mixing

we approached mixing a little differently this time. last album, neil and i sat in the studio with craig, our mixing engineer, while he worked. mixes take about a day per song, so we were there for almost two weeks. sitting. this time, neil decided to send a harddrive down to craig with neil’s rough mixes. craig worked his mixey magic and sent mp3s to neil for review. then after all the songs were at a comfortable place, neil came down to nashville for two days of final touches.
since i am staying here in nashville, it was easy for me to drive by the studio to hear craig’s progress. which was fun for me. it was exciting to hear how each song was progressing at this stage. a lot of times, craig has to make decisions about instrumentation. sometimes instruments occupy the same sonic space and it gets confusing. sometimes, he needs to punch a hole for the lead vocals to poke through.

[use critical hit verse example rough vs final]