I've recorded, I've mixed, I've recorded and mixed and re-mixed some more.

I've listened, I've compared, I've re-mixed yet again, and I've listened some more.

I've listened on this sound system, I've listened on that sound system, I've listened in my car, and listened some more.

I am happy with this music.

On to the technicalities - Copyright and ASCAP registration, finalizing the artwork (Would someone please take a decent picture of me!  Oh, wait, I'll still look like me. Well, let's do the best we can... ), choosing a duplication service.

The songs, they are done! I'm finally done tracking and mixing, as far as I can tell. Nine songs in the can.

Now it's on to the mastering process. I know the order of the songs on the disc (more on that later), so the main task is level matching the tunes and making sure they sound like a set, instead of nine tracks from nine different albums.

Most people don't recommend mastering your own mixes. Since I have no real budget, I'm just going to have to do what I have to do. "They" also say if your'e going to do it yourself, it's smart to leave a little time between mixing and mastering, to give yourself a fresher perspective when listening to the music from a mastering perspective. That sounds like reasonable advice.

I need to come up with cover art and all that, so I'll take a break from the audio for a bit. Now the challenge is to find a better looking picture than the mug shot on this page...

I can see the finish line on this thing. I've been grinding it out (I'm pretty sure my wife is jealous of the guitar getting all the attention). Of the nine songs I'm planning to include on my disc, six are complete. The three remaining tracks each require adding one part, then mixing.

After that, a little mastering touch to match the set of songs in order and with a nice balance from track to track, and the audio is done.

Then comes the artwork for the cover, and away we go.

I was hoping to be done by my birthday (Thursday). Ooops. End of the year? I'd better start the artwork...

I'm setting to track what are probably the two most guitar intensive tunes, so I've been deep in the practice hut, getting my chops back up, and coming up with concepts for cohesive solos.

I hate extended solos that don't go anywhere. They sound like showing off how fast, or what tricky licks you can play. So I'm trying to come up with inner structures for the longer solos that will give some definition, while still allowing for improvisation. I don't plan every note, but I want to have an idea of what types of phrases go where (long lines vs. short, fast vs. slow, consonant vs. dissonant, etc.).

I've been deep in the recording process for a while, so I have to get my instrument chops up a little bit. Back at Berklee we had a joke about the Music Production & Engineering majors (MP&E for short). The gag was that MP&E really stood for "My Playing is Excruciating", because those guys had so much work to do that they never got to play their instruments.

I had committed some time ago to mix a long-distance collaboration project, and those tracks finally materialized recently. It's kind of a complicated tune, and it took a while to get a singer that the writer liked. We're still not sure it's final, but we believe the instrument mix is done right, and we just have to put the right singer in front of it.

The long distance stuff is interesting. Everybody gets the tempo track and musical outline of the tune, and as long as everyone sticks to the tempo, you can assemble the various tracks from each independent contributor. The individual parts files get e-mailed or uploaded to a server where the other players can access them for downloading. I've "played" on tracks with folks from across the country and the planet that I have never met in person. I'm using this same method to get a few parts for my own project. It's a nice way to be involved with people making music sometimes it's difficult to get everyone in the same place at the same time.

The music is a little different from my personal pursuits, so I had the opportunity to use some tools, techniques, and tricks I wouldn't ordinarily use. Fun stuff.