An independent musicians worst nightmare?

I keep pushing myself to stay ahead of schedule, partly because I’m excited to release music seriously for the first time, but then also because I have no idea what might go wrong along the way.

I’m nearing completion of 8/9 recorded songs although most every song has some tweaking required. But mixing hasn’t started yet, and I’m a bit worried about it.

I mix as best I can but the friend who was supposed to help us with mixing has now disappeared. They don’t reply to messages and haven’t said anything for almost 2 weeks. Regardless of how much I want to work with them or how I think they’ll do a good job, I don’t think I can work like this.

On another note, one song I tried to import from another computer and rearranged ended up a corrupted file somehow and I think I’ve lost it. It makes me nervous about importing and exporting these files between computers and different people. I am not sure if I need to re-record that song or not. I’ll spend some time today looking for ways to fix it.

I have another person I can ask to help me record, but she is professional and may charge more than I can afford. She’s also more of a pop producer and I was hoping for something more indie or lo-fi (good sounding lo-fi, not sloppy lo-fi). I’m not sure if she fits the style.

But if I am there watching over what she is doing and giving my input I imagine it will work out.

I have one more song to write and I want to focus completely on that for a few weeks but with a show coming up and then the fact that I’ll have to take a much more active role in mixing, I’m getting a bit nervous about it.

This is way too much for one person to do.

I’m the whole band, the manager, the producer, the sound engineer, the student learning half these skills, the staff and the songwriter first and foremost.

It is what it is though. This is what it takes to release music by yourself in a reasonable amount of time, all while doing other work to sustain yourself.

That all out of the way, I listened to all the songs which have taken form already in the order they’ll appear on the album and I can say this much. They are great songs and the flow of the album works incredibly well, even better than I intended.

My mind is swirling around with solutions to the problem of mixing.

Should I do it all myself and settle for less impressive mixes? People will likely like or dislike the songs the same but they will feel it’s more amateur and it may not hit quite as hard. Some things are a matter of taste but if the vocals sound weak in the mix, they sound weak in the mix.

Another solution is to fork up lots of money and have this done by someone who does it as a full time job. That’s a lot of money! Like a quarter to half a year of my salary.

So far the answer I’m leaning towards is splitting it up. Hiring the professional friend to do 2-3 tracks and teaching me how to mix better so I can mix 2-3 songs, then waiting out that friend on 1-2 songs (a smaller commitment for them) and hiring a 3rd, less professional (but still better than me) to do another song or two.

If I go with that method of splitting it up, we could get it all done quickly enough and it will be about half the price of hiring a full time professional (2 months of my salary) but the feeling of the album may not flow as well. I suppose we since I’m working with these people, I can minimize the damage but there’s a big question mark.

I need to finish some preliminary mixing and bass issues this week so I can get to writing the last song. I’ll contact everyone this week too, and I have to make a poster for our show!

Busy busy, it never ends! But I pray we will have a song or two ready to share with everyone one month from now!

I think that’s how I’ll go. I’ll hire 3 people to do 3 songs each and then one of them will revise and do mastering. If that one person who has already done some of the mixing does the mastering, they can make things more consistent across the album.

Phew, maybe a late October release IS in the cards. And maybe we can get a single out by the first week of September and another two weeks later.

Edit: Decided to share a little clip from what we are working on

The raindrops whisper