This past Saturday was dedicated to our listening/mixing session of our song called "Failing Days". As always, Roland Sacerdoti (Sound Engineer, EggRoom Studios) and Briggs Baritugo (SunDownMuse Vocalist/Guitarist) were in attendance aside from myself.
We had a slow start because of some inherent laziness in ourselves. We ended up watching an acoustic concert DVD of the Foo Fighters called "Skin and Bones". When we finished watching the DVD, we were well stocked with beer and then some, in order to begin our listening/mixing session.
Briggs' friends, Pam and Eduardo, wanted to come over just to hang-out. Of course, they were more than welcome to join us. Pam apparently used to go to ISM like Roland and I. When we graduated from ISM, she apparently got to highschool the year after. So we completely missed each other in ISM. Eduardo came in sporting an elaborate tattoo design of a phoenix, on his right arm up to a portion of his chest. I must say, the feathering was indeed extremely detailed. I've never seen a tattoo that detailed in my life. The two pretty much just read my my men's magazines practically all night, while giving some input to the mixing session here and there.
"Failing Days" is by far one of the more complicated songs to mix because of the sheer number of guitar tracks it has. For the rhythm guitar section alone, there are 2 electric guitar tracks (one distorted, one clean), and two acoustic guitar tracks. Not to mention the many layered guitar cracks on the solo portion of the song. I personally decided to hold back my percussion recording for the song to just congas and chimes tracks. This is because I wanted the guitars to shine in the song.
As meticulous as we were with "Burned" we were even more so meticulous with each and every guitar track in "Failing Days". We felt that the verse parts of the song should have the acoustic guitar tracks more present, while the transition to the chorus parts should be heavy on Charles' distortion guitars.
We then proceeded to focusing on the drum tracks but only for a short while. Basically we wanted to here more attack on the snare drum track ("TAK!" is what is should sound like for lack of a better descriptor).
As always, I will highlight one of the cool ideas I come up with for every song when we mix them. This time is the added "Wah" effect on the lead guitars during a portion of the solo. I first tried singing the effect while the song was playing so that Roland and Briggs can have an idea how it sounds. They liked it. So Roland worked his magic and managed to come close to the sound I was thinking of. Well done, Rol.
We started around 9:00PM and ended around 3:00AM or 4:00AM in the morning. We decided to table the song for the second mixing run because we finished mixing the meat of the song anyway, and our ears were starting to ring already despite ear breaks.
Briggs left when we concluded the session. Roland decided to stay and try out some of the new Nintendo Wii games I just bought. We ended up playing "Trauma Center: New Blood" an arcadey medical operation game that now allows you to do operations in Co-op mode (2 players). After that, Roland went on home to rest his ears. I went to sleep a few hours later. Slept like a baby in my Tanduay rhum drunken stupor, with a smile on my face due to a very productive and FUN night.
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1 comment:
Cool! Can't wait to hear what you've come up with... :-)
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