Monday, July 13, 2009

Another Happy Accident

As promised (to myself), I finished tracking Overture on Canada Day. 2.5 days of singing, with the occasional last-minute musical addition.
Yesterday I started mixing the project. I put together Don't Fall For Me, Let You Go, No Fun, and Love Song. I'll probably have to go back and tweak something, but they're "done."

Don't Fall For Me was interesting. When I started the mix, I noticed a strange harmonic coming from a guitar track, but couldn't tell which one. Isolating the instruments, I muted the drums. Finding the culprit, I slapped an EQ on it to fix.
Getting back to the mix, I was air-guitaring as the intro played. And that's where things got weird...

DFFM has been kicking around for almost 10 years. And it's ALWAYS been the same: fast, almost punk-lite, driving. So why didn't everything join in with a beastly crash?
I frantically scanned my options: is a speaker broken? No. Are a bunch of tracks turned down? No, they're all set properly. Is a cat sitting on my keyboard? No, they wouldn't dare. Wait - what's that little yellow icon doing there? Yes, I had accidentally muted all the drums.

As I reached for the little yellow button, I hesitated. It sounded kinda good with just a strummy acoustic guitar bashing out the first chorus... I ran through it a couple of times, and quickly fell in love with this new arrangement. All it took was a fast edit to decide when to actually start the drums, and it was done. A decade-old song that's just been given a new sheen.

Hopefully by the end of the week I can post a clip, a taste of what is to come...