I've just uploaded fresh MP3's of Playing With The Big Boys, Future Imperfect , and Painting Abstracts to the Prodigal Sounds section of the web site. Both hi-fi and lo-fi versions of the files have been refreshed.
I've been listening to the versions on the web site off and on over
the last month, at work, and I finally made some notes about what I
didn't like:
Abstracts, it turns out, was an older version. I had completely
forgotten that I'd already fixed many of the things I noticed. So the
new version hasn't had any recent work, but is a remix that I did a
while ago but never refreshed on the web.
Future Imperfect. has been beefed up a little, with one instrument
dropping out completely (no more Pipe Organ) and another returning in
its place (subtle Melange strings).
Big Boys has has more radical work done: Thanks to a free VST plugin, TickyClav
from Big Tick Audio. This great little soft-synth (did I mention it was
free?) picks one thing to do, and does it well. After playing around
with it, I decided to replace the clav sound in Big Boys, and ended up
recording a few new phrases, and removing some existing instrument
tracks that were no longer needed. In the process, I also decided to
re-balance some sections of the song with an eye to how this would
sound if there were only one guitar player. So now, where before there
were clean guitar chords backing a lead guitar, the backing track is
now being played on TickyClav.
Additionally, I re-recorded the brass section with a different,
better sounding patch. And removed a second keyboard sound that was
responding to the brass MIDI track. You really couldn't tell it was
there but it was muddying things up a little.
Just a quick couple of days work, but the 2008 versions of these two songs are much improved, I think.