Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The process leading to "White Light" Pt.2

...After I had all the tracks recorded and picked out for the album (White Light) I needed someone who would Mix & Master them. My sister had gone to a music production school the year before and recommended one of her teachers named Kevin Kowal. When I met him at his studio (Leading Tone Productions) I knew right away that my songs were in good hands, and in the next few months I learned a few important things:
1. using a shitty cheap microphone gives you shitty cheap sounding recordings
2. it helps a lot if you know how to mic your instruments properly (evidently I didn't)
3. that Kevin Kowal is a musical genius and can fix almost anything.
It was always a weekly highlight going over there and hearing how he had interpreted the latest song, and mixed it into something way beyond my expectations.
When it was completed it was actually a little depressing, but satisfying as hell. I now had in my hands my first album. Next I had to figure out where to get it pressed, what to do for art work, and how to get people to hear it (still working on this bit).
Due to the fact that I was paying for all this crap on my own, and knowing that it was highly unlikely I would recoup much of what I spent on it, I had to do the rest on the cheaper side.
I decided to design my own album art, and new I wanted a moth on the cover to go with the "White Light" album title. I had taken a bunch of photos of these crazy moths on a blue wall while I was on a jungle trek in Peru and knew I had to use those.








I enhanced the moth wings with some city lights from the Vancouver skyline taken from my apartment window, threw my face on the little guy, made him glow, and the rest is history.
Next I found a place that would press the discs and print all the art including some posters and
3 weeks later I had a bunch of boxes of CD's for me to deal with. What next?

No comments: