Tuesday, January 15, 2008

"By And By" to Be Folk Rock Track of the Day at Garageband.com



On January 22nd, "By And By" will be featured HERE as Folk Rock Track of the Day. It also was chosen as "Best Lyrics in Folk Rock" and "Best Beat in Folk Rock" for the week of Jan 14th.

It has been steadily climbing the Garageband.com Charts and currently sits at #88 of 235 (all-time: #749 of 2,820) in the Folk Rock genre. These awards and chart positions are based reviews by other users/musicians so it's nice to get a small bit of recognition for this song which is one of my personal favorites.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

New Recordings, Mixes and Equipment Failures

Well, I have had the a week and a half of nothing but free time. Tomorrow I will start up work and school again. I am glad to say that during this time I was able to get a little bit of recording and mixing done. One of the things that takes the longest about the whole mixing process is that I need to listen to a song for days and weeks before the imperfections become noticeable so that I can fix them. It can take a long time until I am happy enough to declare a song finished.
  • "Dear Friend" - Finished recording and came up with a near final mix. It just needs to be tested (listened to on various sound systems) and then any problems fixed in the final mixing process. I think this song turned out pretty well.
  • "This Moment" - This song had a final mix (or so I thought), but after weeks of listening to it in the car and on the iPod, something was just not right. So I took the final mix and using waveform editing software I fixed the problems...I hope. This will need to be tested again to see if the new changes will help. It was mostly EQ issues.
  • "Stability Crisis" - This song needs a re-write of some of the lyrics and will probably get a new title, but this week I made some other changes to it. I realized that it was in the wrong key. I dropped it down about 2 full steps and I think that made a huge difference. I had to go back and re-program some of the sampled sounds to fit the key change. Then I re-recorded the acoustic guitar to match as well. The song has a different feel to it now but I really like the changes. Oh, I didn't record new vocals for it yet but I did do a pitch shift to the old vocals. Now they are in the right key but sound really funny because they have been digitally altered. I'll have to save a copy of this version just to laugh at later.
I was not able to do all of the recording I would have liked to because my effects processor for the guitar is starting to die. It's a little frustrating because it cost me $90 when I got it 3 years ago. The good news is that if I can't get this one fixed, I can by a much better one for the same price I got this one for. I'm not sure if I want it to be fixed or not.

I'm On iTunes

If you still have not purchased Making It Right Again, it is now available on iTunes (as well as Amazon.com and other online music stores. The link below will open up iTunes and take you to my album.

James Gillice - Making It Right Again