mixing & mixing & mixing

So I’ve spent the past few days working on a mix for a potential compilation appearance.  It’s not my normal style.  It’s something I wrote & recorded in five minutes on my niece’s piano ten years ago, but found the recording last month & cut up & rebuilt the piece, not exactly knowing what I was going for (I mean it’s clearly closer to Harold Budd in style than Small Life Form, even though that’s the moniker I slapped on it).  I thought I was done with it & sent it off to the compiler.  I asked Brian McKenzie/Electric Bird Noise if he was doing something for the same comp & he said he was & I sent him my piece to hear  & he had some suggestions for making the mix better.  So I made a new mix, then more suggestions & another mix & another mix & he did one for me as well.  It’s great to have someone to bounce your ideas on, but this is one of the problems I have with working on music on my computer.  In the 1990s I would have my 4 track & mix stuff down in real time onto my mini-disc recorder, sometimes playing extra parts live during the mix down. So what I had was the end.  There were glitches all over the place – timing issues, pops, crackles, breath in the mic,  a high noise floor – but it all kinda worked for me.  I think the Remora release Amerse from that era is my most popular album, even if not my best work.  These days even starting to record for me is a laborious process & it all feels more like work than it did twenty years ago & maybe that comes out in the music.  But I’m hoping that’s going to change.  Since having the drone cub, my time to dedicate to Silber & my own music/art has really declined, so maybe when I do figure out a way to get some time to get things done, there will be an immediacy & excitement again.  Last week I played a show where two bands covered “My Brother’s Guns & Knives” & I wrote that song as a 30 second long demo that Brian McKenzie said when listening to my current batch of demos should become a fuller song.  I really want to force myself back into that.  Playing with new ideas on a regular basis, that’s the fun part of music & even I admit that if you aren’t having fun with music anymore, it’s time to let it go because the 1990s aren’t coming back….

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2 Responses to mixing & mixing & mixing

  1. Lullabier says:

    The recording process has become often boring and laborious. I really enjoyed working on my latest Firetail EP, which has been recorded all in one single take. That kind of immediacy is really needed sometimes.

  2. Philip Palmer says:

    I much preferred the do it yourself 4 track cassette days to the do it yourself digital days we live in, but yeah, drive in theaters, milk delivered to your house, typewriters, and the Gaitlin gun.
    ppp