First off, thanks for the replies SDC1-ClickClack and kesslari! I very much feel the same way about Tuesdays results. I have all sorts of new concerns and felt a wave of PTSD from 2016.
I am pleased you have this fun gig coming up, kesslari! How have you been? I know your road has not been easy.
Mapleglo! I am so pleased the removal went well. I sure hope the pain is manageable.
Rick!!! What fab news! Getting these tapes is beyond wonderful! And I love your goal of surprising the guys.
I cannot encourage you enough to try alternate mixes for fun and for the site. We all want to hear your lies more clearly. Let us know if all of the Track Sheets are there (I’d love to see one). And let us know when the hard drive arrives.
Are you and Leah back to full health? I hope so!!!!
Wow wow wow....
Got the hard drive and my first move was to completely dump 100% of the contents into an SSD Drive. By the way, I had Sony do the transfers at 192kz in case we need that for Atmos or any high res versions, plus I had them scale it down to 44.1-24 bit. I was kind of surprised, but they used a standard HHD La Cie 2TB. Both versions together took up about 83 gigs. This is the one:
No sweat, it works fine and it is very heavy duty. So I wanted to start with Service, because it's a cool 2:39 long.
I copied in all of the individual 24 tracks to Logic Pro and I was pretty amazed actually. It is really 22 tracks because we use one track for a click and one track for the tones to calibrate the machine. I think I mentioned that I am actually fine playing to a click, no issues, but I just don't enjoy it as much. I prefer to have the drummer play to the click (especially if he is seasoned and GREAT at it) and then I play to him. I like to focus on feel - but the click takes me into my head due to my OCD and I pay too much attention to the incremental speeding up and slowing down. I kind of get hypnotized by it and lose sight of the big picture. So when I play with a drummer in the studio I watch him like a hawk, and let him click away. Ron eats click for breakfast, so it works out very well for me/us. We are polar opposites but I think we fit together like a glove. Plus, when you have a pretty perfect sense of rhythm, (not bragging here, I absolutely cannot take credit for this god-given talent) a click serves little or no purpose.
But as I was going through the tracks sometimes an overdubbed drum fill or a moog part or a guitar part was part of the track with another instrument. No biggie, stuff happens when you start running out of tracks. It's actually fun to edit the tracks and make a separate track for each part when two instruments are on the same track. It makes it so much easier. But you have to scan through each track to verify what is on it, and re-label in some cases. Many of the tracks were laughingly marked wrong.
I must say, my god....Ken Scott - I mean these tracks are for the most part REALLY well recorded as you might guess. When I got all the tracks imported I pulled the faders up equally, and I must say I was pretty amazed at how they sounded very close to his mix. As I studied the mix a bit, and I mean, I only spent a couple hours on this today - I realized there were some very interesting keyboard and guitar parts which I love - that weren't very well represented in Ken's mix. I toyed with those parts a bit and it took my breath away how much better I feel this mix could be. Of course, YMMV and it is very subtle stuff and who am I after all to even act like I could ever out-mix Ken Scott? It's all so subjective and well - ridiculous to me. I have had a burst of confidence lately though, as a number of people I really respect thought the "Lock em Up" track sounded fantastic.
So I was working on the bass, and without revealing anything, I decided to bust out one of my favorite secret weapons. I punched up the plug in and to be honest, I sobbed. I actually shed some tears right there at the mixing desk. Leah heard me and came in to see if I was OK, but it was one of those emotional moments that can't really be represented with words. Suffice it to say, my bass suddenly came alive and I couldn't believe the difference. By the way, Stephen, take note - Ken DID use a pretty amazing effect on the bass on this tune. Almost sounds like a chorus/envelope generator combo of some kind. We may need to edit the book in that place - but it works with the track and I was surprised - he told me he didn't use any effects on the bass on Service....What a scoundrel!
So, it was a very weird moment for me. Here I was hearing Service with the bass the way I felt it aways should have been. Part of me said wow, Ken's mix is fine with my bass pumping properly, but in truth it wasn't - at least for me. But an overwhelming experience for me, and I do realize that to reach my mix goals, there is a bit of automation work I need to do. Of course, I have a real advantage that guys like Ken never really had back in the day.
More to come....
Oh, and Stephen, no sweat on the typo I know exactly what you wanted to say.
So again, I not only duplicated the Sony drive to the SSD, I also backed up that drive to another SSD. You can never be too careful when it comes to this stuff....And I do have scans of the track sheets, but not on this computer. I will try and get that together and post some of the original track sheets, even though maybe 30% of them are labeled wrong.
www.eazudins.com
