Chris had his way with it last week and .Mac’d it over, so today I began work in earnest on the first track of the EP. Working title for this piece: Rotate. I’m roughly documenting the creation process of this recording, fine-tuning it afterwards for a complete HowTo.
I’ve marked out a basic plan for work on each track once Chris hands it off. Step One: Make Sense. These tracks have floated back and forth for months between our laptops and studios, meaning the accumulated cruft and grit around the edges of the Live files really shows. As I’m mixing and mastering after my surgical work on the pieces, I can blend the writing/finishing stages from go. Make Sense is all about organizing, naming and routing the various parts of the composition, taking into account both continued writing/creation and the needs of a mix/master session at the end. Track collapsing, effects ganging, aux grouping and, as you can see by the screenshot, renaming for clarity is in order. Make Sense is about definition.

The roughs have been created through accretion. The polished tracks will be born of subtraction.