Now I know why new albums are two years apart
I've been working on mixes for two of the 13 songs I have earmarked for the next record. Composition, arrangement, and primary recording don't generally take me that long - maybe 40-50 hours per song, soup to nuts. Sounds like a lot for four minutes of music, but it starts to look more reasonable when you consider what's involved: drums, bass, two or more guitar parts, synth parts (sometimes none, sometimes as many as five or six), main vocal melody, harmonies, and lyrics.
In the past, my mixes have been pretty simple. "Raw" or "natural" would be putting it kindly, but "basic" and "unsophisticated" are closer to the truth. Once the recording is done, I generally set the levels to something that sounds good, adjust the reverb sends, and bounce to disk.
It's always bothered me that my recordings don't sparkle like other bands' recordings that I admire. I can write some of that off to professional gear and seasoned engineers...but I know that there's a lot that I could be doing and I just haven't bothered to learn it until now.
I kinda wish my standards were lower.
Why? Because I have discovered that mixing - setting the relative levels of each instrument, setting equalization, adding effects and other touches here and there - takes just as long as writing, arranging, and recording the damned song in the first place. It's some serious cold water in the face for a guy who's always looked at mixing as "the home stretch". But really listening with a critical ear, taking the time to make each instrument sound its best in relation to the other parts, and placing everything carefully in the audio spectrum is a huge amount of work.
What's worse is that it can't be immersive work. I often go through the creation & recording process in one huge push. I become totally consumed by the one song I'm working on. Mixing, I've found, requires time away from the song. Work on it for a couple of short sessions (2 or 3 hours), put it down for a few days, pick it back up with fresh ears, and so on. Recording for the mix I finished tonight was done five weeks ago. No joke.
Do I think it's worth it? Hell yes, or I wouldn't be doing the work. But if it takes me, a part-time musician with a day job and a bunch of other hobbies, two months to complete a single track - then no wonder it takes full-time musicians two years to come out with a new record. Now I grok in fullness.
I've been having trouble uploading the track but I imagine I'll post it later when I have more time.
