'Where studio tans are worn with pride!'
Hi, This is Where I'm At...
Without belaboring the influence of circumstance and Mars flying through my summer, I chose this year to reaquaint myselfr with the local visual art and spoken-word communities. This has resulted in involvement in the production of two festivals, a summer's work with a local sound-crew, and new business ventures with a night-club I have worked at as a technician since 2006. The process has also inspired new material, and a change in approach to the process of writing and recording.
A few of my songs on the current project may be composed in the recording process, as has happened with one song which is close to it's first birthday - Halloween Labyrinth. HL began life as a poem I rattled off in an art gallery, and later became a song after I created a guitar-loop and rhythm track, and then improvised a vocal melody in two deaf recording passes. As luck would have it, the two vocal tracks were staggered in time, but blended so well that once I finished the beds, it took two months to muster the courage to automate a mix. The addition of the keyboard controller made this easier, since it contains faders which can be mapped to the track faders. Many of the tracks could remain steady, but the vocal tracks and certain environmental tracks needed to be mixed for focus. I had originally intended the lead vocal to wander in the stereo field, but I realized this would be too complex with the controls I had available - in my ideal, when a voice moves, echo moves, equalization moves and panning breadth moves in order to literally suggest a spacial placement.
The mix for another song was a response to a change in instruments and performance style which suggested a small-room jam environment. It is too easy to treat every song as if it was meant for an arena; a notion which ignores the character of a lyric and the feel of a groove. I always seek congruency in instrumental and vocal performances, which later contribute to a mix which is suggestive of either the environment of inspiration or performance.
So that's what I'm working on now, while dodging opportunism in a city which is either a lusty conqueror, or an embattled scavenger. Fun stuff.
A few of my songs on the current project may be composed in the recording process, as has happened with one song which is close to it's first birthday - Halloween Labyrinth. HL began life as a poem I rattled off in an art gallery, and later became a song after I created a guitar-loop and rhythm track, and then improvised a vocal melody in two deaf recording passes. As luck would have it, the two vocal tracks were staggered in time, but blended so well that once I finished the beds, it took two months to muster the courage to automate a mix. The addition of the keyboard controller made this easier, since it contains faders which can be mapped to the track faders. Many of the tracks could remain steady, but the vocal tracks and certain environmental tracks needed to be mixed for focus. I had originally intended the lead vocal to wander in the stereo field, but I realized this would be too complex with the controls I had available - in my ideal, when a voice moves, echo moves, equalization moves and panning breadth moves in order to literally suggest a spacial placement.
The mix for another song was a response to a change in instruments and performance style which suggested a small-room jam environment. It is too easy to treat every song as if it was meant for an arena; a notion which ignores the character of a lyric and the feel of a groove. I always seek congruency in instrumental and vocal performances, which later contribute to a mix which is suggestive of either the environment of inspiration or performance.
So that's what I'm working on now, while dodging opportunism in a city which is either a lusty conqueror, or an embattled scavenger. Fun stuff.
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