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| Fun with the Cannon in Santa Monica |
Been lying low a little this last week. I caught a yucky cold over the weekend and it derailed some of my musical plans. I wanted to get back on top of things full force when I got back here. But it seems Korea can suck the life out of you a little.
Cantonment is essentially done. I had been holding off on a commercial release to see if my Tainted (tortured mix) made it on the side-line facebook comp. Seems they aren't going to announce who made it on the comp until the end of May. Seems they also have somewhere between 500 and 1000 submissions and 40% are from "professional" bands. I'm not liking the odds.
So in light of that. I would like to release Cantonment earlier than June 1st. However, I'm going to try and get a few external remixes and maybe another internal one done in the next few weeks and add a little more meat to the Album. It'll still be an EP by definition, but more remixes are good no?
As for mastering. I've rediscovered through logic's handy little tool "Match EQ" that I do so love to leave some holes in my spectrum I wasn't aware of. Granted that tool is dangerous. If you trust it outright, it can make a total disaster of your mix. But if you get it just right, it can make some excellent fine tuning. Somewhere around 500-700Hz, I don't like in my head, because it kept boosting that. At first it sounded a bit um, "cardboardy" to me. But I've heard it on several different systems now and I do like the way it came out. Perhaps that's the "warmth" those analog guys are always talking about.
I didn't finish all the mastering on all the tracks while I was in Seattle though. Time constraints and the occasional hangover didn't lend itself to mastering. But seeing as I decided to add more to the album, I'll have to make do with what I have over here. With an added dose of perspective.
For the future...
I was going through a lot of songs I'd partially completed between 2006 and 2010. I like where a lot of them were going, but they aren't all exactly the sound I was going for. There are a lot of them. Enough to make into another album over the next 6 months. Though I'm trying to decide if I want to continue to backpedal and revamp older and unreleased material or just wipe the slate clean and start fresh.
If I start over, I feel like I want to avoid "corrupting" my sound with past ideas. But in some cases, I like my past ideas more than my current ones. There are also a few semi-completed tracks that really move me. I also want to bring back a totally up to date version of Cease Fire and possibly Licht.
I'm trying to push myself away from over-complexity. Which has been a constant issue with my music. I do so love to pack as much as I can into a song until it becomes "busy." While at the same time, seeming that the key to a good song is only having what you need in it to make it work. In part that may be my lack of "real" musical talent. As I'm more of an engineer than an artist. Then again, all I have to do is listen to a few songs out there to realize, I'm not doing that bad (oh, crap, hello ego).
Ok, ok... this is enough of a ramble for one news post.
Love and other indoor sports,
-Anthony
