slowburn

The Universal Audio plugins have been my favorite and most used plugins during this project. I’ve used their Neve EQs on every song, the Plate 140 reverb plugin on many of them, and the Roland chorus and delay plugins all over the place. The biggest problem I’ve had is that the plugins don’t run natively on your computer, you have to buy a separate card and use its DSP to run them, and those UAD-1 cards just weren’t powerful enough to run enough plugins at the same time. Well, today they finally announced their new UAD-2 cards with a lot more power, definitely check them out if you’re interested in these plugins!

http://www.uaudio.com/

One catch for me is the cards seem to be PCI-E only, so I would need to buy a new Intel Mac to put them in, and looking at the Apple store, MacPros are quite expensive. It also looks like all the old plugins I bought (and I bought a lot of them) are only free to upgrade to UAD-2 through the end of this year, so I’d have to buy both a new Mac and a new UAD-2 within the next few months if I wanted to get all my old plugins for free. Pretty lame, actually. I’ll have to think about this one.

Back in San Francisco, and spent the weekend in Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands Festival.

Beck playing at the smaller Sutro Stage. He should have been at the main stage, it was way too crowded and the sound system was weak. His new album is excellent.

Radiohead on the main stage closing out the first night. Completely fantastic performance in the fog of SF.

Wilco on the Twin Peaks stage, almost exactly the same spot where I saw Jeff Tweedy play last fall at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. They should have been on the main stage too, and should have been scheduled more time. They sounded great, they were just getting into a nice groove for the last few songs and then had to stop.

Also saw Tom Petty, Primus, Broken Social Scene and some others. A fun way to spend the weekend, and the last day in particular was sunny and perfect. Pictures are courtesy of Joleen’s fancy schmancy new iPhone, which unfortunately has no zoom.

Edit: Nice photos with zoom at Pitchfork.

I managed to write a number of new songs on the Tenori-On while we were in Glacier, I’m thinking I will do a quick little album of Tenori-On songs after I’m done with slowburn. For now, it’s back to finishing it up. Burning Man is happening this week, so maybe this would be an appropriate time to end the project, three years after we performed it there.

I’m headed out of town to Glacier National Park in Montana for a week of hiking, relaxing and unplugging from the internet. I’m bringing my Tenori-On to hopefully write some new music, or at least have some fun playing around with it.

Here’s the preview mix of slowburn. This is the whole album and it is really almost done now! Once I get back, I just need to tweak a few little last bits and then figure out what we are going to do as far as releasing it. I also need to convert a couple of the songs into a format that people can use to remix them, and maybe make a youtube video for one of them. Anyway, if you get a chance to listen to it, let me know what you think. At this point I’ve lost most of my perspective on whether or not it’s actually any good… which is a sure sign that it is in fact nearly finished.

See you in a week!

I am still alive and (soon to be again) mixing. Last weekend I was out of town on a trip, and by the time I got back I had caught some sort of cold/flu bug. Needless to say, a head full of congestion and feeling cruddy in general is no way to finish up a mix, so I’ve spent this week sitting on the couch scarfing down Dayquil, drinking fluids, and feeling sorry for myself rather than being inside the studio working on the songs. The congestion has now mostly moved from my head down to my chest, so I’m hoping to get back in the studio tomorrow, and cough my way to the finish line.

While starting to mix “tea&t” I was listening to Aphex Twin “Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2″, Brian Eno “Ambient 1: Music For Airports”, and Biosphere “Substrata”. I’ve tentatively decided to take the drums out of this one, so that the first and last songs are both beatless. So far it is sounding okay but it just hasn’t quite gelled yet, although it is starting to get there. Before I left last weekend, I also put together a new full album mix which is currently clocking in at fifty nine minutes exactly. I have a feeling this is probably where it’s going to end up length-wise.

After I get the “tea&t” mix done, I need to go back and do some touch-up bits to all the other mixes based on how they sound in the context of the whole album, and work on getting the interludes between the songs right. I will be leaving town again in a week for another trip, and the goal is to have a nearly-final mix to put up here before I leave.

“tea&t” to-do list:
-SIMPLIFY
-timing seems a bit off at certain points, nudge pads a little
-parts need to be more subtle, less upfront
-more of the lead part at the end?
-more bass parts
-acidy part sticks out too much, send it to the back
-some delays need to be longer, too much activity
-need automation on delays
-volume automate noises and blips
-fade parts in and out slowly
-need to do builds without drums
-more effects on the big pad
-more careful use of reverb
-figure out how how wide the song should feel
-use gain plugin to swap l/r for liquid stereo-izing