making of a hit part 3 and a bit.

so there has been lots of development in the track since i last blogged an update.

martin was unhappy with the original recordings performed at his house since he had a cold at the time and felt the end result reflected this too much. i couldnt remember thinking that when we recorded the takes but often these things only really become apparent when you listen back to the track and i have to admit, i never got round to doing that.

so we arranged for martin to come over to my place and re-record the vocals. an extremely productive session with him performing excellently practically first time. he went to the pub, i went for a jog.

the next night i listened back to what we had recorded and dropped a few samples of the vocal in with the track, purely to get a feel for what it was sounding like and so that i could plan how i would complete the project with all the vocals. i purposely didnt begin editing and arranging any of the audio until i had a strong idea of what needed to be done and how i would go about doing this. i just felt that i would get a much better result if i took a step back rather than racing head first into the track, making up the process as i go along.

and i havnt really got much further than that.

about a week or so ago i drew up a mix down plan. i simply made a list of everything i needed to do to get the track from its current state to a finished, club ready piece of music. i also included notes of things i specifically wanted to try and any extra ideas i had for sections.

on saturday me and martin met up and put phase one into action - finish all sound design and melodic arrangement of track so that i could bounce the many synths, drum machines and effects down into short loops to save processor power, but also to tidy up the arrange page.

two important lessons learnt from saturday:

1 - dont get drunk the night before a mix down. mix downs are boring and require tons of concentration on tiny, tiny details.

2 - if your partner is really hung over and asleep on your sofa, they probably wont be very helpful during a mix down and winding yourself up, trying to get their input will result in neither of you being able to focus on the task in hand.

i can see from the weekend that i have issues with being the producer. i just get such a clear vision in my mind of where i want to take the track and find myself enforcing military like rules on the session - some may see this as a good thing, when the creative part of making a track is over then you need this attitude to finish what you have started, however when you want to encourage the input of another person who perhaps does not share your desire for efficiency then things can start to become stressful.

all that aside, the track is now in a more workable state and i have a very clear idea of what i need to do to it this week before i feel i am ready to arrange and mix in the vocals. and distorted bass does sound sweet.

this blog, and others, can also be found on the butterscotchworld blog.