ben wakeman : : Journal

Countdown to CD Release

October 19, 2006

So after an insane few days last week, the new CD is finally out of my hands in at the pressing plant. Hiring Glenn Matullo to do the mixing was one of the best decisions I could have made. He has truly amazing ears and found things in the layers of tracks I gave him that I did not even know were there. He also was great a editing down the sometimes overbearing wall of guitars I tracked. Even if you don't know Glenn, you've heard his work. He is responsible for nearly all of Shawn Mullins recordings, he also produced and engineered John Mayer's first breakthrough CD. Over the years he has also worked on records by Collective Soul and Indigo Girls.

So things move forward and I continue to stay relatively sane bouncing between the two worlds of music and web development. Luckily, my family is at the very center of all of it, so I am able to keep it all together, though Catherine might argue the "sane" claim at times ;-) Just to give you an idea of what my world is like here's a little timeline of last Tuesday:

06:50am - Wake up
07:00am - Make lunches for Dylan, Ian and myself
07:20am - Breakfast with the boys
07:50am - Leave for work and drop Ian at school on the way
08:10am - Make final, final mix notes for Glenn after listening during my commute
08:20am - Sketch outline for topics to cover in Flash Class later tonight
08:30am - Catch up on work email
09:00am - Manage the DP web development team, client meetings, etc.
12:00pm - Sit with Glenn in studio on my lunch break and work through final tweaks
02:00pm - Back to work developing Flex-based e-commerce platform for DP
05:00pm - Leave work, pickup dinner at Whole Foods and head to class at Emory
06:00pm - Teach Flash Intermediate class at Emory University
09:15pm - Leave class and head over to Alex Lowe's studio in Little 5 points to master the CD
12:45pm - Leave Alex's studio and head home with the final CD master
01:20pm - Go to sleep

In keeping with the spirit of the insanity, I'm headed out to the big Adobe MAX conference in Las Vegas next week, only to return on the weekend to rehearse the band for the big CD release party at Eddie's Attic on November 4th. It's a simple life ;-)