Posted on Thu, Aug 6, 2009
Much like I did with "Here Today" last year, I'm happy to announce that my second CD, "Crawford Street", has been remixed. You can download the updated version from here, or grab the ZIP file of the whole album directly.
I stayed with the same rules as the "Here Today" remix: (1) use only what was there when I recorded it, and (2) keep the spirit of the arrangements intact. In other words, this is just a polish job, not an overhaul.
This was easier than "Here Today" in some ways, because everything was recorded in Sonar to start with, but it was harder in others because my first computer recording interface was terrible. The mic preamps in particular were terribly distorted and noisy. I used a ton of noise reduction techniques to clean up the tracks. Another complication was the introduction of real drums for this album - and a drummer (me) who had no idea how to play them. Let's just say I became good friends with AudioSnap during this process. :)
One notable exception here was the song "The Spirit World". I had saved the backup of the session incorrectly, and the original source tracks are long gone. I did, however, have an instrumental mix laying around. Turns out if you put the original mix on one track and the instrumental on another, line them up perfectly, then flip the polarity on one of them, you have an almost pristine vocal track that you can fix up. Splice that back on top of the instrumental track and you're good to go. It definitely would have sounded better if I'd been able to get the source tracks, but hey.
The most improved award goes to "Waiting Takes Time". I'd chosen a horrible patch for the bass synth, and switching it out made the low end so much tighter. That, and a bunch of other tweaks, and that song will rock your world now. As much as a Cher T-Pain Kanye West parody can rock your world, at least.
I'll be going through old orders over the next week and emailing anyone who bought the CD in the past with a free link to download the updated FLAC files. It's not up yet if you have the old link.
This is probably the end of my remix trail. The next CD, "Only Whispering", has hundreds of shrink-wrapped copies sitting in my attic. So for that reason alone, I think that one's pretty much set in stone. ;-)
