All Is Grace – From Start To (Almost) Finish

by Shaun Groves
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So here’s the life of one song – All Is Grace – from start to almost finish.

Writing Demo

First, I wrote the song. Called it “All’s Grace” and, the same day, I recorded it in my home office to share with you:

All’s Grace from Shaun Groves on Vimeo.

Rewrite & Pre-production Demo

Then, I went into the studio with Mitch The Producer. He encouraged me to change the lyric to better connect the bridge to the rest of the song. So I took out the apostrophe that was confusing folks and the song become All Is Grace. Then Mitch put together a loop for me to play and sing a pre-production demo to:
ALL IS GRACE (Pre-Production Demo) by shaungroves

Produced (But Not Mixed)

Then, the band came in and played to my pre-production demo. I replayed my guitar part and resang the vocal as well. Here’s the rough recording unmixed:
All is Grace (Unmixed) by shaungroves

Mixed (But Not Mastered)

Next, Mitch sent the files over to Shane Wilson. He loaded them into his computer and spent the good part of a day mixing them up really pretty like. At this point the song sounds complete. But it’s not quite. It’s only been mixed, not yet mastered.
All Is Grace (Mixed NOT Mastered) by shaungroves

Mastering

All that’s left is a small tweak to the cello part in a few bars and then we’ll pass this song on to mastering. Mastering used to be the actual carving of a wax master record that the other records were duplicated from. But in the age of CDs and mp3s and computers it’s a different process – one I don’t fully understand. I know that the overall level of every song is matched so no song sounds louder than another, and the songs are put in album order with appropriate spacing between each. And there’s some EQ stuff that gets done too. And I know that after the mastering process a song sounds clearer to me, I guess, and bigger. Hmmm, you’ll just have to hear it for yourself I guess.

Soon!

Thank you again for walking through this process with me. Your encouragement and excitement has kept us going. Thank you!

Pre-Order For $5

Almost forgot…you can pre-order the new CD for only 5 bucks right here.