The Cut Pass

One of the first things a mixing engineer/arranger/producer does upon receiving and listening to audio from the recording engineer is a cut pass. In principle the idea is straight-forward: simply to cut out any material extraneous to the song. The actuality is anything but.

Deciding on what to leave out requires a firm sense of what constitutes the Essence of the song, as gleaned from the different voices of the people - the performers, the lyricists, the songwriters, and the producers - who've had a hand in its creation. For me, having assumed all four roles for Víspera, the cut pass has been at both times easy and difficult.

Its been easy because with the first lyrical melodies from the very start, a completed version of the song has lived in my mind. 'Completed' as I would have performed every part.

The challenge has been in loosening the Grip of Conviction sufficiently to listen, understand, appreciate, and weave a place for my peers' virutoso expressions; so that they augment the vision with their own understanding, making each work richer from the creativity of more than one. And so when it's come to the cut pass, a lot of the work has been emotional-intellectual: in reconciling what I understand the song to be as its songwriter-performer, with the ideas of my friends who've breathed it to greater life.

With my producer hat on, I'm conscious of not to riding rough-shod over 4 de Diciembre's individual musical interpretations - I have to be even more a builder, and a reluctant blocker. It's a team-working thing where:

1. a blocker says 'no' to a suggestion; whereas
2. a builder says, 'that's a good idea, here's how we can make it better.'
   

There are times where elements are left out because they butt heads with others or detract from the focus of the song.

At the editing desk, this translates into the fine-details of:

• slicing audio files at zero-point crossings;
• muting audio regions;
• aligning elements where the attacks weren't appropriate; and
• moving elements into new places.
  

The latter task, that of arrangement (and in some cases re-arrangement), has been the most rewarding; where the products of the first cut pass, rejigged and tidied up of all extraneous parts, have sounded more than a little inspiring.

It doesn't mean that there isn't a long way to go, because there is. But at least after tonight, when Thom's trumpet riff at the beginning of the second chorus plus a couple of stabs during Mike's trombone solo in 'Tributo al son' have been adjusted, I can mix-down all the drafts so that Jeremy, Ana and I can prepare for the next tranche of overdubs in the next year.

There'll be more about that in my end-of-year update but at least by the end of tonight, the first cut pass will have ended, signalling the resumption of the recording phase.

Loo Yeo