I was working on one of those older songs I mentioned in another thread yesterday.
Basic drums are done, though I'm still struggling. The original song had a mechanical feel to it. There's a single fill (which even Ringo could have played) used 3 times in the song. I can try and build up on that, but the minimalist/mechanical aspect of the drums really worked for that song. So far I've breathed a bit more life into it, but it still is pretty square. Not sure where I want to take them. And that repeated fill will be hard to replace.
The piano - tough one, as it lays the foundation for the song. The original ones sounded HUGE, lots of bass, and low passed - but w/ some wicked phasing issue. So my original intention to rebuild the song around those had to be discarded.
The hammer sound was pretty obvious too, something I couldn't totally nail. Even Imperfect Samples' Fazioli didn't work and I ended up using one of the odd pianos in Dimension Pro.
There was also some echo on one of the bass synth, some flanger on another (stereo, of course) so the whole thing had like this huge moving watery backdrop, which would be a nightmare to mix. But it's tough to cut into that stuff because it also contributed to the song. Yet, it also caused issues, obviously. Tough call.
It's like trying to re-mix the Cure's Disintegration to make it a bit less opaque. The song is pretty Cure-ish in some ways, incidentally.
Today's guitar day. I did dabble w/ that a bit yesterday. They were originally recorded w/ the strat, so I dug out Marianne but I can't bring myself to play it. That isn't my voice anymore - it's like nothing's there. For the choruses, w/ tons of drive, the LP will be a huge improvement. But the twangy verses will be a different story, because I'm moving from something thin-sounding to something thicker. There will probably be a lot trial and error involved today...
The good new is that I've just realized that my amp can do the sweep echo thing which I needed. :P
It's really tough to make something not just cleaner and more acceptable production-wise, but better overall, particularly when you've lived w/ a recording for 10 years.
My wife will be the judge, ultimately. It's one of the first songs she heard and complimented me big time for it, saying it sounded "like a ton of brick", despite the issues. Let's see if I can beat that...