the vecctones

high on yourself, crybaby (new vocals), impressions, flyin and when it rains, have been remixed.   i’ll get to the others very soon.

All but high on yourself, like this and impressions have been re-sang.  I will get to re-singing those three soon.   These tracks are also getting very close to the final masters.

a mix that has the mids boosted to give a bit more warmth and punch.  I re-did the vocals for get my thing, nothin to lose, high on yourself and the blues.  2 more songs will be posted soon…

whats posted now is being worked on.  the last 2 weeks in August should yield a couple more postings of the set list, with an attempt at final vocal tracks and mixes for the August 31st deadline for the UPLAYA – American Songwriter Competition (which I’m not expecting to win by any means but it has given me an unmovable deadline to finish the tunes up and move on

….I did re-do a couple vocals today, but I’ll be using the next couple weeks to make sure whatever vocals needing to be re-done are re-done.  These mixes were done using t-racks 3 Vintage processors and a couple of plugins that are bundled in with Protools 8

I spent yesterday and today reworking the mixes and vocals and that is what has just been posted.  The song ‘impressions’ has made a come back, song list is at 12.  check it out…

Uplaya has acknowledged the misprint of their July 31 submission cutoff date and have agreed to let me resubmit up until Aug 31.  They’ll be deleting the songs I already submitted so my Auddy Award Trophy Case might be empty until then.  Some of the songs I submitted I was dog tired on the vocals but did the best I could to finish them up.  I was working with 15 songs total, but now I’m in the middle of a process of elimination.  This will give me the opportunity to take my time and make sure both the mixes and vocals are the way I want them to be, and only to focus on the 11 tunes that the vecctones debut album will consist of.

ok, I tweaked the EQ on the guitar tracks for the (follow up) tunes so that they have more mids, matching the (retro) tunes which utilizes a 6 string guitar (the ‘follow up’ has a 7 string that pumped out a lot of low end).  I also re-sang ‘crybaby’, ‘worry about’, ‘impressions’.  Then I re-arranged the order of the tunes, putting ‘worry about’ and ‘impressions’ at the end.  Now the order of the songs sort of tell a story and kind of follow one another logically somehow in my mind with 2 funkier tunes at the end.  This will be effective for a live show too.

Uplaya’s submission cutoff is July 31st for their competition

——–

(retro) get my thing
(retro) nothin to lose
(retro) cause it feels good
(retro) like this
(retro) the blues
(retro) save yourself

(follow up) crybaby
(follow up) flyin
(follow up) high on yourself
(follow up) i’m fine
(follow up) lost my mind
(follow up) same damn thing
(follow up) when it rains

(retro) worry about
(follow up) impressions

….see this previous blog entry for explanation

(retro) get my thing
(retro) save yourself
(retro) nothin to lose
(retro) cause it feels good
(retro) worry about
(retro) like this
(retro) the blues
(follow up) crybaby
(follow up) flyin
(follow up) high on yourself
(follow up) i’m fine
(follow up) impressions
(follow up) lost my mind
(follow up) same damn thing
(follow up) when it rains

you can’t have a retro debut album without a retro mixdown….by that i’m referring to making the drum tracks mono and some other slight adjustments to give it more of an indie sound and feel.  from what i’ve read, mono drum tracks were the thing back in the day.  i like how they hit the compression/limiting and also because they seem to have more punch but with a warmer centered tone.

i actually made the decision based on the vecctones follow up album which is pretty much done. you see, i almost bailed on these ‘retro’ debut tunes by moving onto another set of songs without releasing the first set.  after completing the follow up album, i decided to go back and rework the first set.  all along growing and developing as a vocalist and producer.

so now i’m ready to hit the scene with 2 albums, each about 30 minutes, actually i think the retro is under 30 (though i have one or 2 other songs that could make the cut) and the follow up is over 30 minutes.

i also have guitar riffs worked out for the 3rd album which i did months ago when i got a new guitar and was all excited to play it (around the time i was finishing up the follow up album), but then put those ideas off to the side to rework the retro tunes…..

summary:

retro debut tunes (posted) = a bit more funky and abstract ….09 release date

follow up album = more guitar driven (still some funky elements)   ….09 simultaneous release date possible

3rd album guitar ideas = guitar driven  ….maybe end of 2010 probably 2011