Well, I have listened to the five songs for the first record on the office stereo, the kitchen CD player, the fancy Tivoli in the living room, the iPod, and in the car. I’ve tweaked the mix and applied compression sparingly and judiciously. For comparison, I listened to my last CD, and in some ways, i think this one sounds better. By “some ways,” I guess I mean vocally. I’ve gone all-in with the doubling of vocals — four out of five songs have it. It thickens what I sometimes think of as a thin voice.
What’s more, I really think this collection of songs is solid. I’m especially excited about the side two opener, “Get On With It.” It’s an extremely simple song (even for me), but the way the bass drum came out was a surprise, very surging and deep. I am also very thankful that I got that tambourine last weekend; since then, it’s sounded better with each listen. Lastly, one of the songs has a sample in it. It’s kinda silly. For the sake of variety-in-updates, I’ll share the video I used; maybe you’ve seen it?
Oh, and I’ve pretty much locked down the cover, and I’ve included it in here somewhere…
Next, I have to do my research on RPM, and what exactly the pressing place needs from me. You see, the two sides of the record are about 4:10 and 4:48 in length, respectively. That’s just about the upper limit of what they recommend for a 45 RPM seven-inch. Anything past that, and the quality of audio starts to suffer. I could go to a 33-1/3 seven-inch record, but I’m kind of assuming that is, in and of itself, a notch down in audio quality. I have to confirm whether or not this is the case, and place the order accordingly. So yeah, it’s probably going to be 45, and I’d like to make that a constant across the records. But I make no promises…