pretty happy with the sound. Everything can be clearly heard. Drums sound pretty good. I am however planning to move the background vocals during the choruses to either side instead of in the middle as they are in this version. And I may give the electric bass a little boost in volume.

For anyone who may be interested, I played an Epiphone Les Paul for all the electric guitar parts through a Fender Super Sonic stack, a Fender J-bass and a Yamaha S90 for the Rhodes sound.

My inspiration for this song was actually The Bee Gees. I was going through a time where I was listening to their early songs and checking out all their late 60's and early 70's videos on YouTube. I was just messing around on guitar and trying to come up with a melody over the guitar chords and some of the words just started flowing out. After I had the main theme of the song I started writing the lyrics to match. And then I spent way too long on recording it. Truth is I abandoned it for a long, long time and didn't finish it up. I had spent a lot of time on (Doesn't That) Blow Your Mind and you might say I was creatively exhausted. Excuses, excuses. I pretty much blew off 2013 but in all honesty I did some a pretty good reason. As I look through my recording log book--which I'm not very consistent with keeping up to date--I see that all of 2013 is blank except for nearly the very last month, which is when I managed to cut those 2 Christmas recordings. So it wasn't a complete waste. Pending all things possible, I promise myself to make 2014 a much more productive year. I Already have this song done. "Already". LOL. Album will be on the way as soon as I finish up recording one last song and go back and remix some of the others.

But for now I want to enjoy all the work I put into "Call On Me." If anyone should happen to give it a listen (Bootsy) I hope it sounds like music to your ears. I'll be back in the studio tonight tweaking and making adjustments.