Did a couple of remixes

The James Blake one reached over 70,000 views and I got some nice comments. The I Am In Love one ended up on the B Side of the band’s single.

One I did at the tail end of 2010 has just been released by She Makes War (: it’s free, here )

Highlights of mixing included One Cure for Man tracks.. proper indie.. and Free Control’s EP (with Paul Wong.. great to work there again after many years ), out soon.

Finally released the waa album and got nice radio play from Steve Lamacq

I remixed a track from it, too

TV music got used worldwide, including loads of Masterchef shows.

Albums I enjoyed most.. Wild Beasts, Lykke Li, Lanterns of the Lake

Gigs… Wild Beasts, Lykke Li and Morrissey.Lana Del Ray was a bit disappointing, but looking forwards to the album.

Music remains at the heart of what I am.. dying to finish my studio so I have a proper place to work. Also on the boil is a remix for Shortwave Fade and finishing tracks for Hannah Brine. And the ‘biggy’ project I’ve been banging on about for years. More on that over the next few months.

Also.. trying to record a handful of Rise and Demise tracks.. written for flipping ever.. no plans, just getting them recorded is enough. Got a few started. We will see.

Happy New Year!

Certainly objects of desire. Used a few and once you get used to the lack of top end you realise they sound special…….

Other news, with a bit of a back story, the Free Control mastering has been sent my way rather than who it was originally going to go to. So I’ll start that tomorrow.

Mastered another Edgy Productions play, and did some super quick recording of some live drums for the Hannah Brine track’s I’m producing… and I mean super-quick: single passes through two tracks or hats, snare, toms and ride: then to Logic for editing: not intending for them to replace the programming I’m doing.. just add some human swing.

Best news is the progress of the studio build. Two days of Super Gary saw the garage door removed, bricked up and some stud walling done. Hope to finish the studding before the 9th Jan. Will post piccies when I can get em off my (shit) phone

New electric supply went in today (thank the lord for Poppa Arm Your Ears) to power my stuff and the wife’s ceramics gear.

Glass blocks ordered… lovely cross reeded blocks for the end window. A less sexy side window was picked up on friday. I bought an Ebayed 1940s door a few months back. The holes for both are being done on sunday and then fitted the same day. Very exciting. The brick work won’t be done til early next year.. then I need to insulate, plasterboard, plaster, floor the roof, floor the floor (!), benches, racks and draws.. lots to do but worth the wait.

Music stuff: finally finished the Free Control mixes.. off to Mastering Sam for the mastering. Had another choir mix and master for Fosse Singers which was all Christmassy.

Back to marking.

Other news…. done some more Choir mixing, plus the final final final tweaks (?) for Free Control.

Phew

Of course, it’s never that honest, and , it turned out Lana’s been kicking around for a while as Lizzie Grant, and if all’s to be believed, she changed direction around her management and stylized ‘Lana Del Ray’

The Jools Holland appearance was encouraging … sparse and gorgeous, so I was expecting great things from the gig last night. Lovely venue and very intimate: 3 or 4oo capacity I’d say?

Really lovely 4ft wide balloons were hung around the venue, and 50s and 60s Americana Super 8 film clips were projected onto them.. ace touch.

So, when Lana came on I was instantly disappointed by the band: properly American polished muso band: for those of you who’ve seen This Is It the Jacko film of his rehearsals, the band are of that standard. This was a bad thing. They sounded like a CD backing track: polite and tasteful and the keyboard dude insisted on using a vile string pad on every flipping song.

I was totally expecting a cool looking and a little rough sounding band with beat up Rhodes, Fenders and Gretch’s. What we got was a function band. Hmm. Didn’t add up.

Anyway: tunes: yep, some beauties and some funkies. Most with some pretty sexy lyrics. She sang ‘Fuck’ or ‘Fucking’ quite a bit.

Between song banter revealed a giggly girl…. I was hoping for some mystery: a moody sultry ‘thankyou’. I guess there’s no such thing as mystery anymore….

It could go either way, but it seems mass market appeal seems to be the goal with Adele’s PR company, an Interscope deal, and a Guy Chambers single forthcoming, Lana isn’t quite as ‘real’ as I’d hoped.

Watch this space.

Yes, she is rather tasty.

I bet they smell amazing.

Going to a studio as a band to hear the music gel into this lovely finished piece is a joy to behold:  the band get to look over at each other all gooey eyed and feel that moment where it all starts sounding rather good. It was a rewarding part of mixing when I ran commercial studios. I miss that.. I get nice emails with lot’s of exclamation marks when a mix is good, but music’s a people thing so it looses that communal part.

You see where your moneys going. It’s always a little weird charging people for a process very few people really know what goes on in. By being there, you see what your money’s buying.It’s not very exciting to 99 percent of the population.

Communication is instant. Over email the lists of changes bands send generally need decifering: a ‘decay’ to one means a ‘delay’ to another.. if you’re in the room with the engineer.. you can just point at the fader, the DAW screen, whatever, and say ‘that up’. Simple.

It will, generally, cost more money to mix with the band/engineer in the same room.Not always. If you trust the engineer to log what time he’s spent, it isn’t always dearer. I’m pretty cheap as I don’t rent a commercial space. Often online mixers are the same. Worth a thought.

Look away now if you don’t like your performances fiddled with: it’s a fact of life that because you can tweak pitching and timing, if it benefits the end result, that’s part of the modern mix process. Similarly, drum replacement. These processes are dull as dishwater to watch someone do, and do lead to the debate of the ethics of doing it. I’d rather not have that conversation and unless the performance is perfect (not necessarily timing, I mean feel and the intention) generally some ‘enhancements’ will be made at mix stage. Capturing stuff ‘to tape’ and leaving it as is, is a great limit to work with, but simple enhancements to a performance (like EQ or raising the volume of a solo for example) are the same as tuning and timing enhancement. Maybe. Discuss.

What qualifies you to have an opinion? Eh? The idea of leaving a mixing engineer to it is they have perspective. They aren’t attached to that third guitar overdub,or the bvs.. as such they see the song as a whole, and do what’s necessary to get there. Generally I get comments emailed from various band members on the mix at the tweak stage, and most of the time they relate to the instrument they played rather than the mix as a whole. Much better, actually, to let the engineer get on with it, or get a second engineer you trust for an opinion. This can work the other way: when someone in the band really understands the process, it can speed the mix up and suggestions usually end up being more general and useful.

Tweak til the cows come home… because we can revisit projects at the drop of a mouse, there’s a tendency to tweak and tweak. I’m all for this, but you need to know when enough’s enough. In ye olde days, a mix recall was a wad of paper with settings and notes.. it was a big, time consuming , and hence expensive job: it made bands live in the moment to a degree and consider whether they wanted to spend another 50 quid recalling and retweaking the mix.

DFA. Most engineers have one of these on their desk to avoid carrying out bad decisions. Can you think what it does?

20 quid.

Email me if interested. john@armyourears.com