Works in progress

So the main thing that needs to be done before I break down the studio completely is to make sure we've got all the parts of all the tracks we want to continue to work on.

Since most of the outboard kit in my studio is pretty much redundant these days, we should be able to carry on with tunes already in progress, and also with remixes, new tracks etc. purely in a 'virtual' environment.

Andy and I wrote a list the other week of any old song ideas that had not been finished, that we thought were too good to throw away:

I appreciate that you probably can't read that very well, so allow me to help. The list contains such classics as 'New Dark Thingy', 'Little Man in a Box', and 'Cuthbert and Timoblourgh Go to the Round Pig'. I'm sure I could write a whole other post about our working titles for tracks - we'll save that for another time...

Anyway, since my beautiful (but far too big) Mackie 32 8-bus console has already gone into storage, I've had to set up the little Yamaha MG16CX that I used to use on stage for the moment. After re-routing a few cables, I've got a functional studio again, for the moment.

Working through the list of tracks, it's interesting to see how 'developed' a song needs to be before we consider it a viable idea. I mean, some of these tracks are little more than an 8-bar loop of a riff and a beat yet some others have 20+ tracks and a complete arrangement.

I've exported stems for the first two song so far and there's another 10 to go before I can finally dismantle the studio and move my project set up.

Next time, I'll finish the history lesson of the studio - even if only for my own wistful, reminiscing benefit!