i'm writing this from a wifi enabled restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. i'm here playing with tamara at a large festival for Native American art and artists. the downtown is very beautiful... not the typical skyscraper type of skyline... i didnt' expect that at all! instead it's a lot of fairly low-lying plastar building that kinda feels like i've left the US and found myself in Mexico.
well, almost.

unfortunately this trip is full of mixed feelings....the good news is that i left toronto with 10 potentially finished mixes on my iPod. I haven't listened to them yet, as i need to give myself a couple days' distance to hear them with fresh ears... but i feel fairly confident that my hard work last week paid off and that i'm on the road to mastering fairly soon. there will be touchups to these mixes, but i think they are fairly close. it's a nice feeling, a feeling of achievement.

the bad news is yesterday during my day of airports and connecting flights i received word that my grandmother passed away. it kinda gives everything a surreal quality. i just booked a flight home to winnipeg for the funeral for a few hours after i return to toronto.

karen

feeling pretty braindead tonight... a long mixing day today, but fruitful. earlier this week i took the hard drive over and recorded some guitar played by my friend James, who plays in a few different bands... Sunshine State, the Philosopher Kings, etc... it was a great session and he sounded awesome! he's such a talented guitarist. it was the last thing that was needed on a couple tunes. i was mixing those tunes today and was really grooving on the guitar. :) also, he has a great comfortable little project studio, and it really makes me wish i had something like that i could go to, as in, outside of my apartment! ah well, one day. :)

i think it's gonna be a quiet night tonight, i have a rented movie and a comfy couch waiting. my throat is feeling a bit scratchy geez... maybe i caught something from that girl in the elevator yesterday who clearly had a messy cold and wouldn't stop loudly talking about being sick to her companion while she dabbed at her nose with a tissue. when they got out of the elevator, marc made a joke of hiding his mouth and nose in his shirt - from potential germs - and i just laughed, but wouldn't it be funny if i had actually caught something... just my luck! so i want to rest up... i want to get a buch of mixing done in the upcoming days.

hope you're all well!

k

week # ? of mixing. well if we want to be accurate I guess it's actually been about ... 3 weeks or so. Here's the rundown: ince it's been over a year since the last project I mixed, I spent the first week just studying mixing techniques in order to freshen up and get in the right headspace. Then i spent the next couple weeks not being very happy with my work, honestly. Overall something wasn't clicking. Insert some time off: getting out of town, going for hours of biking in the summer sun, eating yummy food, and working on wedding plans (2 months to go!). And since then I feel i've been doing much better work and i'm very pleased with what's emerging. I have mixed 3 songs this way and look forward every day to getting up and mixing another. yay! :)

more later...

karen

ps: if you're in toronto and looking for some good music tomorrow night (friday)... check out Sunshine State performing at the Rivoli!!