Your Not gonna Believe This....but....
I'm still mixing this single for the "Making The Band" guys (they havent decided on a name yet). Its day 3, i have spent a total (so far) of 42 hours at the studio over the last 3 days, plus another 4+ hours of drive time. Its 3:26am and we just got back another round of changes from Puffy. Its all very little things, and its tedious, but i dont mind. Hit records dont come around every day, so if it takes 3 days to make this one, a year from now i wont care how long i spent in the studio, I'll remember all the times i heard it on the radio and watched it on MTV.
So, what the hell took so long to mix you ask? Well, for the record, i'm not that slow of a mixer, actually i';d consider myself pretty fast. But, when i started mixingthe song, the bridge was apparently a re-write which Puffy hadn't heard yet. When he heard it, it wasn't cutting it for a single, so he gathered up his incredibly talented camp of writers, and everyone started cranking out new Bridge re-writes. This song has had 7 different bridges that i have heard myself, and i think there were more before the first one i heard. So, all of this re-writing and re-recording was happening while i was supposed to be mixing, which kind of grinds things to a halt a little bit. Finally last night (Monday night) around Midnight, Puffy approved a bridge, and then the tracking engineer spent another 4 hours tracking vocals (again, not cause he's slow, because there were THAT MANY Vocal tracks on the bridge to sing, perform, and polish). Finally by 4:30am we had a finished bridge. I left at 6am Tuesday morning, came back at 1pm, and we've been tweeking, printing a mix, having it messengered to Puffy, or waiting for Puffy to come to the studio to hear it and work on the changes, and finally at 3:30am we are either EXTREMELY Close to a final version, or in fact done. But we wont know until tomorrow when we hear from Puffy. Oh yeah, we also recorded Puffy's ad libs today, and re recorded a couple lines that one of the singer had to perform better, all during the "Mix" session. So, hopefully tomorrow around noon (which will be day 4) we can print this mix and start another song mix.
So, this may all seem incredibly crazy to you. and on one level it certainly is. I certainly don't like waiting around while new bridges get written and recorded, However, i'll say a few things. Puffy (much like other producers i admire such as Kanye and Just Blaze) is very good at raising the bar, finding the little things that by themselves mean nothing really, but taken as a sum of all changes really make a difference, or making the really big changes, like listening to bridge re-writes until he's got the one that inspires him. This also should be a wake up call to any young producer or young artist as to how steep the competition is. How high the bar really is when your trying to produce a hit record. It is very very high. And maybe this explains how Puffy and Bad Boy have been making hit records for over 15 years consistently.
Now stay tuned, looks like i'll be here all week, maybe next, so i'll keep blogging if anyone is paying attention.
-Ken Lewis
So, what the hell took so long to mix you ask? Well, for the record, i'm not that slow of a mixer, actually i';d consider myself pretty fast. But, when i started mixingthe song, the bridge was apparently a re-write which Puffy hadn't heard yet. When he heard it, it wasn't cutting it for a single, so he gathered up his incredibly talented camp of writers, and everyone started cranking out new Bridge re-writes. This song has had 7 different bridges that i have heard myself, and i think there were more before the first one i heard. So, all of this re-writing and re-recording was happening while i was supposed to be mixing, which kind of grinds things to a halt a little bit. Finally last night (Monday night) around Midnight, Puffy approved a bridge, and then the tracking engineer spent another 4 hours tracking vocals (again, not cause he's slow, because there were THAT MANY Vocal tracks on the bridge to sing, perform, and polish). Finally by 4:30am we had a finished bridge. I left at 6am Tuesday morning, came back at 1pm, and we've been tweeking, printing a mix, having it messengered to Puffy, or waiting for Puffy to come to the studio to hear it and work on the changes, and finally at 3:30am we are either EXTREMELY Close to a final version, or in fact done. But we wont know until tomorrow when we hear from Puffy. Oh yeah, we also recorded Puffy's ad libs today, and re recorded a couple lines that one of the singer had to perform better, all during the "Mix" session. So, hopefully tomorrow around noon (which will be day 4) we can print this mix and start another song mix.
So, this may all seem incredibly crazy to you. and on one level it certainly is. I certainly don't like waiting around while new bridges get written and recorded, However, i'll say a few things. Puffy (much like other producers i admire such as Kanye and Just Blaze) is very good at raising the bar, finding the little things that by themselves mean nothing really, but taken as a sum of all changes really make a difference, or making the really big changes, like listening to bridge re-writes until he's got the one that inspires him. This also should be a wake up call to any young producer or young artist as to how steep the competition is. How high the bar really is when your trying to produce a hit record. It is very very high. And maybe this explains how Puffy and Bad Boy have been making hit records for over 15 years consistently.
Now stay tuned, looks like i'll be here all week, maybe next, so i'll keep blogging if anyone is paying attention.
-Ken Lewis
posted by Protools Mixing at 2:48 AM
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