I had a wonderful time on vacation last week! ❤️ I met a lot of amazing people and got to spend time with some of my best friends in the world. Pre-Release Weekend was a blast too! I'm going to leave the pre-release masters up on my website for now so everyone who got a QR code can still access the album at their leisure. Most of the tracks will remain basically the same for final release, so, enjoy! (and if you do enjoy, please don't forget to listen on spotify and tell your friends once the full public release is out!)
So... if everything is basically ready, why are we delaying? Something's been gnawing at me. Earlier this week I had a meeting with John Caviness (my mixing/production assistant on The Queen of Time) and we've agreed to go back and re-do some elements of the mix/balance on All Along the Western Side before release. As much as I want this album to be done ASAP, I think this is the right decision.
All Along the Western Side was the first song I worked on with John, and, at that time, certain elements of our workflow were still budding and yet to be established. Frankly, the stems I gave him were a *mess.* Things were tragically disorganized, and while it was in his hands I continued to add and remove parts and re-track things, and send him new stems, and tell him to remove this and that and YIKES! I was new to this! I was very naive to the actual reality of having someone else to lend their hands/ ears to my mix- I was still learning what I could expect from this process.
My biggest lesson learned: People (no matter how smart they are) cannot read your mind. Nobody (no matter how experienced) knows your song as well as you do. You have to tell them what's going on in your mix or they won't know! Receiving a batch of unorganized stems is disorienting! You have to be proactive, specific, and organized in detailing the elements of your song when you give someone your stems to work on. They won't be able to make magic happen if they have to spend hours combing through your obscurely labeled tracks.
By this point in the project we are much more on the same page about what rolls each of us plays in the mixing process, and how give each other what we need to make the best work happen. As the project has gone on, John has also become more familiar with my sound, and has a better idea what textures, and parts to emphasize in my mixes. It's not that the current mix for All Along the Western Side is *bad*, it just stands out a bit from the rest of the album- frankly, it sounds a bit like it was mixed by someone else.
From the outset, this has been one of my favorite songs on the album, and whenever I've shown versions of the album to friends and family- many have highlighted it as one of their favorites too.
Of course, like all things in art/creativity, I can't know if the result of our re-balancing this mix will be *better* than the current version of the mix until it is done... So for all I know, we may end up going forward with the current mix anyway 😅. But I sought some advice from another producer who I interviewed at the start of this phase of the project, and he agreed that it's definitely worth a little delay to try to fix the things that will keep you up at night... and the end of this track *does* threaten to keep me up at night...
The finale of this song wants to be huge, and in my demo mix, I hear a ton of melodies, synths, and percussion elements that just *do not* shine through in the current mix. I didn't realize how diminished all these tracks were until I had some time away from the song and got to listen to it with fresh ears after I got the first round of masters...
There's something that happens to you once you've listened to/worked on a song a lot- it's like "listening in 4D." You hear what's there now, but you also hear the song's past iterations, and all of its future potential, all at once!.. Sometimes you can lose sight of the actual truth of the mix, and blend what you are currently hearing with your memory/ knowledge of the elements you are supposed to be hearing. I think that's what happened to this mix somewhere along the way. It's going to be a few more weeks before we can dive in and re-work the mix (John is about to leave for his own vacation soon)... So in the mean time I'll be doing what I'm always doing- writing, editing and mixing ✨new stuff <3✨
- May 30, 2023
This weekend only, I'm making my album available totally for free on my website! Check it out! 👀
The "official release" is likely to happen sometime in June, and then it will be published everywhere you care to listen to it (Spotify, itunes, Amazon Music, Bandcamp, Tidal, etc...) But for now, you can get a sneak peak right here!
I'm still working behind the scenes on a few tiny details (last minute meetings with mastering engineer and production assistant) but the album is very nearly (or already completely) ready for release. I'm so excited to be able to put it in the hands of friends, family, and you!
- May 25, 2023
Updated: May 30, 2023
This week I got back the first draft of the full set of masters for The Queen of Time!...
The first listen was an amazing and bewildering experience, hearing everything for the 1st and for the 1,000,000th time all at once. Overall I think the tracks sound GREAT and I'm excited to get things released as soon as possible!..
But over the next few days, I started feeling less and less sure that everything was as good as I I wanted it to be... There are a few sections of a few tracks that I find myself wishing I had done differently. "If I just made this one different mixing decision," or "if I hadn't changed this one line..." what if *that* would make the difference between a track you want to skip, and track you want to download? Will I regret it forever if I let my song get published, when I know it could be better?...
I very nearly decided to delay things and go back to the mixes and make a few changes... but at this phase in the project that just doesn't seem realistic. Addressing the things I want to fix would take at least a couple months and now that other people (and money) are involved, it would not be frugal.
As an artist I've always struggled to know when the project is done. Honestly, the anxiety I'm currently experiencing is the thing that's prevented me from releasing work in the past. Yes, I've heard the platitudes- "-your own worst critic", "- work is never complete, merely abandoned." All true, lol... But I feel like being your own worst critic can also be a super power- It compels you to constantly improve and make better stuff. And the more you listen to it- the better the work gets!..
But I also have to understand that I'm constantly growing and changing as a person, and my tastes and preferences and ideas will change over time. If I let the project incubate forever, then the project never feels finished, and it continues rolling forward with me, and never quite catches up with who I am, or what I'm capable of... The decisions I made about a mix last year are not the same decisions I would make now (for better or worse).
There is always going to be *something* that I feel like I want to improve about a project... It's very tempting to keep fixing the next worst thing until... What? I'd like to believe "until everything is prefect" but that's simply impossible. By the time I've truly perfected the original idea, I've moved on as a person, and I may not even be able to recognize what the original idea was.
Ultimately I'm still deciding whether or not to release it in its current form. I don't feel amazing about it, but I know that I almost certainly never will, and that's okay. We release work not so that we can bask in the glow of a job well done- but so that we can learn from and appreciate the human experience of others. Publishing the project means allowing people to actually see this thing I've made, and that's really exciting! But at the same time, I really want the project to be as good as it can be. I'm certain to continue to grow and change as an artist, and publishing this project- calling it done- allows me to do that, but delaying it might allow me to feel more confident in the finished product- which is also really good for the project.