Lest you think I took the weekend off, allow me to correct this piece of falsehood. I did travel to Manhattan over the weekend, and had a total blast. WHILE in transit, I spent a good amount of time focused on my iPod listening to the latest mixdowns of the new album, and taking copious notes. Technology really is great. When we recorded our first album, we would have to mix the stuff down to cassette, then load it into the station wagon tape deck so we could listen to it while we went to Menudo.
Now, I just dump the whole thing on my iPod after exporting from Cubase, and I am up and running. I use my iPhone to type out notes, then I email them to myself so I can view them on the PC while I am making corrections. truly amazing times we live in.
Anyhow, after listening to the entire album two times, I came up with the following notes. Typo's included. These were typed out on my iPhone while I was walking or flying.
Album notes
Drum intro for otrh
More bell vocals on april
April can hear background singing on"and i thought that i heard you laughing"
Some slopppy bass drum on intro for btt.
Little more vocals on btt.
Drum fill right before drop a few shack
Very last cymbal crash seems a tad too early
Transition from armageddon to sta is a little shicking. Order issue
Drum hit right befor "as if thr thought hadnt croased" is a little off
Bordered in black is blank
Drym hits before "now the evenings rolling" on dribks. The one before the last "smoke filled roon" is perfect.
Drum fill bedore "i made a game" is choppy. Hits are timed right, but too much silence
Friend is blank
More fischer vocals on guitar. Needa more body.
The experience of listening to the album on the iPod is VERY different than listening to it on my PC. Not only do I have different speakers, but there is ambient noise in the room, the sound bounces around, etc. The iPod earphones are right in my ear. Also different being in an airport, the car, or an airplane. So while I do not use one specific environment as my test bed, I find that switching it up can reveal weak points.
As you can see from the notes, my focus was really on technical glitches. CuBase has some problems outputting sometimes, and I really need to be more aware of that. I would hate to go to the final pressing process and accidentally upload three minutes of blank noise, which would then appear on the CD. that would be bad.
Overall though, I think the album has REALLY come a long way in the past couple of weeks. I am REALLY down to the nitty gritty, and I am DEFINITELY in the nit picking phase. I believe that MOST of the technical flaws could easily be unattended to, and nobody would be the wiser.
Finally, in other news, while in Brooklyn I actually met up with an A&R guy from an independent record label. We had a brief discussion, but it was more of a "seed planting" effort, as I'm sure he gets that type of stuff every day. I'm not going to jam it down his throat, but when the final album goes to press, I will for sure get a copy to him. If nothing becomes of it, I'm no worse off than I am now.
Except I will be out one copy of the album.
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