Had a freakin awesome weekend. Got to stay in and record for 2.5 consecutive days! I've found the only way I can record good stuff is when I am A) In my room at my parents' house with B) a readily accessible Xbox 360 and CODMW2 after C) a day of R&R. By that I mean a day of watching movies and playing Xbox. No judgement.
I'm a one-shot deal kind of guy when it comes to the studio. Once I write the song on guitar or piano (guitar as of late) and open up Pro Tools, there's no turning back until the track is complete. Food breaks are annoyingly necessary, but other than that I can just record and record and record.
I usually go in around 10am, and before I know it my stomach is growling and it's 2pm. After slamming down a lunch my phone rings; my brother calling me to come downstairs for dinner. 6pm. But at this point I'm usually almost done with the track. I take a break and eat, hang out for a while, mess around on the computer and then head back up to the stu aka my bedroom.
Lay a few touches on it and bounce down a first mix. I'll pop the mix onto my iPod and throughout the following week listen to it on repeat making mental mix notes. Contrary to what any sensible engineer would tell you, I think mixing on my iPod headphones is really effective. Most kids listen to music on the crappy iphone headphones, so why not mix for it?
But no worries, I also listen to the track on pretty much every sound system I can get my hands on. Car stereo, computer internal speakers (the ultimate worst), computer monitor speakers, different headphones, my studio monitors, etc., etc. Eventually you find a middle ground, make changes and the mix is done. Well, the process of making changes to the mix usually happens around 5 or 6 times but eventually it gets done haha.
I got 2 tracks done this weekend. I've been listening to the one track since I started writing this, and will probably keep it on for another hour or two. I need to turn down the cello stacc and add a heavier kick drum to the after-chorus section... blah blah blah
