Final Mixes Half Done

The week before last, we completed rough mixes of the new CD, The Nuclear Family. After listening to them, there were substantial changes for most of them (including cutting new/re-comping vocals for about five of the eleven tracks). We made changes to six of the tracks Thursday evening. I took home the "final" mixes for these tracks and now I only have a (very few) tweaks for them. There is even one song for which I have no more changes. We are converging to completion.

If I get confirmation of availability, I'll go into the studio tomorrow evening and we'll finish the main changes for the other five tracks and put the minor tweaks into the six we've got at a "final" state for a "final final" state. All of these mixes will come home with me, I'll listen, get minor tweaks into the remaining ones and then we'll go to mastering (which should not take more than one more (albeit long) session.

As such, I now have to put the tracks in some order for the CD. I have a couple of choices... I can go with a thematic order - I noticed that the songs I've recorded have an order based on the arc of a relationship, from new to broken. This has a certain artistic appeal, but it ends up having too many slow songs together and has some of the less good songs go towards the front, while some of the better songs get buried towards the back. As such, I'm probably going to stick with the second option, which is a standard ordering having a good intermixing of fast/slow songs with the very best songs going towards the front and less good ones trailing back.

I understand that this raises the question of "good song"/"less good song". Let me state that I don't think there is a real stinker in the bunch. I like all of these songs well enough to have spent a good amount of time on each of them and, in the final analysis, all are listenable, all are well performed (or at least as well as I can), and all are good songs. However, to paraphrase Orwell, "All songs are equally good, but some songs are more equally good than others." So, in placing the tracks on the CD, the "more equally good" stuff will go at the front, while the merely "equally good" stuff will be towards the end. However, note that this ordering is produced by taking into account what I think folks will like and discerning listeners might find songs that they actually like better towards the end. In short, listen to the whole CD and you decide.

Anyhow, we're in the home stretch with the CD. I plan to engage a Photoshop jockey this week to compose the final layout of the CD artwork (with track ordering). With any luck we should be ready for duplication sometime around the end of September. Woot!

P.S. I already have three new songs in the works. Come to the AMA performance at Sellwood Public House on September 19 to hear one of them.