4-track demos.

Last night TM convened at the flat to mix down the recordings we made on Saturday. The plan was to transfer each track individually from the 4-track to my laptop, and then to use that to mix them and hence give ourselves a bit more control.

Doug was, of course, a full hour late. How we laughed.

The pizza was also a full hour late. There was considerably less amusement about this. Once the delivery driver had discovered which street the flat was on, I watched him stop halfway up it - outside number 23, a single door down from the flat - and get out, then get back in and sit motionless, apparently waiting for something to happen. Divine inspiration? The small but measurable chance that the pizzas might spontaneously relocate to the flat? (Trust me on this one - it's unlikely to happen before the universe implodes.)

I went down and retrieved the pizzas. "I was going to try coming round another way," he said. "Another way? To travel six feet?" I didn't say.

Perhaps I'm banging on about this a tad much.

[By the way, the stuff that follows is band/mixing geek chat, so consider yourself warned!]

We'd recording 4 tracks: vocals, lead, bass on a track each and then drums and rhythm guitar mixed down to the single remaining track. Not ideal, but probably the best arrangement given that we were limited to 4 tracks.

We transferred each track separately onto my laptop and lined up the starts. All great, except that the timing, which started off perfectly aligned at the start of the song, was out of kilter maybe thirty seconds in. Almost at the same time, we slapped our foreheads and muttered that the tape deck in the 4-track would have been turning at a slightly variable rate each time we rewound and restarted it. So much for our master plan...

Instead, we used the 4-track directly as we've done in the past. Mart's floor effects pedal was used to process the vocal track, adding a bit of reverb, compression and the like (and occasionally, a soupçon of white noise) and after about an hour per song, we had three 'real' mixes and one extra free mix of a tired, hungry but rocking Happy 2/34^th Birthday. With any luck, they'll be up on TM.net over the next few days.

We cracked open a few cans and listened to the mixes. Job done, and no-one fell out of the window.