Mixing begins.
I have a headache from watching golf with my pal Derek, and I’m tired, but I have to get started early to get the hard drive and DVDs to Mick Glossop. I call Mick at 9 to see if his UK to US power adapter is three pin, and it isn’t. He suggests that my hard drive probably accepts 110-240 volts like most modern computer gear, but I can’t be sure so I waste 1/2 hour on Kilburn High Road failing to find said power adapter, back at the hotel I dig out my magnifying glass (my eyesight is so bad I’ll need reading glasses soon) and have a closer look at the drive. Inside the place where the cable is seated I see 110-250 so text Mick to check the Glyph website and indeed it will work on UK voltage. I get cab over to W12.
M’s new studio in his basement is exactly as you’d expect an anal retentive’s studio to be. Everything is perfectly positioned for ideal ergonomics, everything is clean and everything works. Not sure you can actually call yourself a recording studio if everything works… There’s even am ethernet cable by the couch back here.
The hard drive is working. Files are copied over to Mick’s drive and then each file is purged of what we don’t need. Had this been done at the Magic Shop my DVD burn would have taken 1/3 the time… but we were very busy recording. I’ve only forgotten one file, which I’d recorded in Logic (the new vocal to Double Happiness – I will be able get my wife to upload it, I’ll have to talk her through the process over the phone and she will get in a bad mood about it, but it will be fine).
The rest of the day is spent talking Mick through the songs and figuring out a basic panning algorithm for the record. I don’t want any extreme hard left and right panning, but I want Matt on the left and Mark on the right, me in the middle. The only tracks which will be full width stereo are the room mics on the drums. The rest of the mono instruments will be in one of five positions = Left, Mid Left, Center, Mid Right and Right. Not completely old school, but close. Ensemble background vocals and keys will be clustered around the center.
Once this is all established, M wants to start on sounds and he doesn’t need me for that. I get the tube (very slow) using my new fangled Oyster Card to Kilburn and spot a great looking Sichuan/Cantonese at the top of the High Street. I will return there about an hour later to eat some fish with chillis so hot I can barely look at them. It’s good but, what am I thinking? The hotel bar is crap, I need to find a decent local pub tomorrow.