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"Normal" has been done since the end of August - just need the final mastering, which is the most imprtant part. (Mastering is when the final mixes are given the proper eq and volume so that the songs match each other, and also match other CDs...) Mastering is more important than mixing - think of it like this: you've painted a beautiful picture (your mix) that you want the world to see. Mastering is how/where the picture will be displayed. Good mastering would be perfect light, bringing out the rich colors without glare or tint, just a pure picture that's full of depth and touches the full spectrum of the brain. Bad mastering would be showing the picture behind a dirty scratched glass in a dimly lit room. A vibrant picture in a dark room does little for the viewer. Same with mastering - if the mastering isn't done right, it's as if you're missing a few colors in the spectrum or the room isn't lit and the colors are dull, or the glass is dirty and the sound isn't clear. So I'm a psycho about getting the mastering right...
I started mastering the album myself, but I was so close to everything, it was like trying to operate on yourself - my perspective was blurred and I'd slave over one song for 3 days with little useful result. So I called upon some friends who do it for a living, had them take on a song and after a week they showed me what they did - it was still missing something... the closeness, clarity, punch, fullness, I wasn't seeing the vibrant colors. So I started doing it myself again - got closer to where it should be, but it still wasn't quite right. So I scheduled time with a top engineer at a big mastering studio in NYC. He ran it through a tube compressor and squashed it, made it loud, it was pretty good. But after living with it, everyone agreed it lost bottom end and the tube saturation was too harsh, bringing out unpleasant upper mids. I tried fixing his mixes by adding bottom, but the natural lows were simply *gone* and there was nothing to boost. So I started from scratch. Been working literally day and night, 30 and 40 hours at a time working on my mastering, trying to find the perfect process to give it everything without distorting or losing dynamics, meanwhile finishing two other bands' CDs and rehearsing and gigging and teaching. Been working like this for a year or two without a break - reached a point where my body was breaking down, serious chest pains and warning signs that I didn't have much longer at this pace. So I regretfully quit a bunch of gigs and teachiing and albums I was gonna produce so I could take care of myself, before the damage is too far gone.
Another thing - for the past few years I've *desparately* needed an assistant or manager (had a manager in 2002 - he ended up making life 10 times more difficult...) I can no longer keep up with emails and phone calls and scheduling, whether businees or personal - I'm constantly runninng around from studio to gig and am simply unavailable, most of the people around me are asking for things, so I somehow need to be there for myself which is already an impossible task, and be there for everyone else - hence working 120 to 140 hours a week, and the ToDo list is still growing faster than I can knock it down.
OK, so I finished attempt #5 of the mastering - it's 99% there. 99% is not good enough. This album is more important to me than anything else and I refuse to settle. All this time with the mastering, the one thing that's been missing is ANALOG TAPE SATURATION. I've been trying to emulate this by artificial means and it just doesn't work. Sooooooo, my friend Mike Orlando (remember that phenomenal guitarist I turned y'all onto a month ago?) has a 1" 15ips 16-track machine. Last night we ran a mix through his machine, recording 4-tracks on the left, 4-tracks on the right, shooting for the feel of a 1/2" 2-track. 15ips gives a nice fat bottom, smooths the harsh edes on top - definitely improved the tone of the mixes. Wednesday we're gonna run the rest of the album to tape, then back into the computer and I'll tweak the eq and level as needed, and that should do it. Smile Been mentally crushed trying to get this mastering done - the album should have been out a month ago, but everything is happening the way it was meant to, and as frustrating as it is to be so far off schedule, this is the album's intended fate and we gotta roll with it.
Thanks for being patient Smile
