Christopher Blog

Buy CD - MP3 Version- FLAC Version

CD Version:$6.99 Standard DVD Case, album art, etc.

MP3 Version: $4.00 All songs 320 kbps encoded. DRM Free. Comes with a 13 Page PDF Booklet and Web Extras such as wall paper, avatars, etc.

FLAC Version: $4.00 Lossless Compression. Comes with a 13 Page PDF Booklet and Web Extras such as wall paper, avatars, etc.

Or

Torched Laughter & Smoke and Origination Bundle:

MP3 Version: $10.00 All 18 songs 320 kbps encoded. DRM Free. Comes with 2 PDF Booklets and Web Extras such as wall paper, avatars, etc.

FLAC Version: $10.00 All 18 songs Lossless Compression. Comes with 2 PDF Booklets and Web Extras such as wall paper, avatars, etc.

If you want to listen to all the songs on `Torched Laughter,’ you can hear them on the front page at www.comecloser.com

Some Notes:

I intended to do some updates prior to the release, but there was way too much to do. In order to release this album the way I wanted to, I had to sacrifice any updates/blogging to get everything ready. Hell, I’m still getting everything ready.

About the FLAC and MP3 Versions of `Torched Laughter:’

While you can get the album on i-tunes, (eventually. They take forever.) I set up the option where you can buy the album in better quality and get a whole bunch of extras that would not be available on i-Tunes or any of those sites and it’s considerably cheaper.

For the time being, the MP3 and FLAC versions are available through Paypal.

It was a lot of work and pretty risky to release the albums in multi-formats before the digital distributors get their hands on them because this is the first time I’m managing it on my own. If you experience any issues trying to purchase and download the music, let me know: info@comecloser.com

Thanks to all of you for your support and being involved peripherally in the recording of this album. You had to endure over 8 months of my constant yammering, and now you can hear what I’ve worked extremely hard at. Hope it was worth the wait.

Domain/Website Issues -

Talk about perfect timing, I’m having a dispute with a domain company regarding christopher.mu. As of now, it will NOT work. Please use www.comecloser.com
to access the site. I have no idea when this will be resolved.

-Christopher

Hi All,

The artwork is being done right now. It looks fantastic. Why? Because I’m not doing it. Doing everything yourself is severely overrated.

The front cover is done but the inner sleeve and liner notes need to be finished. The visuals are somewhat related to `Smoke and Origination’ and the `artwork for each song’ concept is present on this album. When I have a tangible release date in my mind, I’ll post the artwork. I would hate to post it now, and through some profound bad luck the album is held back until 2009. 

Some other notes:

I don’t have a whole lot to report on regarding the release date of `Torched Laughter.’ I’m shooting for September but I am going to take my time and release it properly with hopefully minimal stress.

Press folks, you’re getting the album after it’s released. It has nothing to do with illegal downloading. It has everything to do with the 1-5 month lead times websites and magazines have. Trying to synchronize my record to your schedule just does not work. It certainly didn’t work last time. And I have no cocaine to bribe you with.

I was going to post a `final last word’ on the `Torched Laughter Studio Diary’ experience. I’m looking over it now; it’s very long winded and quite negative. I think I’m going to give myself some more time before I write my final thoughts on this recording experience. It was pretty exhausting all the way to the mastering process.

Thanks to all of you checking out my Hockey Night In Canada Theme Song Entry. Please view it and share it. Here it is again: http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/mediadetail/298424

`Torched Laughter’ was officially finished on August 2^nd 2008 at 3:12pm.

More details to follow.

Mastering audio is a horrid, horrid process. It takes a very special set of ears and perception to do this type of job. I do not have those ears. But since I am not budgeted for a proper mastering specialist, it’ll be DIY.

Mixing, with all its warts, algorithms, and soul sucking cubicle-esque methodology, is tolerable. There is a lot of room to play around and get creative.

Mastering? Hah. No. It’s about adding the polish to make the final recording sound vibrant and stellar. You know that glossy sheen you hear on your favourite songs that make it sound all professional? That’s mastering. Thankfully, the product I am working on is my own. If I was mastering someone else’s album, I probably would eat a bullet.

Mastering is also a deceptive and seductive mistress. With all the mastering software and outboard gear at your disposal, you can easily wreck a recording simply through making it incrementally louder and adding more eq. Each increment sounds glossier and louder than the previous step. Before you know it, you have this over-processed over-loud recording that is louder and harsher than any Brit Pop record.

The other deception is when you THINK you are done. As I thought I was on Saturday. I heard the playbacks on desktop, laptop, car, and home theatre speakers. They sounded great. Fantastic to my fatigued ears, actually. I almost wrote a great press release proclaiming that the recording was finally completed. I would exhale yet another effervescent breath and move on to other things.

Then I listened again Sunday. And since Sunday I’ve been eq’ing and compressing (tastefully) until the damn thing sounds right. The problem with the initial finished product is that it was too hot, too harsh and sounded `narrow.’

In other words, it sounds like every other professionally recorded album out there right now.

You know that glossy sheen you hear on your favourite songs that make your ears tired and you can’t listen to an entire album straight through? That’s mastering.

That other devil within Mastering is its capability to make something unnaturally loud without distorting that much. This realisation started the great LOUDNESS WARS of the 90’s which continues today. Record labels, and now bands, think that in order to compete on the radio and your mp3 player, they have to be louder than the next recording. The problem this causes is that when a well mastered recording with a respectable volume is played against a hard mastered song, that well mastered recording does indeed sound weak. Our stupid ears respond to intervallic relationships, not on actual sound.

After a good 10 years of listening to recordings that are very hot, I am conditioned to make it very loud and hot as well. It’s an ugly practice contributing to the decline of this art. Fortunately, you can get the best of both worlds (volume, sheen, and tasteful) but it takes a bit of work to do. I have 3 songs I am very happy with so far. Only 3 to go. They should be finished tonight.

The mixing of `Torched Laughter’ has been completed. I breathe an effervescent breath.

After several weeks of re-reading basic EQ tutorials, re-learning compression, finding out what really worked and what didn’t, the final work is something I am genuinely excited about. I like how `exposed’ it sounds. It was important to me to re-learn everything such as the fundamentals of sound. I always feel I forget something crucial.

What have I learned from all this?

I need to take my time. The endless self-flagellation over not being able to increase my output to match colleagues and contemporaries has only made me miserable and those on the periphery.

Being an inconsolable prick because I’m not getting a record out as fast as I would like to is stupid. Somehow, the world has managed to revolve without my prolific contributions.

Shocking, I know.

And while that last crisp breath gets exhaled, I dread the following inhalation. That air will be muggy and painfully hot like the iron works of Hephaestus.

Mastering is next.

If my `Mixing: An Introduction’ blog gave any indication for my contempt for the art of mixing, it will be greatly diminished by my thoughts on Mastering.

Took up the chance to play some songs at a party this past weekend. It was a blast. Although it was sloppy and amateur (my playing, not the other groups there,) it felt so good to sing and just mess around without structure. More after the jump. (continue reading…)

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.

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.

Instead of talking about how mixing is going, please see the below picture.

Driftwood discovered on one of the many country sideroads in the area. It was removed from said sideroad and now resides `a little closer’ to my home. No sense having this little piece of nature go to waste on the edge of some drunk’s property.

This alien hydra head thingy is about 4 1/2 feet tall and about 100 lbs. It’s natural weight falls horizontally so I had to prop the driftwood in its current vertical position.

I’m letting it stand where it is for now, but I do have this urge to spray paint it black.

Mixing is going fine. I am clicking, panning, inserting, and patching with much fervour.

Mixing in the digital age is the equivalent of a shitty IT position.

It is repetitive, dull, and draining. Cut and Paste, Click and Drag, insert, export, apply, delete, automate, bypass, edit edit, EDIT. The eyes get bleary, the ears get fatigued. It’s Excel and a micromanaging boss all in one glorious sitting.

There are two fantastic aspects of mixing:

1) Sitting down. I haven’t sat down in the studio for 2 months. I’ve been standing away, flowing along the breeze of my own flatulence while babbling into a microphone. Since I’m too cheap to get someone to engineer (or buy a remote device,) I’ve had the privilege of running, jogging and staggering 30 feet to hit `record’ or `stop’ every time I hit a bum note. My legs are in fabulous shape.

2) The big payoff is when the music is mixed well. There are moments when you can get goose bumps from the way everything sounds. I live for those moments, especially when it’s very loud yet doesn’t hurt the ears.

I don’t think I can gauge what is a great mix. I just know what I like and a portion of the time I can get a mix to sound like what I want it to. For `Torched Laughter’ I’m looking for an unprocessed, uncluttered, well balanced sound.

The first step for the mix down process was to get some Reference Music. Reference Music is any music you like that has a production value you are either familiar with or thoroughly enjoy. The reference music is…you guessed it: A point of reference. So when I’m mucking through the `Torched Laughter’ tracks I’ll be listening to CD’s and gauging whether or not the mix is comparable, better, worse to those CD’s.

In this case, I went for 2 organic records that give me goose bumps when played loud:

Susana Baca: Espiritu Vivo

Cassandra Wilson: Belly of the Sun

If you have any recommendations, let me know.

Songs can be a search for self. They are powerful analogies that reveal parts of your personality all from the safety of your home or crack den. Fight or flight? Interacting with others? Your natural reactions to these situations can be made apparent just by singing a certain song even if you don’t immediately experience them in real life.

Though experience and emotions imbue life into songs, I see no point on focusing on this well discussed aspect. The songs can be the teacher instead.

  (continue reading…)

The reason I haven’t posted anything in the past few weeks is because things have been downright slow and negative. With all that bad energy floating about I get very unmotivated to do certain things, like posting a blog entry. It’s much easier to seethe and let my intolerance ferment into sweet hateful ether.

Despite all the `Torched Laughter’ tracks being completed last month, I’m still recording vocals for other projects. I was to finish everything by March 29th, but that didn’t happen. By the 29th I finished one song (not related to `Torched Laughter.’)

1 out of 15.

If there is a positive way to look at this stat, please let me know. Because I am quite at a loss.

I do know why I didn’t finish the recordings in the allotted time frame. Cue bullet points:

* Intimidated by the workload. It’s not a matter of just recording one track and then going to the next song. At times there are 10-12 vocal tracks to do for a song (making those big fake choruses.) I don’t have the blow to motivate me to pull off 12 hour days of singing the same `OOOH’ 144 times in a row. (I wish I could though) Which cleverly ties into:

* Creating a level of standard that might not be unattainable. By doing this, I can safely self-sabotage anything I do and not feel any guilt or pressure to meet a deadline. It is a passive-aggressive trait that has done more damage to my person than I want to admit.

In this case, it was the following rule: SING THE WHOLE SONG. Do not record one line at a time. Record the entire song. I am unqualified to pull this off. But I insisted on doing it this way. Something to do with pride, arrogance, etc. This alone set things back several weeks. The good aspect is that I can do it now under certain circumstances and the vocals are genuine and not patchwork. But the price was a lot of time and exhausting to the voice from overdoing it.

* Not staying positive. In order to even attempt what was laid out in bullet point #2, I had to warm up twice a day for 2 hours. Many a day those warm-ups were a waste of time because the recording process later in the evening was just terrible. The voice was there, the mind and heart weren’t. The intimidation and all the pressure I have thrown on myself were knocking me out of whack. Why did I put myself under these conditions when I knew I wasn’t up for it?

Because my heroes could do it well and do it quickly. I want to be as good as them. Obviously I am not. If they had an inkling of care, they would be sneering down at me from their cocaine castles. Provided they weren’t so dead and all.

Even worse were the days when the mind and heart were there, and the voice wasn’t. Which bleeds into:

* No sleep. I won’t go into detail about this. But if you don’t get rest, the voice suffers greatly. Smoke, drink formaldehyde, lick unhygenic prostitutes, but make sure you get rest. I don’t get much rest.

* Finding my voice. This will be the next entry.

Sorry for my tardiness. 

All the tracks are done for `Torched Laughter.’  And that is all I wrote in a blog draft a few days ago. The words weren’t flowing at the time.

I am currently listening to Cave-In and Misha Alpernin on Noise cancellation headphones. A certain someone had too much to drink and is belting out opera upstairs. She still has it. But I have a headache and those high frequencies aren’t helping my cause. I always like having a musical house, but motherfucker, I’m having a quiet day today. Ah well, let her have her euphoria. Misery will greet her in the morning.

Anyway, a few days ago I finished up the last 2 songs.  To make things all ceremonious, the last track performed was a triangle. You can blame Curtis Mayfield for the need to have that. I was listening to the Superfly soundtrack a few weeks ago and noticed that this little triangle was making a lot of the songs groove and shuffle.

GRRRRR THE KVLT OV TRYANGL

The only feeling I experience is relief that the tracks are done. I don’t get these surges of pride when something is accomplished.

Besides, the mixing process is going to tell the truth of these tracks.

48 recording days to record 7 songs. That’s abysmal if you ask me. But I did some math:

Since there was rarely a day where I actually could record for the full day, it took 14 8-hour sessions to complete the tracking for `Torched Laughter.’  Not so bad in the light of emergency room visits, learning new instruments, practicing, cavorting, and day to day responsibilities.

The `Torched Laughter’ blog is going to stop for a while after this post. Reason being is there are several other songs for the metal project that need finishing. It makes sense to do this instead of mixing because the rental agreement for the microphone is good for another week.

In the interim, I am going to post more anecdotes about the `Torched Laughter’ songs and how they came to be. (Like the Finely Tuned Meat entry)

Oh lovely, Nine Inch Nails is blaring up stairs. And I’m being told fervently that I suck.

Happy Good Friday

`Finely Tuned Meat’ can be summed up by the below anecdote.

My father was enduring colon cancer a few years ago. At the same time, another loved one was undergoing a horrific drug therapy as prescribed by a doctor. The therapy wreaked holy hell on the person’s body and mind. You probably know someone who has to suffer these types of drug therapies. I describe pharmaceutical practices like this: they destroy a house to save a wall.

It was an intense time. Dancing around verbal land mines and trying not to trip into my own pit of overactive fears. I don’t think there was any positivity to be found at that time. Though I had my health and an overactive imagination which I can escape into, I felt guilty for having them. The same could not be said for those around me.

Fortunately for my father, his cancer was caught fairly early and was to undergo surgery to rid his body of it. I made plans to fly back to the USA to be by his side, take care of day to day things around the parent’s house, etc.

I took a direct flight from Toronto to Newark. After being greeted by the friendly Canadians at Air Canada who thought I was someone famous (LOL,) I had to deal with the US Homeland Security `Team.’ After one question asked by the posturing-lackey-in-a-booth regarding my citizenship I was whisked away to a white room. Mind you, I was still on Canadian soil, but these garden variety shitnecks knew how to make you feel like you were in Guantanamo Bay.

(continue reading…)

I’ve been rewriting the words to that last song that I meant to sing this past Saturday. Per my last entry, I really hated what I originally wrote. Thankfully, the words came kind of effortlessly last evening. Effortlessly in my world is sitting back with a stiff drink and listening to the same thing over and over again for hours. Eventually I get unhinged by the repetitiveness and the good stuff starts coming out.

The lyrics compliment the music and my current mindset quite well. I’m not a fan of revisions. They have a tendency to destroy the heart of a song. But there are always exceptions. Now this song has life to it. Unfortunately they are not done yet. I’m hoping tonight they’ll be finished. In the interim I am still singing, but for the metal songs. There’s a bit of Queen-esque vocal tracking, so each song takes a while. Trying to get as much use out of the Neumann TLM 103 microphone before it needs to be returned at the end of this month.

Saturday started off rough. I don’t know if it’s because of the winter storms, but god damn it was insufferably dry again. Singing anything good took a massive amount of effort. It got extremely frustrating. Like throwing headphones against the wall frustrating. (Thank you Sony, for making durable cans for us divas)

Began the vocals on Thursday for a song called `Jaw Filled Wreckage.’ I completed about a 3rd of what was needed. The fatigue on my voice was no longer endearing so I needed to stop. The work done on `The Tilted Figure’ did half of the damage. The other half is not sleeping.

I write this on a Friday night nursing honey tea and listening to Cinematic Orchestra. I am not speaking and plan to head to bed early. Drunk fights and dramabombs are the last thing I need right now. Saturday will be ambitious: Sing 3 out of the 4 remaining songs. I need these to be done. I have something to prove to myself. I would like to do all 4, but one needs a big lyrical overhaul.

“Jaw Filled Wreckage” is a variation based on another song from the CD `Smoke and Origination’ called ‘Sharp Knives.‘ The former was the first one written for `Torched Laughter.’ It’s social commentary mixed in with the abstract. The title of the song was inspired by William Burrough’s phrase `Language Is A Virus’ (also a song by Laurie Anderson.) This term describes how certain sayings and words are picked up by other people and employed in their daily lives ad infinitum. Just like a virus, it replicates and mutates until everyone knows and uses some variant of them.

In other words, your fucking W00t is HIV.

The title `Jaw Filled Wreckage’ doesn’t imply a viral cornucopia of snappy sayings. It refers mostly to the mindless inane babble that we house in our mouths (or even our hands;) so desperate to deposit it onto another hapless victim: Filthy linguistic waste.

The title also refers to horrific teeth dreams.

Last night’s work was infinitely better than Tuesday. I hope Tuesday has lungs, so it can get a lung infection and drown in its own Tuesday mucous.