It was a relief to get that over as it had been hanging over my head for awhile and the studio was 70 miles away.The vocal was pretty much iced,the drums were lifted out a bit,and the mandolin and then a percussion track was put into the solo section.that shall not be released in the US at all.Oh and it still has to be mastered.You do want to do that with all of your serious work.So your sound levels are uniform when your song is played with other artists.And you are able to fine tune a few more adjustments,focus on your compression, and get a PQ log.Is is quite affordable to do provided that you have a solid final mix.Sterling sound in NYC mastered (oo)(oo) for $250 bucks.And sonically it could not be more watertight.I was expecting to pay a couple thousand for it.The final mix is to prep what is going to be mastered.It is not to be released,I do have some unmastered sessions on this site but I can do that if I want to.Outtakes are interesting in their own way.Demos too.It shows how you did it and how much the song changed.Maybe a crazy bridge here or there.What you hear of donna spanish is the final mix.For the artist most times when a project is completed you have already moved beyond it into the next thing anyway.And it is there that you are focused,the rest of it you are looking back at.Well not so much for me because I control the entire production down to the tiniest detail of it.I know exactly what the eq laid out for the drums is.Channel by channel.It is all in my logbook.I am real chill on it,laid back and not agressive so my engineer can listen and find that squeak in the kick drum pedal.And I may say...no leave it in and we will test it.I was,as a scientist,in the right place at the right time for recording technology.The morph from analog to digital.The approach was still from analog which works fine digitally but then if you want to you can cut/paste at any time.The best of both worlds.For the kind of music that I do,it has to be ambient.Which is analog to produce natural phase cancellation.Digitally you want every track to be all in it's own space and then you work the shortcuts to produce artificial phase cancellation.Which is why the recordings sound "canned."Loop,loop,/sample/loop.You are listening to a machine trying to sound like a human being!many artists today must go onstage "live" and merely pantomine to the machine.What do I care? it is your nickle and you bought the ticket.As the world sinks down it is going to get real again,people are going to get real...they are going to have to my friend.See you at the campfire!