This week I’ve mostly been mixing.

Clearly these aren’t final mixes but I needed to do this to get the tracks a bit more streamlined, bouncing MIDI virtual instrument parts down to real audio, all in preparation for moving the logic project files over to the portable hard drive.

This is so that I can easily move between the studio iMac and the Macbook Pro (which now is fully ‘Logiced-Up’ ) for the big drum recording session which is tomorrow. Yay!

Along the way, I’ve taken the time to do some editing and mixing following the last two sessions with Andy and Adam, and I am really happy with the Acoustic parts in Together and A Day by the Sea, and the new bass parts in ADBTS have really lifted the feel, particularly in the 6/8 instrumental.

Also coming under scrutiny were the big multi-tracked vocal harmonies in Children of a Forgotten Sun, Don’t Give Up on Love and ADBTS . I have created vocal groups in each case and used Logic’s Focusrite compressor model in each case.  This has helped to blend the vocals together in a really lovely way.

So the tracks are now all on the portable firewire drive, the MacBook has had the Alesis mixer drivers installed. I have all the mics ready and cabling up together.  So hopefully my next entry will be all about drums.

A somewhat action packed edition of the blog today folks.

First off: Guitars.  Andy came over the other Friday and brought his rather nice Yamaha acoustic, and his even nicer American Stratocaster.  I miked up the Yamaha with a Samson CO2 Small Diameter Condenser mic set about 18″ (45cm) from the soundboard pointing at about the 12th fret.  Got a really nice sound.  Anyway, we tracked the acoustic guitar parts for A Day by the Sea and Together on the Shores of Time.  Then we moved to the Strat, which I DI’d directly into the DAW, and then using Logic’s Amp Designer I selected the Large Tweed Combo which is modelled from a classic Fender Tweed amp.  This was used to great effect on the rock section of A Day by the Sea.  I’m really pleased with it.

Also on the Guitar front Nick has agreed to do me another solo, this time the guitar solo in the 6/8 instrumental section of A Day by the Sea.  I  sent him links to the section in question, and the whole song, and he’s going to get to work on it.

Next up: Bass.Adam was in Tracking some alternative bass parts for A Day by the Sea, because we agreed that what we had worked out last time could be improved on.  This time we came up with some really outstanding bass parts, and it has lifted the arrangement to another level.  We also tracked about 70% of the bass for Children of a Forgotten Sun before we ran out of time.  We have another session booked for this coming Friday so that should see all the bass in the can.

Finally for today: Drums. Paul is booked in for an all day session on the first Saturday in March.  This will be a fun day.  I’ve booked a Church building for the day, which has some killer acoustics – It’s a large vaulted ceiling building which would seat up to 300 people but it is carpeted and the chairs are upholstered.  This gives a space which has a nice  reverb tail but isn’t overly lively.  I reckon that we can get a great drum sound in there.  I also have access to a fair selection of mics – D112 Kick mic, Audio Technica AT4021 overheads, Shure SM57 for the Snare, Rode M3 for the hi-hat and another for the floor tom.  and my Samson C02 pair for the rack toms.  I’ll also take my Groove Tubes GT57 Large Capsule condenser for the ambience mic.

I have installed Logic onto the Macbook pro, and I’ll be taking the Alesis Multimix to interface it all to the computer.  I’ve recorded a drum kit in that space before and was please with the results, but this will be the first time with my own gear, so it’s all going to be a bit of an adventure.

This is the big push to get the final bits of tracking done.  I still have Sue’s electric violin part to get for Ode to Joy, but I can now see the end in sight for the tracking.

I received a whole bunch of guitar tracks from Nick Crosby on Friday, these are all the separate guitar parts for Children of a Forgotten Sun.  Basically, when Nick did the parts for that song originally, he provided me three guitar stems, the lead stem, and two rhythm stems, however, the lead stem contained a composite of three distinct guitar parts, which at one or two points play counterpoint to each other in a rather great Steve Howe-esque way.

Having these as separate parts has given me quite a lot more choices for the mix, including panning and different processing with Logic’s rather tasty Amp Designer.

But there are a lot of guitars here, and it’s a long song – the longest on the album, topping out at around 13 minutes (well, this is prog after all!) – so I took most of the weekend chopping up the parts, deleting the silence between sections, colour coding stuff so I could make sense of what was where, and then started in on the processing and balancing.  There is a fine line between an immense wall of sound and descending into mush, and I’m not sure I’ve pulled that particular trick off yet.

And I’ve decided that the intro vocals now sound distinctly wimpy in comparison, so that has gone back onto the list for re-tracking.

Busy, busy, busy.