Christopher Blog

It’s silly to keep using `day 1′ or `day # whatever’.’ I really have to stop doing that. Most of the days are so uneventful I am hard pressed to write any sort of update.

Some brief notes:

-`Jaw Filled Wreckage’ took a very long time to mix. Mainly because it’s the first song I’m mixing. Thankfully, this was finished a couple of days ago. Finishing up `The Tilted Figure’ today.

-How it sounds: Unprocessed, uncluttered, and unfiltered. How everything was recorded through the microphone is what you hear except with more bass, high end, clarity and a smattering of room acoustics. So strange that it’s infinitely harder to do this than create a synthetic environment that is overly processed and manipulated.

-A baby skunk was trapped in a window well for a day. I picked it up and let it go on its merry way.

George Carlin passed away yesterday at age 71.

I will miss his biting commentary on Western Civilization. It’s a tragic loss that his perspective was silenced.

Comedy innovation aside, he was an unflinching crusader for free speech. Through out the years of political correctness, religious propriety, and other regimes of stupidity, he unfailingly lashed out at all of those sacred cows. Then ate them.

On his last appearance on the Opie and Anthony show, George conveyed with sadness and frustration the horrific condition our collective state of being; the vortex of incompetence, conglomeration and politeness that we have slipped into. The most profound realisation of how our rights have been shit on was highlighted by George’s recollection of his tenure as a radio dj in the 1950’s. To paraphrase, the landscape of free speech CONSEQUENCES has shifted from intellectual discourse to apologetic tripe. Thought provoking or possibly offensive dialogue is no longer left to either live or die in the mind of the listener. Instead, these thoughts are crucified by fringe interest groups and stiff corporate policies.

Yes, he created the 7 Dirty Words bit. On the surface it was the adult equivalent of children saying `poo’ to one another. The visceral level of the joke was a cautionary tale of speech crime. Through his comedy, George was a teacher and continuously warned us of the stupidity that was just around the corner.

Enough of my terrible writing, go watch his HBO specials. And learn something.

The ultimate work he created was his own coffin.

It was designed to be an exact replica of Pope John Paul II’s coffin. The master carpenter apologised about how it was impossible to procure cypress in this part of the world and had to settle with pine for its creation. He said `whoever dies first gets it,’ implying either him or his wife.

Above is the coffin Pope John Paul II was buried in and what the master carpenter replicated

Right now it stands in a corner of his studio covered in sheets in order to keep the attention away from this supposed morbidity. He was sheepish about showing the coffin. With a child-like grin he said while looking at the floor, `well, it’s a bit morbid you know. But if you really want to see it…’

Of course I wanted to see it. A quick removal of the sheets revealed a trapezoidal container built with a craftsmanship that you are either born with or spend your whole life developing.

I didn’t think it morbid at all. It’s a powerful act to construct and decide your fate post mortem. Many loved ones will fret and panic regarding which Cadillac-style casket to throw the remains into. Not to mention the awesome debt that will follow. While it wasn’t the craftsman’s intention to give a middle finger to the Funeral Industry and the coddling policies of government, it can be easily seen as such. His intent was rooted in his religion and admiration for the pope.

Gregg was the master carpenter of restorative art when Canada had an actual government division devoted to Art Restoration (during the Trudeau years.) He’s restored everything from elegant chairs/tables for the supreme court to a 19th century pram to ornate ceramic bowls from the Middle East. Masterful work was done with a meticulousness and exuberance that can be fully appreciated in light of our current lack of standards and quality control.

He’s very enthusiastic talking about all the various projects he has done. The life of `art restorer/fixer upper’ is reclusive: Sitting alone in a studio with a lot of chemicals and measurements. I sit alone in a studio with a lot of enjoyable chemicals. That is the extent of our similarities and it was a pleasure meeting him this past weekend.

-South of Ottawa June 7, 2008

Mixing didn’t go so well because I’m not thrilled with the current reverbs I have. The ones I do have are good for providing space for a lot of tracks, but not very good for solo instruments or sparser environments. They’re too fake sounding. While reverb in itself is fake creating fake ambience, I would like to find a find one that at least simulates a medium-sized room well.

Plus, I really wasn’t in the mood to mix. It’s one of those things (like recording) where if you are not focused, you’re kind of doomed. The onus is on me to solve the technical problems. If I was a solely an old school producer and had an engineer in my employ, my mood wouldn’t really matter. I could yell and yell at the guy until it sounded correct. All I would have to do is listen and mercilessly criticize until I felt it was acceptable. Oh how I long to be in that state where I can bask in self-importance and make others feel awful. (Though those close to me may argue that this is a reality now)

Example now: Since the reverbs I have aren’t what I need for this project, I need to go hunting for a Convolution-based reverb and dip into my budget. If I was an old school producer, the scenario would go like this:

(Me is played by a cute little me with red demonic eyes)

 (Engineer is played by late 80’s hockey player Tim Kerr)

We need a convolution-based reverb for this track

 Ok. But I don’t have one here.

 You’re an engineer and don’t have one in your sonic repertoire? GET ONE NOW INGRATE!

SIR! YES SIR!

THAT’S RIGHT. MY HAND IS STRONG BOY.

See? Nice and easy. I can sit back in a leather couch, and just THINK. Think important things until the engineer (or his intern) comes back with the reverb. And look brooding. A girl who doesn’t talk and devoid of interpersonal skills will massage my shoulders.

I can wear vibrant feathery plumes, use a cane wherever I go and tell brilliant overqualified audio specialists how everything should sound. Then they can curse my name behind my back and blog about my incompetence and arrogance at their secret audio messageboards. They’ll make nasty audio technical jokes like `If he reduced the volume of his voice by -72db he’d sound fantastic!’ They’ll LOL, but it will be typed angrily.

But alas, this is not my reality. But I can dream. I will be testing out the reverb this weekend while traveling

Ice on the foot, let’s get to work.

There is some debate in the mixing world whether you apply EQ or Compression first. The usual method would be to apply compression. In the past I would apply EQ first. Reason being is that most of the material recorded didn’t sound good initially and needed attenuating immediately. Nasty bumps, bonks, honks, squawks needed to be removed. I applied this same method last night. But there was one factor that I totally forgot about this time:

I actually recorded everything fairly well. All that time slaving away at the bass was for naught. The bass sounded fine. I was just being an idiot repeating past methods.

The only real fix it needed was to notch out all my serial killer breathing one of the microphones picked up. The compressor was acting a little strange but did the job. I’ll come back to the bass again, this I am sure of.

The percussion was a breeze. This is probably the last time I will say this in this blog.

Light compression, light EQ, they pretty much mixed themselves.

The song I’m working on is `Jaw Filled Wreckage.’ Once I figure out the mix of this song the others should follow suit pretty easily. I’m not going to vary the sound too much since it’s the performance that is doing all the variations.

The Pittsburgh Penguins (my favourite NHL team) lost the Stanley Cup tonight. Perhaps if this was the NHL of the 1980’s I might have cared. I want bench clearing brawls, no helmets, tears, rivalries, smoking and drinking in the penalty box, and great technical passing. All of that is dead in favour of a sterile game played by genetically enhanced livestock instead of prisoners and French Canadians.

Fun fact: Mario Lemieux was a neighborhood acquaintance of the family way back when. My brother used to play football with him. So…local boy did good. When his back decided to work.

Tomorrow night is creating the ideal spatial field environment for the drums and bass. Sounds fancy!

It’s not.

I broke a toe. (So I am told)

I take this as a tell-tale sign that I am close to completion of this record. Nothing ever gets completed without some ridiculous unforeseeable incident. Take `Smoke and Origination’ as an example: I lost the whole album (and Torched Laughter, and the metal project) while mixing. The exception was `Lucifer Rising.’ That was because the guiding hand of Satan took care of me.

Thankfully, this toe doesn’t interfere with my hands or my ears. Nice try karma, better luck next time. I am used to your petty games. I know you put pin holes in the cosmic condom.

Moving right along:

The first step in this adventure of suck called MIXING is equalizing the upright bass.

The bass is the foundation of the music. Once I figure out how I can make sound as good as possible, it will make adding all the other instruments much easier.

Since taking a 10 minute break from writing this particular entry, I found the right sound of the bass. If I didn’t take that break, there would have been some mighty mean cussing in this blog. (It’s early yet)

I took a moment today to think about why I really despise the mixing process and frustrated at times with recording in general:

It stems from years of dealing with over-analytical technophiles who made anything and everything sound complicated. As a youth I would ask silly questions like `how do you get a guitar to sound really heavy without being mushy and sounding lifeless?’*

The answer would be a 6 paragraph manifesto regarding the impossibility of achieving said sound with gear that doesn’t cost in excess of 200,000 US dollars. At the end of this smarmy speech they would brag about the mixing board they owned that was once used for a rehearsal for Mahavishnu Orchestra back in 1972. (Before Jan Hammer & Billy Cobham left the band and sold out MAAAAN)

I say `they’ because there are several variations of the same answer from different experienced engineers I dealt with in the past. Some used Mahavishnu Orchestra as the claim to fame, some used Tool or Aerosmith. They made everything sound impossible.

While I sit here and play with equalization I can feel their fucking hockey haired smugness dripping acidic breath on my shoulders. If I was still in contact with them, they would be sending me the schematic of a kinetophone with the word FAIL going across it via e-mail.

Sorry, I couldn’t find the schematic.

This is by no means an affront to experienced engineers. Just addressing the rubbish that had no semblance of positivism, ingenuity or encouragement for those who were curious about the fundamentals of sound. If more guys were like Bob Katz, perhaps music and audio these days would be a much better creature.

Anyway, let’s see what Day 2 brings.

*Turn the gain down. Add mid range. Play around. Done.

I finished up editing and cleaning up all the tracks some time last week. So far, without any eq’ing and effects the tracks really shine. It’s now a treat to hear the playbacks versus the cringing I was doing for the first 3-4 days.  

The editing took about a week to do. Each song had about 100 tracks and 80% was thrown out. Quite a bit of sonic debris. The reason for this was I did multiple takes on the percussion, guitar and vocals just in case `take 1’ wasn’t good enough. And more often than not, `take 1’ was not good enough. I did my best not to splice and dice together 2 different takes. That type of editing is a little too prevalent these days.

 I am leery to do a mixdown right now because of a lingering ear infection. Though I think I hear fine, chances are there is something not right (aside from a lack of equilibrium when I walk and rampant dizziness.) It has been about a week of ridiculous fatigue and near blackouts. If I had the strength, I would punch your hat off right now. But I can’t. And this upsets me.