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“Five o’clock shadow,

Six o’clock news,

Coolin’ my heels, no time to lose.

Seven for a secret,

Eight lucky horseshoes,

If you leave me hanging, baby, I’ll be blue.”

We repeat the chorus. Kash “ooh-ooh-oohs” his way through the bridge, plays a solo with a few improvised licks, and then we finish the song on a double chorus that leaves us whispering “You’re worth the wait” over and over to the train drumbeat. For our first full run-through, it was pretty good—if you ignore all the times I went pitchy or flat or breathy. So basically, any of the sounds that came out of my mouth.

I stop recording.

Thank god that’s over.

Kash beams at me. “That was so good. Do you think we should add a fiddle track? Or maybe a train whistle?”

For the first time since we started working on this song, Kash is pumped up. He sounds like a kid in a toy store, asking for everything he sees. Unfortunately, we have a budget (like most shoppers do, except our wallet is low on time), and I’m not sure we can make all that happen in the hours we have left. Still, I don’t want to dampen his fire.

“There are some MIDI tracks that might work,” I say. “Maybe you can pick a few out and we can try them tomorrow, when we’re mixing the final submission?”

“Okay.”

“Here, I’ll create a folder where you can save all the tracks for this song,” I say.

I pull up the four tracks we recorded—two vocal tracks and two guitar tracks—and the MIDI file for the train drumbeat. Kash scribbles down notes as I explain how the software works.

“The first step is to create a static mix. Basically, you’re just trying to balance the instruments and vocals. Think of it like the bird’s-eye view of the song.” I sweep my arms open in a big arc. “To create a static mix, you can either work with the tracks from the ground up, starting with the drums,” I say. “Or you can mix from the top down, starting with lead vocals or the lead guitar. No matter which option you choose, you want to set the levels around that element. I like to keep it around here,” I say, pointing to the –10dB marking on the on-screen meter. “Because that leaves some headroom to work with later.”

I show Kash how to look at the levels in each track at different points of the song and how to adjust them with the different toggles, slides, and knobs available in the software.

“First, we’ll zero out the mix,” I say, instructing Kash to drop all the faders to their lowest position on the software console.

We spend a good hour like this, hunched over the laptop while Kash learns the basics of the DAW—digital audio workstation—program.

“How do you feel?” I ask after I’ve finished the tutorial.

Kash glances down at the loose-leaf pages of notes he’s taken on college-ruled lined paper and blows out a deep breath. “A bit overwhelmed.”

“It’s a lot,” I say. “But the more you play around with it, the easier it gets.” I press a kiss to his cheek and the wrinkle in the center of his brow disappears. “You’ve got this,” I say. “And if you run into any trouble, there’s a searchable digital manual.”

Track 24

Good News Has Me Singing the Blues

Kash

December 17

“Give this a listen.”

I press the play button on the mix I created for our first attempt at “Worth the Wait” for Paisley. I worked most of the day and late into the night on it, figuring out what I liked and didn’t like and then making adjustments.

When I’d gotten it as far as it could go based on Paisley’s lesson, it didn’t feel done to me, so I watched a few how-to videos to learn about panning instruments to get a more three-dimensional sound, equalization to clarify the sound, and how to finish it off with some compression and reverb.

The final cut isn’t sleek or sexy, but it has depth and a whole lot of character. I like the old-school, gritty feel of it. It reminds me of Six String Justice’s early songs, chock-full of heart and barely contained energy. It’s definitely not highly processed, like most radio-ready songs are these days, but it’s ours and I’m proud of it.