what is going on in your musical life

! xxp

I have about 30 mins of music done, if I clean it up I guess I have an album

also apparently I made a song last night that for some reason I titled Boricua Owl

- sat up way late last night trying out the studio mic ive had set up in my room forever and not used (issues with room reverb i had to fix). Dear god, it shits all over my beaten up old SM57. I dont have to STRAIN when I sing.

Hell yeah, Merdeyeux! What did you get?

Picked up my tele this morning for the first time since buying the bass about a month ago. It felt like a mandolin. The bass is so much more comfortable for me.

After our rehearsal last night, I think the spiritual ensemble concert on Sunday will be okay. As of Monday, I thought it was going to be a massive trainwreck, so that's a good thing.

convinced highly skeptical bandmate that bass through the slowgear clone pedal -> heavy metal 2 pedal would sound awesome.

how cool did it sound

is it good for basslines or is it more suitable for abstract/extended technique playing

it sounds as close to a distorted amplified cello as I think I can get with a bass and no computer/midi. It only works well when played slow or at moderate tempo, but it is almost exactly what I wanted it to sound like.

n.b. i have only been playing bass for about a year, after having played for about a year as a teenager, so it might work differently for a better bass player

cabaret was doooooooooope

my girlfriends and i started practicing to be the GoGos at the local halloween thing

its my electric (non-bass) guitar debut tbh

it is VERY fun

i am jane weidlin

she lives in my town, plays some bands i think but i haven't seen any of them. i only know her from Clue.

Been trying out a new bass playing technique by holding the neck higher and holding my fingers so they point down rather than across the neck, playing the strings with the sides of my fingers a bit like a double bass. I'm self taught but this seemed to help my playing somewhat (less encouraged to play with my thumb), whereas I'd almost always approached the bass like a finger style guitar with a finger on each string. Am I doing the right thing here?

finished a recording project i've been working on for a year
bought a new guitar
trying to write songs again

wait, dl, do you mean with your fingers pointing straight up? and do you mean your fretting or picking hand?

picking hand. before, i was holding my hand into a sort of claw with a thumb/finger for each string. I knew i was doing it wrong, but it's what came natural. I'm trying to use the resting thumb/two finger technique now, but I'm playing it a bit more like an upright bass (although maybe not that extreme).

i started playing bass this year and my hand cramps out very hard and embarassingly fast, but it's more my fretting hand. could be wrong but there's no right or wrong way unless you really wanna shred, it's more about experimenting with what feels comfortable. i'm at the extreme of unambitiousness technique-wise, though

oh ok yeah. youre now playing the way i play.

im really worried that my (pending) rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis (waiting for test results) is going to F with my playing. so far whatever it is isn't in my wrists or hands, but from what i hear that prob won't last

Got the EP mastered today. Pretty happy with it.

I spent yesterday evening in a super-souped up studio, an "ideal listening environment", to listen to and make notes on some mixes I've been working on for a client. Things were going great until my friend who works there cruelly put on some Real Music, who's mixes shat all over mine. A single Broadcast song made me want to change occupations, bleah.

I've been stewing about this for years: if the listening public/music writing body understood how their musical experiences are so definitively created by not the songwriter, or the producer, or the performer, but by the mixer and the mixing process, 90% of all fun rhetoric would dissolve. You can't really sling mud as effectively when your opinions are defined exclusively by who's behind the desk. Agree? disagree? Anyway, making records sucks.

disagree; you just get to have nerdier, more esoteric mudslinging arguments

Anyway, making records sucks.

Bleurgh, tell me about it...
I've got 95% of an album recorded, but nothing mixed yet. And this is always the point at which my ears fill with cotton wool and the songs that I thought were awesome end up sounding like a guy shouting from behind a sofa.

disagree; you just get to have nerdier, more esoteric mudslinging arguments

True. The language of mixing engineers is kind of the worst. I started to type some anecdotes but it just turned into venting so I deleted it.

dude who mixed my band's never-released album had managed to get his hands on copies of the Sergeant Pepper's masters and was going to remix the album to include some of the string parts that had been left out

that basically told me everything I feel I need to know about dudes who are professional mixers

some otherwise good records can be ruined or made less enjoyable by bad recording/mixing/mastering, and other records can sound terrible and still be great. it all depends, y'know? some kinds of music are way more dependent on sonics than others.

if the listening public/music writing body understood how their musical experiences are so definitively created by not the songwriter, or the producer, or the performer, but by the mixer and the mixing process, 90% of all fun rhetoric would dissolve. You can't really sling mud as effectively when your opinions are defined exclusively by who's behind the desk

Oh god yes. Final mixing on good speakers is like getting your teeth pulled through your brain, you doubt your aesthetics and your sanity. It's like a process of systematically removing everything you found intrinsically interesting during composition. But things like low end are important.

More Sunday broadcasts followed, but Stokowski was unhappy with them. He disliked the sound of the radio signal, which was compressed (tamped in at its low and high ends) so as to travel through the air without grave loss of fidelity. He loathed the surrender of aural control that the process called for. Before conducting the musicians, he conducted the technicians -- supervising the placement of the microphones, scrutinizing the recording equipment, and quarreling with his new rival behind a mixing console. "He was at the conductor's stand, and off to the side in the wings there was a man sitting at a sort of keyboard with dials," Evangeline Johnson recalled. "He was called the mixer. Stokowski stopped the orchestra and asked what the man was doing." When the need to compress the sound for broadcast was explained, he retorted: "Then you're paying the wrong man. He's the conductor and I'm not. I don't want this to be broadcast under my name if I'm not controlling the pianissimo, the mezzo forte, and the fortissimo."

As the story goes, for the next broadcast Stokowski made the technicians place a portable mixing board near the conductor's podium; as the story goes, the technicians disconnected the wires at their end, placating the maestro with the illusion of control.

pg 138, Reinventing Bach, Paul Elle

(eventual story is that Stokowski settled on sitting the mixer within the orchestra, where he could be conducted.)

there's no Stokowski thread on ILM. what are we, amateurs?

xp I think that is a rose-coloured view that I wish were the case but ime is not the case, especially in the current climate, where quantitative number crunching has mostly usurped verbal criticism as being the primary method in which records are talked about.

thanks for that, Milton

I am in the middle of recording an LP, I start tracking vocals tomorrow, tracking and mixing is supposed to be wrapped up in the next 3 weeks, I feel pretty much 24/7 anxiety about it these days

Reading these last few posts isn't helping :(

my record is finally coming out next month. feels like i finished it forever ago but it was a long process of finding a label, getting together artwork, video, an EP w/remixes leading up to it, etc etc etc.

meanwhile i've been messing around doing production for a few different rappers and singers. who knows when any of that stuff will come out but it's nice not having to worry about the mastering, promo, etc for it.

also the record went through a last-minute round of remastering after a lot of agonizing about it, so yeah.

recently had a record come out that went through 3 rounds of mastering

it can drive you just a little bit crazy, especially if you're already halfway there (e.g. I'll listen to various masterings of albums to figure out which I like best)

I think some of the inherent disconnect between mastering engineers and musicians is that the former are trying to obtain something that will sound the same across a wide variety of playback situations, and that may involve squelching frequencies that the latter are quite fond of

not to mention the inherent differences in LP/CD and digital audio

don't get me started on 24bit->16bit dithering

the former are trying to obtain something that will sound the same across a wide variety of playback situations, and that may involve squelching frequencies that the latter are quite fond of

well put. saving you the heartbreak of how all the parts you're currently the fondest of are going to sound on other systems.

I am tagging along for this: http://vague-terrain.com/2013/exploring-the-nebulous-cloud-like-three-dimensional-sound-space-at-the-center-of-four-speakers-does-this-space-evoke-comedy-cavernous-terror-reassuring-pastoral-birdsong-inhuman-wire-mother-blee/

i thought i was happy with how my new EP sounded but then i heard it on Spotify via my girlfriend's laptop's speakers and i wanted to die.

what is going on in your musical life, Milton? You are going on tour soon, yes?

i thought i was happy with how my new EP sounded but then i heard it on Spotify via my girlfriend's laptop's speakers and i wanted to die.

I like to mix the vocals on laptop speakers for this reason

me too

that's a good idea, this was more no bass (duh) and some slightly harsh mids from a bell tone, which sounded like it had a lot more sustain on the laptop speakers vs any decent stereo where those frequencies blend in more.

a lot of great music doesn't sound like anything on laptop speakers

I pushed for using a different master for the vinyl vs digital release

this was not a popular decision among all involved in the process but I think it was the right one

does anything sound good on laptop speakers?

that shit ruins whitehouse