Crunch Time

Well, we’re down to crunch time with the demos.

Crunch time? You’re thinking, “You’re not leaving until mid December. ¿cuál es el problema, hombre?”

Well, no problema exactly, but definitely a bunch of stuff that needs to get done now in order for a bunch of other stuff to get done next week, so all the stuff gets done in time for the trip!

I need 1-2 weeks turnaround time for CD duplication and printing. The work will only take a few days, but it’s not like my project is the only one on the shop floor! Then add on a few days or more to send the disks down ahead of me so I don’t have to worry about getting them through customs. They’re demos, so not for sale, but that kind of thing won’t necessarily be understood by officials. And I don’t want to ruin the new art work by stamping ‘promo’ or ‘sample’ on everything.  Before the CDs can be copied, Alex needs all the final mixes to do a nice master EQ of all songs, putting them all at similar volumes etc, so the disk is easy to listen to on any stereo or headphones.

Like most things in life and especially creative endeavors, other things have gotten in the way and delayed bits and pieces. The big one lately was that Jo got called out of town for a week on business which slowed down his final mix work on two of the three full-band demos.

But he whipped one of them into shape since getting home this week; so we’re in good shape there. I did a few takes of vocals last night on that and will edit a final track this weekend. The big stress with this song was that it’s a male-female duet, so I had to line up another singer. But I couldn’t schedule a session until I knew when the final music would be ready. When I got the music this week, wouldn’t you know if, but I couldn’t track down the singer I’d lined up! So today was a bit of a scramble to find someone else. Luckily a songwriter friend put me in touch with a great local singer who’s coming over tonight to record!

After that, I have to do my final vocals and harmonies for the other full-band mix that Jo has (and hopefully will send me over the next 24 hours). There’s also a song of his that I wrote new lyrics for and we’re trying to get that whipped into shape too. It’s a bit out of my range, so we’ll see what comes of it. When I’ve got the final vocals, I FTP those tracks back to Jo and he’ll drop them into his mixes, tweak levels, EQ settings, etc., and then he’ll send those to Alex for the CD mastering!

I must say, internet file sharing has been the key to moving things along. Alex set up an FTP site where we up/download tracks at various stages. It’s pretty cool. With the three of us having entirely different schedules and life demands, it would have been impossible to collaborate in person. There were certainly times when I really just wanted to sit down in a room with a guitar and work on a song with them, but things have worked out pretty well in the end.

The rest of this weekend, I’ll be steaming away on the six acoustic demos. I think two are pretty much done. The others just need some tweaking. One could really use a good piano or lead guitar in addition to my rhythm but I couldn’t line anybody up yet for that since I really just finished the song yesterday!

That song is called The Ballad of Jack Flynn. I’ve had it for a few years, but the chorus melody never really sat quite right with me. This week I tried changing the start from the 5 to the 2 chord, which then lead to a slightly different riff between lines, and that seems to have done the trick. So it’s a last-minute addition to the package.

So, on Monday morning, the plan is to FTP all the final mixes to Alex for a hopefully quick and painless mastering session. 

Alex is already finished the full-band mix for the song he was producing. It sounds great – sort of a Tim McGraw kind of feel. 

I should be able to send a CD off for dupes before the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

Once the demos are out of the way, I have to figure out what the heck to do with the new singalakesong website. Writing, design, photos, oodles of html tech stuff that I don’t even remotely understand! And or course there's always more reading to be done about the Nashville scene.

Okay… onward. I’ve got some chores to do before the music mayhem begins tonight.