Opposite Day (or Opposites Day, or Opposite’s Day, I’m not sure). There are a lot of tracks! Remember it took Will 3 days to get his parts done… Plus there are multitracked Matthew and Dave and Joan. Organising, filing and making notes takes a while and when I’m done I’m still wondering if the track could take a simple synth part. I try, and try, and try and I give up. The last idea was a mono synth adding a note to the snare beat and that almost worked but a better idea would be to run the snare through some sort of resonator or comb filter during the mix. Rough Mix, move on.
On to Myrtle and Rose – Ouch! There is still lots of rendering and bouncing down of tracks to be done. The good news is – my Ring Mod guitar is better than I’d thought. I didn’t need to bring M Schwaber in, I was just insecure about it, but listening back now – my simplistic repeating part works very nicely. The harmony vocals, which were moot, do work, thy just need to be close to subliminal. All good. Rough Mix, move on.
Women’s Studies – M Schwaber’s guitar and Joan’s piano have saved this song – my guitar actually sounds great next to them. Matthew’s block vocals are massive. I do the usual, make the notes and then wonder about the piano – I mute it in the verses and the song breathes, the guitars interact better and the chorus is bigger. Win, win. The solo section has no solo, though… Here we go again – should I add something? I figure out a pretty great T.Rex style low string idea, but it sounds like another record, not this one. It is important that the palette is adhered to. In desperation I consider breaking the ‘no organ on this record’ rule, as the melody I have in mind seems ideal on the organ but after all sorts of treatments, I give up. Nothing is better than any of my ideas and I don’t like the idea of a new instrument coming in after 2/3 of the song. Not on this song, anyway.
Treatments – I got my order mixed up today. Before working on Women’s Studies I applied my analogue filter to M Schwaber’s tremolo guitar on Silver Lake. I just took delivery of a portable case for my modular synth – http://www.tiptopaudio.com/s252.php – it wont hold all the modules but enough to put together a processing station for the mixing. This is the system I’ll be taking to Germanyhttp://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/1142. The results on Silver Lake are just lovely. It’s much more natural to be tweaking an actual filter, than it is to be mapping out cc messages in a DAW. For me anyway.
With Women’s Studies and Opposite Day both rejecting my keyboard ideas, I think I’m finished. Percussion is Feb 5th. I fly to Germany Feb 9th.