It's been 7 1/2 months since we recorded at Abbey Road. Of that time, we have spent 2 1/2 months mixing the songs, creating over 50 mixes in the process. When we left Abbey Road, the evening of December 8th, we had some great rough mixes that had a tremendous amount of punch and energy. The reason for mixing back home was primarily that there was still some editing to be done on a few things like vocals, bass, guitar and drums.
Once the editing was complete, it came time to try and recreate the great punch sound we'd gotten on the roughs. Trying at least one mix a day for the better part of two months, we determined we needed some help. And that help came in the form of some software plug-in programs created by, you guessed it, Abbey Road. These plug-ins work with my editing/mixing software (called LOGIC) to act as some of the outboard processors at Abbey Road. Essentially, they emulate the old tube compressors and equalizers that were built by the EMI/Abbey Road engineers way back in the 50s and 60s.
Anyway, purchasing these plug-ins and learning what to do with them was the answer. With them, we were able to give the mixes the punch and sonic signature of what we heard on our rough mixes. All that remained, once Tim and I agreed on mixes, was to master the tracks for CD. For that, we sent the final mixed songs to Abbey Road where they worked on them and sent them back to us. And they sound GREAT!
As Tim said, we are planning on releasing them on the one-year anniversary of recording them. And as Tim also said, we're anticipating a record release party in Tacoma, WA USA on December 8, 2009. Hopefully, we'll have some of the video put together to at least have a good music video for each of the songs. For the documentary about the journey, we are talking about having a professional do it. Lofty goals, but the loftiest has already been done - going to Abbey Road and recording!
That's the update! Stay tuned as we get closer to the date! Who knows, maybe we'll even toss up a web site about this!
