February 19, 2007: At Last

Monday evening found Mike and Doug back in Alan's studio once again to try to finish off the first two songs: "Rhythm Of The Radio (Favorite Position)" and "Bad, Bad Man". for "Favorite Position" we wanted to replace the original drum track with a new drum track that used a setting with a harder edge. As we quickly discovered, that's not an easy thing to do. A few weeks earlier we had taken a stab at it by recording 3 different versions of the drum track, hoping that we would be able to stitch together the best sections of each. A few days ago, we sat with Alan as he worked his magic on the 3 drum tracks. We really weren't sure how do-able this would be, but once Alan finished, we ended up with a result that works. Alan did some additional mixing on this last take and presented a near-final mix to us tonight. The result? We think this song is finally done. At last!

Next, we did some more work on "Bad, Bad Man". Specifically, we thought the overall rhythm guitar sound was a little thin, so we wanted to experiment with a couple of new rhythm guitar parts that have a little more bite to them. We also wanted to shrink the song from it's original length (almost 8 minutes) to around 4 minutes, without having to re-record the whole thing. We accomplished both goals tonight and were happy with the new guitar parts that definitely give the song more bottom end and a grittier sound. Once Alan does the next mix, we'll add a 15-second intro, which we came up with at last week's practice, and that will complete this song.

What next? Probably Mike's "Call Me". We've got a number of songs ready to follow including Bob's "Hold The Phone", John's "Watch It What You Say" and Doug's "Back To Bimini".