So, doing this last song I've learnt a number of things:
- The difficulty of playing even relatively simple things at recording quality using a big "bloom" reverb in tracking
Even the slightest miss or inaccuracy - something you wouldn't notice in a distorted or even clean tone, and the pedal just went away with it and the take was over. In the end I had to do separate verses etc. as I'd still be there now had I not.
- To use the master fader to turn the whole song down, and that I don't need to turn it down as much as I thought
I always knew I could, I just didn't. Turned the individual tracks down for some reason. Didn't think that I was mucking up the compression thresholds in the process.
- How to get the nice tight snare sound that's eluded me for years (on VSTi drums)
Again, a blinding flash of the obvious - somehow, maybe it's default, maybe it's accidental, but there's an attack control on the sample that if set anything past about 5ms, loses the thwack. I had it sitting on 26ms. Also to tame the rattle of the basic sound via the sustain and release controls - been doing it on toms, but never touched it on snare.
- To keep singing, even when I'm not working on songs
I had a couple of nights worth of attempts on the lead vocal because I decided to go "breathier" and I was OK on that because I'd been singing it for a while by then, but by the time I got to harmonies, my god, it was awful. I hope the neighbours weren't walking past at the time. Why? Because I don't do standard 3rd over or under harmonies and tend to make them up at the very end, and so had never attempted to sing them at all until I had to. Pitchy, thy name is Armistice. Far harder than it should have been.
- Where I'm doing multiple electric guitar tracks, to scoop around the 500Hz mark
To clean up the effect of having so many playing at once.
So all in all, lots. Next first up mix will be a lot better, I'm thinking, as a result of this tune. Thanks for all the helpful contributions along the way.