Before I launch into the next set of tracks for my new album, I thought I’d take a listen to what I have so far. I find it’s good to this to a group of songs. So burned a CD for the car and uploaded them on my iPod for the train ride. Listening to mixes on inferior systems in noisy a environments is a good way to make sure it degrades gracefully, as important features of the music can’t be heard. Overall it’s sounding good, but I made a new batch of mixes.
Marfa My Dear being a cover is not really destined for the record, but it still seemed it could stand some improvement. I mainly reduced the level of chorus on the vocals, reduced the effects on the piano, and boosted the sax and the bass guitar. Added a peak limiter to the master out.
Letter From Home, also a cover, and therefore an oddity for the hypothetical box set. This one was just an effects tweak too: reversed the order of the chorus and delay in the effects chain on the horn, and it’s a good deal nicer to my ear. Also boosted the bass guitar a tad and added a peak limiter to the master out.
Heat Wave is the first original song in the new batch, and I put it aside when I got to the first rough mix. Now I’ve come back to sharpen it up. Now I’ve added a clav part to the chorus and bridge to give a little rhythmic counterpoint to the piano and bass. I also cleaned up the sax part and added some effects for the sax solo, and adjusted the levels of pretty much everything. For a while I had been thinking the horns weren’t bright enough, and maybe I should double the part on alto. But not the tenor sounds a bit more on top, so that may not be necessary.
Angel Or Alien of course is the song I developed over the summer. I made one more mix that cleaned up the lead synth and added some percussion in the middle section. I did a few experiments after that with backing vocals and more percussion but wasn’t satisfied with the result. I have one more thing I want to try, adding some drum fills in the tutti section, and maybe some atmospheric synths in the very beginning and/or end.
So enjoy the new mixes. Now I’m trying to decide what to work on next. I have lots of songs that are partway developed, but I narrowed it down to two that are pretty are along and also relatively short. One is an instrumental in 9/8 in the key of E minor; I did a demo of it years ago. Another is a sort of bitter twisted stride number in 7/8 in C minor that I wrote in 2004 or so. But then just today I wrote a new song. I’ve been looking to do something really simple, in contrast to all these crazy chords and meters I’ve been doing. I came up with a riff I like based on the change C, Em, F in a classic R&B soul groove. Today as I walking back from lunch I came up with a lyric and melody, and nice love song to Jeannie. So I’m excited about this and think it’ll hop to the top of the queue.