Tag Archives: TriTone Digital

Mind the Mix: Sway Penala, I’m A Wreck

I completed a song mix-down a few weeks ago, and it was slightly out of the norm. For one thing, R&B Pop is not my typical genre, though the instrumentation and general formula are very similar to the Electronic Dance I’m usually generating. The real challenge here was the very quick deadline. Who can resist a good challenge? In hindsight, it was an interesting episode of setting priorities and calling on experience. Here’s how I succeeded and where I may have failed.

“I’m A Wreck” was produced by JP “The Beat Digga” Nebres (Pinay, DnH) and performer Sway Peñala (American Idol top 24, season 5) for Sway’s debut album, My Story (Amazon, iTunes), released on 18 May 2010. The instrumentation, the recording, and the musical arrangements were done. My job was to take all of those pieces and make them sound like a song.

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Plug-In Stand-Ins

One of the reasons I’m dropping Pro Tools is that every TDM plug-in carries a two-fold price premium for no good reason. I built this rig in the Mac OS 9 days, and I’m now dying to move to OS X, so the upgrade cost for each and every plug-in is also annoyingly expensive. Aside from being a drain on customers, this also seems to discourage independent programmers from coming up with interesting new plug-ins.

I’ve spent the last year seeking out replacements for my current tools. I figured I’d need all new bread & butter basics to replace the Waves 3 bundle and McDSP plug-ins I’m used to, but I’ve discovered some very cool new goodies on the way! Check them out, keeping mind that the Waves 5 TDM Platinum upgrade is $1600 MSRP, which still doesn’t include the full multi-band version of L3:

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