Adding a remix to the mix

These weeks between kitchen construction phases, and especially between painting phases where we wait (almost) patiently for the last coat to dry well enough to hold masking tape without causing more damage, are beginning to drag a bit, but it doesn't mean we've been idle.

I can't believe it was (*checks*) last July (!) when we began the process of re-recording and remastering our first album Suburban Nostalgia, but it really has taken this long to find enough spare Thursday evenings to record the ten tracks over again with the key changes, vocal warm-up routines, and additional harmonies, and for Annie to lay down the new backing tracks, add new instruments, and generally spiff it all up.

Having only formally released one album (our second) for digital distribution way back in March last year, I had to refresh my memory of the process, but I'm happy to report that it all came back to me eventually, and I soon had the song files and the (slightly amended) album artwork uploading to the distributor.

The new tracks are already available for streaming from our website, so you can hear the difference right now. Official release of the remixed version of Suburban Nostalgia to iTunes and other online retailers will follow shortly as soon as the distributors have done their thing with all the material. Whoop!

The remastering starts

Having spent almost five times as long on the recording of our second album as we did on the first, and being much, much happier with the result, we decided it would be a good idea to go back and apply all the lessons we'd learned in the last five years to the older work and bring it up to the same standard. Remastering is, after all, a well-tried activity in "proper" music circles, and as that first album never enjoyed an official public release we figured we'd prefer to make it as good as it can be before letting it loose.

Suburban Nostalgia contained 10 tracks written by Beresford & Wallace, but we also each did a cover of a Genesis track. Retaining these covers would lead to all sorts of copyright complications and royalty payments (which we avoided first time round by not selling any of the small number of physical CDs we created for family and friends), so the remastered album will only contain our original work.

I've already redone the artwork in preparation for the new release and tonight we got together at Annie's place to start re-recording tracks, beginning with one of the ones I'd always been least pleased with. Old Love was written with a key transition in the middle which really stretched my range. Half of the song was either too high or too low, depending where I started, and the result that made the final cut of the first album sounded painfully thin and reedy in places. Happily, with new vocal warm-up techniques and some minor transpositions, the new recording is much stronger and includes some nice harmonies too - something Annie is becoming famous for. I have to admit I totally hate recording the harmonies. Although my musical memory has improved over the months, it still takes me several... takes... to "get" what she's trying to achieve. There's no denying it makes the final sound much richer, so it's something I have to put up with, but I don't have to like it!

Anyway, one down and nine to go before Suburban Nostalgia is re-released - this time for digital download.