I was going to post these around a week before the holidays and yesterday I looked at the date and was like “Holy Christmas, it’s Dec 21st!” Here they are anyway:

Under The Mistletoe:
[audio:Under_The_Mistletoe_Emeline.mp3]

The First Noel - Tekno mix:
[audio:The_First_Noel-Emeline.mp3]

These songs were composed with the first successful artists I ever worked with, Emeline. We lost Emeline in 2001 after she spent many brave years battling breast cancer.
Rosie Owens is on backup vocals.

DISCLAIMER: These are very old songs. They were done over 16 years ago in 1991, back when I was still learning to compose, produce and engineer. They were commissioned by local radio station Z95.3 FM, who are the time were playing Emeline’s music frequently. You can hear evidence of this from the clips on Emeline’s memorial site. You can get more of her music here.
So these songs are a little embarrassing. But I’m trying to be humble and put them out there anyway. Hope you enjoy them.

Have a great holiday season visiting with family, good food and good friends.

Earlier this week I went skiing for the first time this year, and it was great.
I realized two things:

• I love skiing for various reasons, but one of the main ones is how quiet it is
• I am really out of shape

I have been working so much this year that I have totally neglected physical activity so I was expecting to be in pain after skiing, but not on the second run, that is an all new low in being out of shape. So now I am exercising every day even though I loath it.

Have you ever noticed how quiet it is out when it snows? Especially when it is falling from the sky. This is because snow is an excellent sound absorber. I listen to sound all day every day, often the same thing over and over (I probably end up hearing the average song I am producing over 300 times by the time it is done), so it is nice to get up into the mountains where the snow is everywhere because it is so serene. Aside from the odd swish of a ski, or a chunk of snow falling from a tree, it is truly tranquil. A great break from the noise, which I also love, but you need a break once in a while, you know?

Next blog posting: my original Christmas songs.

I wasn’t sure if after working very hard on a number of musical projects this year I would actually have any new completed CD’s this to speak of. But at least there will be one, as I recently finished Elika Mahony’s new CD, Fire And Gold which I will talk about in a later post when it is released.
(I haven’t linked to her site as it isn’t working yet.)

When I am completing an album, I become somewhat obsessed with making sure it sounds as good as possible within a reasonable time frame, and since I am not only producing, but mixing, engineering and mastering, there is no shortage of things that need to be monitored in that last chance to make final changes.
Many correctly argue that a producer or engineer should never master a CD, but so many projects I have worked on have been ruined by improper mastering, I often end up doing it myself, at the request of artists that trust me more than anyone else, because of how important the music becomes to me after spending so much time composing for, producing and mixing. I am still searching for the right mastering engineer.

There are so many things that can go wrong at the final stages, just mixing so that everything sounds great on ANY stereo system is a challenge on it’s own even when you’ve been doing it for over 17 years.
I’ll leave the technical details to that to keep things from getting boring here… I get into some of the pre mixing issues that can come up in this post.
I start to obsess about little things in the music when it’s my last chance to make changes, in my attempt to make sure everything is perfect. Of course it never is, but the majority of listeners will never know.
It may seem overly revealing for a professional to divulge that, but any producer who says their music is indeed perfect is a liar, because I hear the problems and mistakes in their music that no one else does, and that’s ok. But I do find it shocking that famous producers with 10 times the budget that I have for a production would release music with major oversights like out of tune notes and piercing frequencies. So that makes me feel a little better about any issues that escape me (and I emphasize the word little, as I said, I get obsessed)

Then again, you could argue that if someone is going to listen to the music at one tenth of the resolution as an mp3 with ear bud headphones coming from a mini jack, the worst quality audio connector on the planet, what is the point? But this is a blog not an essay, so we’ll leave it at ‘because otherwise I couldn’t live with it’

Most people have no idea how much is involved in producing music, and that includes the artists and musicians themselves. That’s right, most professional artists don’t really realize what goes on behind the scenes in producing their music. They leave it up to a professional like myself, a producer (if they want it done right).
The idea of sculpting a bass sound on repeat for 4 hours is just beyond their comprehension, but that is the kind of thing that goes on amongst mixing together many competing elements so it all blends perfectly.

Today was an example of that in recording the last of the Cello parts for Elika Mahony’s album which will be completed this month. I’ll tell you more about that 3 year project soon.
It was very cool to hear someone play something I composed on keyboard on the cello, but professional players aren’t fond of working with non professional composers (ie: composers that don’t write out scores for performers to play). Even though I had the parts professionally scored, the timing didn’t match up with the parts I composed because the piano wasn’t played strictly with a metronome. This means that when the parts are scored, it is very difficult to figure out the beats and bars. There are ways around this but they require a lot of work like creating tempo maps which I won’t get into now.

Basically what it comes down to is that since artists don’t know what’s involved with these kinds of production details, it is hard for them to know how to prepare for them. Generally, if you want to add any instrumentation, music needs to be played perfectly to a click when it is first started, if it isn’t, it will require a lot more time and money.

It’s all part of the many intricacies of professional music production. It’s hard to believe how much goes into a song sometimes, even for myself. But when it’s done right, it sure sounds amazing. It can capture the heart and stir your very soul.