I’m still on LA time. Can’t get to sleep before 3 or up before 10, so it’s another 1PM to 7 PM day today.
I start over on Blue Like Mars and I get it right but it’s still tricky and one has to be methodical. Then I import the backing vocals (8 tracks!) and guitar ideas. I learn how to hide tracks in the arrange window (very good idea when there are 8 tracks of backing vocals alone), and I bounce down a backing vocal stem ( a stereo mix of all 8 tracks) so we don’t have to import so many tracks into Mark’s Mackie system (the same one we used on Broken Record) tomorrow.
I then re-name all of the files so they make sense and export them all to one folder for work in Mackie or Pro Tools sessions.
It’s 4PM already… There is no way I’ll have all the songs ready for tomorrow. I get to work on California Earthquake and it’s 80% done when one of the guitars is out of sync. How? I don’t know – gremlins, or more likely carelessness… I have to delete the new session and start again on the old one. Thankfully I’m getting more fluent in Logic; still slow, but there is less guesswork or distant memory involved… It takes about an hour to completely prepare CA Earthquake for overdubbing.
It takes about the same amount of time for Diminished Ex. Neither of these songs have click tracks so moving the files around is a little tricky.
The beginning of Dimisnished Ex is funny – there is a false start – I mess up the singing, but we don’t stop and start again – we just keep going, so deciding where the files that we use should start was interesting… I chose a practice drum fill Fred plays, followed by me saying (something like) “Yes, like that”… the song ends with me sounding exhausted and still in the rather high key of the song asking “Did that feel good for you?”. Yes, I made a rough mix including all of this and it will be included on the deluxe outtakes disc.
I estimate it’s about another 10 hours work preparing the remaining 7 songs. There will be no singing in Sonelab tomorrow, only prep work.
As I’m writing now I receive an email from Charles in LA – the mic won’t be here tomorrow anyway…