At 10:45 tonight I completed the recording and mixing phase of this album. The last act was to take a little snippet of Lynsey Hutchinson’s vocal on one song and swap it from left to right in the mix. The most drastic act of the last day was to axe a complete verse from one song. I pulled back from the brink of doing the same on another song as I couldn’t decide which one was weakest; the verses gazed up at me with their limpid little eyes till I put down my axe and walked off. I should come back when they’re sleeping.
All the songs are now trimmed, volume-maximised and ready for mastering tomorrow.
The next task is deciding on the order. I’ve been reading other people’s opinions on this and it’s very varied. ‘Start with your best song’; ‘Start with an uptempo one’ ‘Keep the best songs for positions 3 and 7 in a 10-track album’; ‘Sequence them in the order you like them starting with your favourite’; ‘Imagine it’s a live performance – what order would you do them in?’; ‘Avoid two songs together in the same key’; ‘Do them in the order you wrote them’. It’ s bewildering. Starting uptempo wouldn’t be good in this case as there’s only one uptempo song on the album! If I did them in the order they were written my least favourite would be first so that’s not happening. Surprisingly for me, only three out of ten are in A minor! Actually I know how I want to start and finish it, it’s just the rest I’m not sure of. And of course it matters less in these days of downloads.
Can’t wait to start the next one 🙂