More & More Mixing (Sessions #8,#9 & #10)

We've been doing mixing sessions on our new music at the recording studio on a weekly basis. 3 or 4 hours at a time. One session results in about (give or take) one finished song.

It's a weird way to do it, but it also allows us to mix and then listen to the results all kinds of ways: iPod, home stereo, boom box, headphones, car stereo; good systems and not so good systems. We can then go back and tweak the mix as necessary. The goal is to have a track that sounds good no matter what.

Mixing is a long, arduous and meticulous process. There's no way around it, no way to fake it. Since we are "producing" the album, we are there for every last second of the process. What's amazing is that our recording engineer is also an amazing guitar player, a sonic avant-gardist, and a recording technician of prodigious talent.

It's kind of like working with Robert Fripp, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti all rolled up into one big bear-like dude. Last session we asked our recording Guru to add more guitar flourishes to a track. It was an intense session and the results were stunning.

I think of myself as a pretty competent guitar player, but our Guru really does play a different instrument. He's a true lead player and a creator of sonic landscapes, kind of Fripp, Zappa, Belew and the Edge, with something totally his own too.

It's weird, I don't really want to just "talk up" our project, I'm really just kind of reporting the process, the music will have to stand on it's own, but the actual process has been thrilling. We are so close to it, don't really know if it's as brilliant and beautiful as it seems...