Sic Semper Tyrannis

When's the New Album Coming Out?

Well, well, well, my lovelies.

I write this little missive today while listening to the final mixes of the forthcoming Grandpa Griffith album entitled Electric Scooter Holiday Blowout and I must say that I’m quite pleased with this stuff. I’m excited for everyone to get to hear a “best-case scenario” of some of the stuff they’ve heard live for a while as well as some of the little surprises that no one, (or very few) have been privy to.

And of course, listening to this music takes me back to the four days of recording, which were really more like a vacation in Dallas. Just hanging out and creating amidst a bunch of high tech gear with a producer who seemed to be more excited about our ideas than we were---well, I must say it was probably the best week in my life as a musician.

So, folks, we are one major step closer to the release of the album! We’ve only got mastering and duplication left. I often encounter blank stares when I talk about this process, so let me explain a little bit how it all works.

During the week that we were at the studio, we did what’s called “tracking,” putting down the original parts one at a time, mostly starting with the drums, then the bass and then adding everything on top of that. At the end of this step, all of the instruments are isolated on their own tracks.

The “mixing” process is just adjusting the levels between instruments and vocals and adding effects like delays and reverbs. The result of this process is a 2-track mix of every song that is pretty darn close to a finished product, sound-wise. We are just now done with that part and I think our guy did a wonderful job of mixing to emphasize important stuff and de-emphasize the stuff that should be felt but not necessarily heard. In my opinion, mixing can be as much a creative art as writing the songs.

Then, in “mastering,” final touches are put onto the record. All of the songs are brought up to the same volume and final EQ fixes are made so as to sound as pleasant on the ears as possible. [Did you know that there is a bit of a battle in the music industry involving the mastering process? There are specialty engineers who get paid to only do mastering for projects and they are constantly feeling pressure from artists and record companies to make records as “loud” as possible to compete with what else is on the radio. Unfortunately, in most cases, to make a record as loud as possible requires the engineer to ruin the dynamics and overall sound quality. So, a song that starts with just a voice and acoustic guitar would be just as loud as when the whole band is supposed to come crashing in. This is how dynamics are ruined. Sound quality is usually affected by the introduction of distorted artifacts. Distortion is the sound of rock n’ roll guitar. Not necessarily the sound of vocals. So, in many, many cases, mastering engineers, who used to be known for their “golden ears,” are now forced to “ruin” the sound of records, if they want to make a living, that is. If any of this tech talk interests you, (Ryan), go here.] Anyway, the result of this process is a master, the sound recording from which copies are made.

And the final part of the process is “duplication”-making a bunch of copies and printing artwork.

And of that whole process, the first two steps usually prove to be the most time-consuming.

So, hopefully, it won’t be long, my friends!

posted by Mike @ 3:50 PM