well, it's official....

i'm still not sure i really believe it, but:


Yes. Christian is officially done with tracking his parts. That means no more hoping his voice holds out over the hours of phone calls and meetings he takes part in each day, no more trying to schedule studio time around his super-busy schedule, but most importantly, it means this thing is just about done.
But, i'm getting ahead of myself... first thing we did last night was to review the notes that Plink (the mastering engineer) sent me regarding the first 8 songs i left with him. He agreed to review the work and give me mix comments; things that could be changed to make the mixes better before we master them. I had to go back with the last 3 or 4 songs anyway, so if there were things i could change in the original songs, i could do that and bring new versions with me. Here's a shot of us going through Plink's thoughts on the mixes:

Most of the comments were small changes - some were matters of taste - but overall, i think the mixes are pretty much there. We quickly got to work and tracked christian's lead vocal for "Happy Souls" in record time. After that, it was on to a background vocal for "Jesus Master" which also went really quickly.
The real Dan P solved calculus problems while we worked.

Before i knew it, that was it! it was over! Christian was really all done, and it was only like 9:30. No champagne was broken out and sprayed around the room on each other's heads and into the crowds like you see when the Indy 500 is over. No large tubs of Gatorade dumped over my shoulders or reporters shoving mics in my face asking me "what are you going to do next!?!" like in the Super Bowl. We celebrated by firing up the 1964 Hammond M3 and trying to write an organ line for "Happy Souls".

Which is pretty funny to watch as neither Christian nor i can REALLY play the organ. We can fake stuff ok, but it's like seeing two chimps pounding away with sun-bleached thigh bones on a log deep in the jungle trying to come up with a suitable part.
Here's a clip after the bone pounding was over and we started getting composed:

By this time, most of the peanut gallery had left (Tom, Steph, Dan and Alex) leaving only Michelle, Christian, and myself. We planned the rest of the tracking to be done, which looks like one more session for Jeff and myself to knock off 2 background vocal parts. In the meantime, i will be putting finishing mixing touches on "Jesus Master", "Happy Souls", and "Life Is So Bright".
Alright, that's it for today.... so, this may be the last one of these on this blog; get ready! Christian presents us with our moment of Zen: