The Dream

Yesterday I was in the studio, mixing ‘The Dream’.
It’s one of my favourite new tracks at the moment, and changes constantly. I originally wrote it as a swampy slide-guitar song, set incredibly slow and morose. Then, on a whim, I played an upbeat, almost rockabilly, version. That one was a lot more fun, and exciting. I developed both the fast and slow versions at the same time, preferring whichever one I was playing at that moment.
I suddenly had a brainwave – do BOTH in the same song. A little quick math, and a lot of slow practice, and I figured out how to do make it work.
However, recording two different songs as one means a complicated mix. Lots of settings, equalizers, compressors, and even instruments change mid-way through the song. So it took quite a while to get it right.

And here’s the beauty of self-producing: when my wife came home, I was really excited and asked her to critique the track. She made a good suggestion, EQ’ing out some high-end frequencies from the bridge-section acoustic guitars. A couple of quick knob-turns and the result proved her right. After the song ended, she commented that the lead-guitar ending was too long. She might be right, but I can never resist air-guitaring Keith Richards-style when it gets to the end of The Dream. It’s some great playing, and I can’t bear to pare it down.
With nobody to answer to, I get to write, arrange, and produce my songs my way.

This mixing process is really slow and time-intensive. And every once in a while you need something like this to reinvigorate, to give that electrical charge that makes artists do what they do.