This is one of these things I’ve been putting off for years. It serves two purposes. One is to have the songs sound better. Two is to clean up all the tracks on each song, and, remove all the unneeded files that can accumulate fast, AND, backup each song as I go. Whew! I’ve never made proper backups of all my music and it would totally blow if hard drives were to crash. So I suppose this would be called the Remix/Backup project.
After completing this first song, I’m slowly realizing what a daunting task this is. Here’s the deal. All the older songs were recorded on an older computer (makes sense) that was 32 bit. I upgraded to a 64 bit computer a couple years ago with the newer Protools. Protools decided to have a completely different format for their plugins in the process. What does this mean? All the plugins from the 32 bit system are now obsolete on the 64 bit newer Protools. Yay! So that sucks, but the computer runs better with more tracks more efficiently. This makes all these songs a true remix as opposed to just tweaking the same mix. Have I confused you yet? I’m confused myself so that makes 2 of us.
In addition to that, it’s preparing all the audio files on the old computer then creating a whole new song on the newer computer THEN importing all those audio files into the new remix of the song. This takes a lot of patience, notes, time, and screenshots. I hope to streamline this the more I do it.
Here’s the first song, Fairfield, from a Spintunes competition of yesteryear. It’s one of my problem children that I’ve always wanted to redo because a lot of the songwriting competition songs had to be done so fast. They really had no time for critical listening. The bass was a little overbearing and needed to be cleaned up among other things. So hear ya go. I hope it sounds better and hope you like it. It’s about the town I grew up in in Fairfield, New Jersey. It’s all TRUE!….well sort of.
Chris
Damn! Where have all the years gone? Is it just me or has time sped up? Is there research going on about this? Let’s get on this! Well it’s good to be back here with reinvigorated motivation where I feel I belong. I have no excuses as to my lack of productivity (yeah right), because there are none (except for laziness, soul sucking job, Netflix, YouTube, tired, lack of sleep DUE TO soul sucking job, etc…). So as you can see, no excuse. This year I’m turning this around. Bust out the pom poms!
I’ll keep this “getting reacquainted post” short without bombarding you with a zillion sure to fail resolutions all at once. I’d rather take it easy at first then slowly ramp things back up. At this point I’m asking for your help. Please? If you, or anyone you know, has a song or tracks to be mixed or remixed, or you’re just a super nice person with perfectly mixed songs, please let me know. I would love to have a crack at mixing your music. My output has been extremely slow lately and I could REALLY use the practice. I will do it for no charge. Nothing. Zilch. Nada! Just the experience and you have nothing to lose. I love to mix music just as much as writing and recording. It’s what I love doing. Just send me an email in the contact tab above. Thanks!
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Here’s a song I just finished a little while ago. First song of the year! It’s an acoustic cover by The Jayhawks as part of my acoustic covers album which I’ll talk about later. I’m really getting into these acoustic covers. Hope you like it.
Chris
When I was young, a LOT younger, I was a huge Monkees fan. I’m not sure who came first for me The Beatles or The Monkees. The Monkees stand out because they were on television everyday in reruns and I would be glued to the screen watching them. This song always stuck out for me because it was the first song on the great More Of The Monkees album that I would play over and over and over… Again, thanks to having an older brother and secretly raiding his record collection. 😛
Here’s the link.
http://christophercogott.bandcamp.com/track/she
I’ll have one more cover song this month (and that will be it for the covers for now) and a new song out as well.
Summer’s gone and fall has arrived and is, and has been, in full swing. Cold weather is creeping in. Something I suppose I should be used to by now. Not my favorite time of year. The changing colors of the leaves is a thing of beauty. Wish it didn’t have to come with cold temps. Think I’m just getting old and cranky.
I bring all this up why? I have a new song! Finally. Well, it’s a cover song, but it’s a start right? Time to get out of this dryspell funk and start pumping out some musica. It’s been WAY too long. It’s a Beach Boys song which will always remind me of summer and the beach and yes, WARMTH 🙂
This has been by far the most challenging cover I ever attempted, strictly from a vocal point of view. Sounds like a simple song but it’s The Beach Boys. Incredible harmonies when you really listen and try to break it down. I tried my best and think it’s sort of close. As challenging as this was, it was still a lot of fun and I learned a lot in the process. Doing covers, for me, has always been about the learning process. Learning different techniques and ways of doing things that will inevitably find it’s way into my own songs. I was asked to do another one and I’ll be working on that one soon.
Oh yeah, one other thing. This is the very very very first time I actually played drums on a song instead of programming them through a plugin. It’s an electronic drum set which is going through the Abbey Road 60’s drums software. I’m still using some kind of software to manipulate the sounds, but at least I finally get the satisfaction of bashing on the drums instead of a keyboard. I’m also going to start putting out track sheets for all the songs I record moving forward. I enjoy looking at track sheets to see what instruments were used and how many vocal overdubs were done, etc. Hopefully you will too.
Here’s the song. Hope you like it. – CC
https://christophercogott.bandcamp.com/track/surfer-girl
PS – Here’s an older song I wrote. It’s about mermaids but it’s also about the ocean.
https://christophercogott.bandcamp.com/track/drag-me-down