Eric's House Of Ego

The mixes for the "Amy & Me" album are almost done. The vocals are now properly adjusted, but I'm not happy with the relative levels of the fiddle and guitar vs. the vocals, so I need to go down and take another run at the songs. Unfortunately, this takes time and time has been in short supply.

On Friday and Saturday, I was going to and from Ball State for Parents Day. This was a priority interrupt. :)

Sunday, I reworked and tested the mixes, realized where some of the problems were and started experimenting with some different approaches.

Monday, I had a Windycon meeting.

Tuesday, I went back into the studio and touched up all of the mixes.

Wednesday, I tested the mixes in the car and found them wanting. Tonight, there was another Windycon meeting.

Thursday night is the dog training class, so there will be no mixing on Thursday.

I expect that I can get this cleaned up on Saturday and off to the duplicator by Monday morning.

Assuming that nothing else happens...

So last month I got a new guitar, but I couldn't talk about it much then other than to say that I had gotten it. That is because this particular model had not yet been announced.

Today, Taylor Guitars announced it. It is a Gold Label 514e Super Auditorium model with spruce top and mahogany sides.

It is a very pretty guitar. And it plays well too. :)

Ruby the Dog came through her surgery with flying colors today. Now it's just a matter of keeping the stitches in until its time for them to come out. This was easier when we only had one dog, but Ruby is actually putting up with wearing a t-shirt to cover the wound so far which helps a lot.

I finished up the printed matter for the new album last night, but I still have to finish the mixes. I *think* that I know everything that needs to be done, but I need the time in the studio to get there. Unfortunately, today was a work day and work actually needed to be done, so that's what happened during the day. This evening, there was a Windycon meeting.

Tomorrow night, I am going back to mixing. The last few songs that I touched last night sounded very much the way I wanted them to sound, so I just need to go over my notes and get everything else to match now.

And then I can send it off to the duplicator.

Ruby and Calvin were successfully redeemed from the dog boarder this morning. It was no surprise when Ruby hopped promptly into the car. It was more of a surprise when Calvin did, because Calvin has been -- up until now -- unwilling to get in and out of the car voluntarily. But he got in and then got *out* when we got home.

This did not mean that he had learned anything else in our absence, as I discovered after lunch. But Gretchen has read through some of the training materials and is trying a new approach to housebreaking Calvin. We'll see how it works.

Ruby is scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning to take out a new (thankfully small) tumor of the same kind as the previous one. I'll be taking her there and I'm hoping that everything goes well.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to push the "Amy & Me" album to the duplicator, which would be easier if I had actually finished mixing it. We tested the then-current mixes on the way down to Ball State on Friday and decided that the track order works, but that there is a problem with the matching between the tracks with replaced vocals and the ones that have live vocals. I did a bit of research last night and got some ideas about how to approach this, which I figured I'd give a try after lunch today.

Unfortunately, what was sounding reasonable in the studio did not sound reasonable at all in the car. But this gave me an idea of where the sonic problems were, so back to the basement I went. This time, I decided to grab the Slate modeling headphones and mix with them instead of the studio speakers. This turned out to be a good idea, I think.

I swapped around the mic modeling plugins again and found something that seems to have worked better. I also reset the compressors on the guitar and vocal, switching to a different compressor plugin that I've never used before for the vocal. I also switched out to a different program for the maximizer.

All that done, tracks went back onto the USB stick for another test while grabbing dinner for Julie. And these were much better. The first track in the set of 10 needs more work, because it was the first track and there were more changes that got accumulated as I went forward, but the other nine sound good.

So I need to patch the first track, then I need to touch up the other 13 tracks so that they match, and then maybe this will be solid for duplication.

Naturally, I have a Windycon meeting tomorrow night...

We had a lovely visit with Amy McNally today. And if you follow Amy's Patreon, you may have seen that we have accomplished the mission of getting a cover for the "Amy & Me" album. :)

There are still things to be finished up, but I should be pushing this out to the duplicator Monday or Tuesday.

And there will be much rejoicing! :)