I am working hard to finalize the Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange Special Edition Releases.
There are so many little details to think about to finish off these special releases, and to double check everything, but they are almost done!! Not that anyone else wants (or needs) to think about all of the technical details of what was needed to put together this release:
Early versions and bonus tracks
For the Early Versions, and Bonus Tracks, it involved me combing through an old box of ADAT tapes, and CD-Rs that we would make while we were working on the albums, to find all of the best early versions, and forgotten songs from the era. Then I transferred all of that into pro tools, so that everything could be mixed. Some of the songs came from mulit-tracks sessions, and some where just stereo tracks.
Onto mixing:
In order to do “true” surround mixes, and not just running the existing mixes through a plug in for a “fake” surround mix, I had to essentially re-create the original mixes…which, for the record, turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would. My goal for these mixes was to make the mixes as good, (or better where possible) than the originals, and not “remixes”, or something totally different. At the point I had the mixes more or less “copied”, I could do the surround mixes.
Number of mixes and files:
In order to do the release on Bu-Ray, and CD (as well as having the downloadable content on the Blu Ray), there are a ton of different versions and formats to think about.
For the “Chasing the Ghost” Blu Ray, the album version has 10 new mixes, in stereo, instrumental, 5.1 Surround, as well as the original versions of the mixes. That makes 40 different mixes. Then there are bonus tracks, so that’s an additional 5, and the early versions, which add an additional 8 mixes. That’s 53. There’s music for the credits and menus, and the Razor Sharp Video, (which I re-edited and made into a higher resolution format.). Then…there are separate song files included on the Blu Ray that can be downloaded, as well as MP3 versions. Although the mixes are the same sound-wise, as the ones for the Blu Ray, the format is different than what is needed when the Blu Ray is actually playing, so that makes an additional 40 mixes. Then there are separate versions for the CD, which are 16 bit 44 k. That works out to be somewhere around 150 different files, not to mention the video and authoring for the Blu Ray, which I also did. There is also new artwork for the whole package. And that’s just for one of the releases!!
This is why my brain hurts sometimes…just trying to keep everything straight, and I’m trying to just complete one task at a time. I don’t think I fully realized all that was going to go into these releases 8 months ago!
Thank you everyone who has purchased them so far! We really hope you love them when you get them. Wish us luck in the final stretch! -Statik