Almost Finished

I just finished the music on This Old Dawg. Which sort of surprised me.  I expected to record at least one more guitar part. Possibly two. But when I was listening to the playback, it sounded damned good. I just didn’t see why it needed anything else.
Recording this song has been a learning experience for me. It’s gotten me back up to speed. I’ve realized that I’m not as out of shape musically as I thought I was. But I guess grinding away on a song week after week has a way of getting you back into shape.
I’ve also worked out a lot of new recording techniques. Well, new for me, anyway. Using Cubase LE and a computer to record with has opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities that simply didn’t exist before. It’s also forced me to break with some old ways of thinking that I didn’t even know that I had. This recording is going to final out at about sixteen audio tracks, all of which were recorded at a high resolution. That beats the hell out of the old cassette 4-track that I used back in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But I’ve been amazed at how much I still think like I’m using a cassette 4-track. It’s only slowly sinking in that nearly all of the old limitations have evaporated.
I’ve also learned that I have no patience with fancy lead guitar breaks. At first, I was frustrated because I was rusty and couldn’t make my fingers play what I heard in my head. But eventually I limbered up enough that I could play the stuff, only to find out that I really didn’t want to. What I wound up doing was more melodic and sporadic. What sounded good to me was leaving a lot of empty space in the mix. Sometimes less is more.
I’m rather pleased with all this. Discovering that the music is finished means that all I have left to record are the vocals. One more track. Two if I double the vocals. I’ll most likely make my target of mixing the song this weekend. After that, I guess I put it up and see what people think about it. Which is a little scary, honestly.
Oh, well After the song is mixed, it’s back to the real world for me. But at least I can know that even if, for whatever ungodly reason, I was to never record another song, this last one fucking jams.