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November 2009.
Playing catch-up now - having spent the last few weeks at home happy and secure in the Domestic Bubble with our new baby girl, ERIN, I'm finally venturing out and am delighted to now have the opportunity to properly announce her arrival, which occurred on the 22nd October, a week early, in an ambulance outside our flat! Frustratingly, I arrived home from my studio a minute or so after she emerged - major and most sincere thanks to the ambulance crew, Mark Arnold (who truly "delivered") and driver Penny, who drove us to the hospital to finish up.
Meanwhile back in the outside world, various musical possibilities, particularly for 2010, are starting to open up....
That's about it for this month - not much to report, mainly due to the many hours I've been spending hanging with my family - ostrich-style with computers and cell phone generally turned off - I can recommend it!
More next time!
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October 2009.
I'm happy to report that October has, so far, been fairly productive and that momentum is gradually being regained.
The afore-mentioned meet-up with publisher Rob went nicely and provided me with a much-needed feeling of closure regarding Dorothee's project - the surround playback was satisfying all round, and the handover of several sets of discs (DVD-A/V, CD and Remixes CD) for the Real World luminaries whom I am hoping to interest in the project was an apt and good way to finally finish my time as Nasher's long-term guest at Big Top. I hadn't seen him for a few months - sadly he had a very similar experience to myself during the last few months (his dad became ill and died) - so it was great that he managed to pop in while Rob was having his listen (we all have some joint history at the late Swanyard Studios in common). A few days later the surround gear was all dismantled and guitarist Tim Stone (who had originally helped me to take the equipment over to the studio so many months ago) was on hand once more to assist with the removal of it. Much appreciated!
Another notable occasion was the opportunity (which came via Neil Wilkes) to attend the official launch and playback event around the 40th anniversary re-release of the first three King Crimson albums which have been superbly mixed in 5.1 from the original session tapes by Steven Wilson and beautifully packaged with an abundance of extras and alternative versions. Neil had authored these and was accordingly called upon to organise two sittings of surround playback for the assembled array of press, former band members and musicians. First of all Robert Fripp and Steven Wilson jointly introduced the event, which took placed in one of the live rooms at Air Studios, after which we were treated to a 75-minute surround playback of a cross section of these first three releases. Highly enjoyable both musically and sonically, although as a huge fan of the eighties incarnation of King Crimson (the Robert Fripp / Bill Bruford / Tony Levin and Adrian Belew line-up) I am very much more looking forward to the release of those albums, which will apparently happen at some point next year. This batch of albums has survived the test of time very well for me and is still amongst my favourite music of that era, particularly "Beat". As a very pleasant bonus I was able to chat briefly with Bill Bruford, whose utterly excellent autobiography I was recommending a couple of months ago. My own copy now sports the signature of the man himself - call me "fan-boy" as much as you like!
Looking forward to getting my teeth into new music very soon. There's just one thing preventing me from jumping in wholeheartedly right now, and just for once it's not prevarication : the Russell household is due to have a new arrival very soon now - we have been told that it's going to be a girl - on around the 29th of this month. Life is anything but dull! Every time the phone rings now I'm thinking that we're under starter's orders!
Productivity comes in many guises! Until next time .......
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September 2009.
Time seems to be flying at the moment - it really doesn't feel like a month since I got back to London, but indeed it is ..... the school holidays are over, the evenings are drawing in, and I'm officially starting to want to make a noise again. Dorothee's project is poised for delivery (publishing-wise, to Real World Works) - finally - I am seeing publisher and old friend Rob Bozas in around a week for a meeting, a surround playback and some food, after which I hopefully will be free to explore new musical pastures without a guilty conscience nagging at me to get on and finish what I've started. Speaking of which ...
I continued with the Spidercat (catamaran) wiring project until it too was all finished and tested and although, as with most things, it turned out to be a way bigger undertaking than originally expected, I feel very highly privileged to have been given the opportunity to do it. It turned out nearly as pretty and neat as a wiring job can be. Although people aren't building million pound recording studios these days there are certainly loads of high-end boats being built, so if I decide I need an outlet for my wiring skills in future I now know where to look! Finally (for this topic) I was invited to come along for the maiden voyage which happened last week - a 30-mile journey down the River Thames from South Dock (near Canary Wharf, in London) to the River Medway on a perfect sunny calm day - maybe too calm as there was so little wind that we mostly used the motor. I can really see the attraction in being able to sail away from it all - how nice to be able to leave a note behind that says "gone to sea" and for it to be true! It was great to participate in this venture and to spend time with Simon and his super-hospitable wife Thea - hopefully I'll get to experience more of it in exotic and sunny locations worldwide sometime in the future.
Right now I have to attempt to re-capture my previous work ethic and become productive once more. I've taken about as much time out as can be justified - everything that's happened over the last few months has, although sometimes stressful, been beneficial in some form or other - I've had contact with many new people and learnt a bunch of diverse new stuff, all good, a lot of it very widely applicable. However : enough!
Expect more about music next time!
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August 2009.
I finally arrived back in London after managing to empty my mum's house by the mid-August deadline. This, together with the amount of paperwork and correspondence which have needed doing, has made for an extremely intense month! Lots of music listened to, but none made ..... didn't even manage to get to Womad due to other commitments.
I found myself curiously reluctant to pick up the threads of Dorothee's almost-complete music package straight away on my return so took up the long-standing offer of a few days involvement helping with some wiring work on the newly-launched ocean-going catamaran Spidercat which my dear friend Simon Webb has been building for almost ten years. I was "official photographer" on the day of the launch and will treasure my photos and the memory of the day for a long time to come. The boat is beautiful! The level of his achievement is phenomenal - makes my own humble project-orientated efforts look extremely small in comparison. I was very proud indeed to be there on a key occasion for the project, and glad to help out and to pick up some knowledge about marine systems and conventions, solar panels and DC power. A welcome foray into something new, which was very good for my head. There's another day of crossing t's and dotting i's to do at some point, but eventually my conscience finally got the better of me and I visited Neil at Opus Productions to do the (almost) final tweaks to the Dorothee DVD.
We did a couple of revisions to the credits movie and to the version which will play on any dvd player - worst case you get 24-bit stereo (or dts or Dolby Digital 5.1 if your player does surround) with song-specific artwork but no browsable lyrics - which should have been it, but when I took the disc away to check it my daughter Antonia spotted a missing word on one of the song screens. Neil and I have been looking at these screens for literally months and hadn't seen it so a rather frustrating further revision has to be made before I can finally sign off on this phase of proceedings.
I have a mastered CD version and the pre-diced discreet mp3's which (with the approval of any prospective licensing partners) will go in the DVD-rom section of the dvd, along with a selection of Faith's artwork for use as desktop wallpaper or whatever. Having had a while away from it all I got a fresh listen (and look) when I dived in again and am still well-enough pleased with the journey it takes me on. Not long now until I have to get the salesman's hat on - I'll report back on how that goes ......
One final thing. I have been reading and re-reading Bill Bruford's autobiography during my time away and must recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone with even the faintest interest in music. It is highly articulate, placing Bill firmly alongside the wonderful and prolific Neil Peart in the drummer / writer category, and has given me a great deal of insight as well as pause for self-evaluation. There is truly something there for everyone - a lot of pertinent home truths nestling amongst the many entertaining and illuminating anecdotes. If you follow this link there is even a chance to read a chapter for free. Do it! You won't regret it.
Many thanks to the kind people who have emailed me messages of support over the last couple of months - much appreciated!
Until next time ...........
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July 2009.
Nothing really to report on the music front - my mum passed away on the 27th June and I've been involved in all the processes which follow on from that ever since. She did an equity release deal on her home a long while ago so I have to hand it over (emptied of all her belongings) in around a month. A scary amount of work to undertake in an area where I have very little local knowledge. So, to state the obvious, July will not be a very musical month ......
From the point of view of not having had to let anyone down, I'm very glad I didn't take on any live sound commitments this summer. It has seemed weird seeing TV coverage of various festivals and not having any feeling of involvement this year - but it's all turned out for the best. I'll possibly be attempting to go to the UK Womad as a punter for a day if the timing works out, but may well be too entrenched in house-clearance duties on the other side of the country. We'll see.
Until next time ...........
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June 2009.
In brief : out of necessity I've got into the routine of travelling to my mum's place near Norwich, dealing as best I can with her care needs and then spending Fridays (back in London) at Opus Productions doing the final phase of design and functionality tweaks to the Dorothee DVD-A. Then I test the disc, make far too many notes and we reconvene for a batch of revisions. Rinse and repeat on a weekly basis. Sitting in on the the authoring process has been a rewarding and hugely informative experience and a welcome distraction from "too much gritty realism" elsewhere. Also, acquiring an awareness of some of the other surround music lined up for release later this year has done wonders for my assurance that the 5.1 aspect of the project was and is worthwhile. I have (more than occasionally) wondered. This week's small victory : we've managed to incorporate one of the five Pete Ardron remixes as the soundtrack to the DVD credits which occur in the "Extras" section of the disc. The mood of his remix (of the opening track) combines with all the text information very successfully indeed. Faith's visual stuff looks consistently wonderful - I was lucky enough to be able see and test a disc on a 40" screen at one point and can report that it looks absolutely like a bought one. Officially.
One other extremely positive event - I became a grandfather!!
Eldest daughter Jessica's baby boy, Louis, emerged safely into the world on the night of the 31st May.
More soon ....
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May 2009.
Not a lot to say for May - for just over a month I have had to become a carer for three or four days a week. My dear old mum has become seriously ill to the point where everything else has to come second. Music-wise I've been checking in with Neil at Opus Productions now and again and am pleased to report that the album, in 5.1 at least, now sounds (dare I say it) finished (!!). The artwork has been selected and delivered and is now being incorporated into the many menus, song homepages, lyrics and synopsis screens etc that help access the numerous formats and flavours which will live on the disc (Hi-Res 5.1 and stereo / DTS 24/96 5.1 / Dolby Digital 5.1 / Stereo PCM etc etc).
So - the intended DVD-A / DVD-V hybrid is very close indeed to being ready for submission to our prospective licensing partners and I also have a mastered version of it in stereo for the CD. Am hoping to do some preliminary work bringing the ACSS parked stuff into current working order on a laptop at my Mum's place in between times. It's high time to change flavours...
Finally, Dorothee is getting married during this month in her adopted hometown, Paris - I take this opportunity to publicly wish her and her husband-to-be, Nicholas, a lifetime of love and happiness. Congratulations!
Until next time .....
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April 2009.
Having hung around for a few days too many after completing the final tweaking of the mixes I eventually gave up on the idea of the high-quality analogue route (to arrive at the DVD-A master versions), partly because it was taking too long to assemble the relevant gear and mainly because Neil Wilkes at Opus Productions stepped up and offered his own excellent services in this regard. It's weird for me to relinquish such a degree of involvement in this vital step, but Neil seems to be on the same page as me regarding approach so it'll be nice to hear his take on what it could finally sound like. In his shoes I know I'd like to have an unattended bash at it on my own (easier to experiment and to be free to go wrong for a while) so I've left him to it for a bit. And let's face it, it is nice to have someone helping out! So I haven't heard it all through for a while and will hopefully benefit from a hugely better overview when the time comes for me to hear what he's done. In the next day or so, I'm told. I shall be doing the CD mastering myself shortly after approving this and then it'll be time to have some meetings - to see what our prospective licensing partners make of the project-in-progress. Or not. In which case it's Cottage Industry time, as previously mentioned ......
It's been very satisfying to work with Faith Tatou on the artwork. She's now brought so many (maybe over a hundred) original images to the table. There really is a strong visual identity starting to happen - we're focussing on the DVD-A menu design requirements, rather than the disk packaging right now - widescreen rather than square - because, hopefully, the latter aspect will get designed (and paid for) by someone other than me, and to a better budget than I could justify at a Cottage Industry level! The DVD-A, however, must be as close to release-ready as possible so as not to become a contentious issue - just a question of swapping out my own Sonic Innovation logo and appending the relevant barcodes and ISRC codes. The ongoing issue of associating particular images with particular tracks is what is currently occupying what's left of my attention.
It'll be sad to finally move the 5.1 mixing gear back into storage after getting so engrossed in using it again, but it'll have to be done soon. I'm now starting to relish the prospect of doing something different ....
Finally, I have resolved to change my approach next time I do 5.1 and work on the stereo mixes first so that the surround mixes come more easily. And also not to succumb to a similar extent of comfort eating when the going gets tough! The cheese and onion pastries from the Victoria Bakery and the Rocky Road Fingers from Iceland became a way too regular feature of my days. Consequence? Fat Boy! My reward for finishing is having to diet substantially and exercise the body instead of just the opinion. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?
Onwards and upwards!
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March 2009.
My collection of empty 5-litre water bottles at Big Top where I'm working is getting significantly large, and I figure that if I've put 50 litres of Jasmine tea down my neck I must have almost finished! (I'm self-sufficient in the one room so have to buy water to make hot drinks - I've largely given up caffeine, so Jasmine tea, which I'd come to love almost as much as the food whenever eating in a Chinese restaurant, has been my reviving fluid of choice for the last couple of years. Rock and Roll!). If you'd told me that three months to the day after arriving with my 5.1 gear I'd still be finessing this project I wouldn't have believed it, but here I am. Admittedly I hadn't bargained on doing further recording, and there was, I seem to remember, a bit of a festive season a while ago, but I'm embarrassed by how long this has taken.
Having done the self-deprecation, I should extend public and profound gratitude to Nasher, who has been endlessly generous and encouraging and has allowed me to make myself truly at home in his studio for way longer than he can have anticipated. (He has also contributed some lovely additional guitar stuff on a few of the tracks).
My latter day ACSS engineering soulmate Mass came over to listen and critique a couple of weeks back and gave me some great input. It's a shame I haven't been able to involve him more but he's been understandably preoccupied with the health ordeal that his partner Hiromi has been going through. It was amazing to see him and to benefit from his overview.
I should also mention my dear friend Michael O'Connor, who has been a useful pair of ears and a peripheral assistant on most of the projects I have been involved in during this century - he got made redundant when the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street (I still can't bring myself to think of it as Zavvi) finally closed its doors recently. His tireless efforts in persuading and educating otherwise disinterested people to buy ACSS albums (and other Real World stuff I've been involved in) shouldn't go unmentioned. He's shot a small amount of DV footage during this particular project which may possibly surface as an extra on the DVD ....
A little earlier in the month I had an artwork meeting with Faith Tatou (Dorothee's sister - she also did some backing vocals on a few songs during last summer). Playing the current album assembly to her ticked the rather important box of vocal intelligibility. Being as not many Rwandans will probably get to hear this it was good to know that those who do will be able to receive Dorothee's words loud and clear! (Though hopefully not too loud). She went away seemingly impressed and inspired to contribute apt artistic and photographic content for each song, which was encouraging for me. I also played her some remixes in progress which I've got my friend Pete Ardron of Orchid Star to do - there are four so far and they're turning out interestingly. Also anything that I don't have to do myself is very good news at this point!
Last but not least, I've contacted an old friend from my Soundcraft days, Gareth Connor, an audio design specialist who these days has a company which deals in boutique compressors of his own design and also does re-vamping classic analogue mixing desks into highly desirable pairs of channels for the likes of me to lust after. Given that I need to generate audio in a variety of high resolution formats for the actual album masters I had the idea that rather than more digital (which is the last thing that this needs) I'd try to record these via as high quality an analogue signal path as I could get access to within the room I'm working in. It was nice to catch up and he seemed not to be put off by my suddenly re-appearing on his radar and ranting intensely about multichannel 24bit 96kHz techno-blah .... and seemed disposed to help out for expenses and a credit. Fingers crossed! This will also give me the ultimate deadline - after this process the project will be finally done, so any last-minute revisions and finessings need to be completed very soon. Thankfully the to-do list is fairly short now!
So the finishing post is in sight, and while I have occasional days when the mixes sound like an array of dodgy moves that could have been done better, I'm resigned to living with it, getting it out into the world and moving on. There are already a few live possibilities starting to arise.
The main activity immediately after this is going to be starting work on a new ACSS recording for completion by the end of the year so that we can do extensive and meaningful touring next year. Needless to say I shall be ranting occasionally about this as it progresses ...
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February 2009.
Time has flown! They say it does this when one is enjoying oneself - which has been true to some extent here. I have to confess to getting quite hacked off with the travelling and am starting to think of adding the (Rush-inspired) phrase "Brought to you by the number 34" to the credits in commemoration of the hours of sitting in the bus at a standstill on the North Circular Road. Much progress has been made nevertheless ....
I gave myself a much-needed deadline and made an appointment to visit (surround guru) Neil Wilkes with an assembly of the album to bond a little and to hear how it would translate into the outside world. This was useful for many reasons, the first being that deadlines force me to be decisive! After spending a while in the decision wilderness the version I ended up taking with me was way closer to being complete than I'd thought would be possible. Thankfully there were no nasty surprises sonically (other than a couple of digital clicks) - it sounded pretty much the same in his control room as it does in mine. (Huge sigh of relief). I got all sorts of useful information in terms of menu design options and graphic opportunities so am now due to meet with Dorothee's superb artist-and-photographer sister Faith to progress what I already have so far in terms of visual assets into something with the right identity. On the afternoon with Neil, as a bonus, I also got to hear a little of one of the ten (I think) remade-in-surround King Crimson albums currently being prepared for release, ("Beat", a big album for me back in the early 80's), which has been mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree fame. It sounded excellent and it's great to discover that he is an advocate of advanced resolution sound outside of his own numerous and excellent musical projects. I came away very positive and inspired from my one-day foray into the outside world.
Oh yes, I should mention that I did finally arrive at a running order! I've changed it a couple of times, but the way that it informed the requirements for each track made me wish I'd done it much earlier. Anyway, being of the opinion that any album longer than an hour is outstaying its welcome, I drew the line at fourteen tracks, which go by in a little over 58 minutes. (This leaves me with one spare song which will become part of the bonus content for the DVD-A. I did toy with the idea of putting the surround mixes of two of the "Hotel Rwanda" cues on as additional bonus material, but this could well turn into a publishing can of worms so I'll probably have to leave it). Anyway, on a good day this 58-minute journey goes by me quite pleasantly. Along with a few content revisions (replacing and recording additional bass guitar stuff with Kaz Kasozi, adding a bit of Jaw Harp courtesy of Andrew Cronshaw - I'm conflicted about calling this instrument by its common name of Jew's harp - is this derogatory or offensive?) I've had a number of people over to listen through and give me notes and this has kept me hard at it.
It is starting to sound occasionally like a bought one ..... so I suppose I'm almost there.
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January 2009.
Well, we're almost at the end of January and I guess substantial progress has actually been made. I've been oscillating between the peaks of "this is all really good" and the troughs of "whatever was I thinking - this is complete bollocks" but have managed to keep moving forward incrementally and currently have six Version 2 mixes (reacting to some of the copious quantities of notes I've been making regarding what still needs doing) as well as the full fifteen Version 1's which were completed by the end of the first week of the year. I lost faith in the bass guitar part that I played on "Ingoma" - (ok part, no feel whatsoever) and got the wondrously gifted Kaz Kasosi to come back and greatly improve it, which has now led to my questioning the quality of various of the other bass parts which I played. I'm planning to get him in again in the next few days .....
I had a very productive evening with Nasher a few days back, during which he gave me his critique of the tracks as they currently are, which resulted in some excellent suggestions and loads more notes - there are now several content-related issues which I now have to make decisions on. As long as the result is a better album I'm still keen to put in the work, but I'm very aware now of how extremely long I've been working on it and also that a lot of how I've been progressing is purely geared to wanting it to be finished (and that I'm so very familiar with every micron of every track that it's impossibly hard to catch a fresh impression of any of it - there could be great glaring errors staring me in the face and I wouldn't know). Ahh, the joys of working alone!
As a break from Dorothee's album, I was also finally able to persuade Nasher to listen to some of the afore-mentioned FGTH "Sonic Collection" in 5.1. It was a privilege to be there and catch his reaction - particularly to "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome", which is really well done.
I've plucked up the courage to have a preliminary chat with Neil Wilkes of Opus Productions (who I want to work with on the authoring of the DVD-A, having developed an admiration of his work, particularly the Porcupine Tree "Fear of a Blank Planet" DVD-A). He's a cornucopia of info and opinion on all things surround, and at some point I have to find out how my sonic take on it measures up to the competition, which is a little scary. I sent him a few tracks in progress - with the usual disclaimers about nothing being final - and asked that if it all sounds to him like bandwidth from another planet he should tell me so immediately!
Most pressing now is the need to arrive at a finite running order, so that I can make the transitions between the tracks as effective as possible and assess the potential journey through the entire assembled thing. Jumping from particular tracks to overview mode is hard at this point, but, as they say : this is the career I have chosen!
Onwards and upwards. Until next time ........
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December 2008.
1) I'm pleased to report that I'm now up and running mixing-Dorothee-wise ...... thanks to a) assistance beyond the call of duty from recent musical buddy, guitarist Tim Stone, who drove and lifted and made my arrival in the space comparatively stress-free, and b) assistance and a heart-warming Big Top welcome from Nasher. I'm hugely enjoying re-connecting with music in surround. Feels as though I've been away and have now returned home! It took me about a day to interconnect and thoroughly test the system, then I started in on Dorothee's mixes with one of the New Batch tracks, "Ingoma", which is shaping up well. I alternated between working on this and listening to some of my more recent surround music purchases - to build up my reference of the way the setup sounds in the room I'm in.
Have decided to get a handful of tracks to the 70% mark and then close them out when I'm more confident that I know the sound of the room. Making a reference dvd-a of each track-in-progress when I feel it's time to park it and move on is the way to go. The next on the list is "Njyenyine" (which along with "Ingoma" has outstanding soprano sax on it), after which I'll start on "Nyicara", which is from the initial batch of recordings.
2) .... after allowing myself to "become festive" for a little while I've resumed activities and continued preparing more tracks for closing out with due attention to detail. Further to the above, "Icyatumye" and "One Minute" have had a once-over and I'm now re-warming to the task with "Urugendo". All the tracks are feeling fresh and well-recorded to me (so far), I think I'm getting a handle on the way the room sounds, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to coming back to them all again for that crucial last lap .... maybe I'm delaying giving each track the requisite 100% commitment, but activity is occurring and the overall body of work is starting to please me again.
I have to confess to being majorly distracted by various dvd's that have found their way into the space : I got given the 2-disk version of "The Dark Knight" for my birthday a couple of weeks back and had to get my Christopher Nolan head on by watching "Batman Begins" and "The Prestige" before going for the new film. (Didn't see it in the cinema - I rarely go - I generally can't stand the guzzling and slurping artefacts of my fellow audience members when I'm seeing something for the first time). A truly phenomenal piece of work on every level. Every department utterly excelled themselves and Nolan's opting for getting as much reality onto the screen as possible should make the "CGI is now good enough" brigade rightfully quake in their boots and consider the error of their ways. The guy is an amazing storyteller - I just hope in his much-deserved success he remembers that part of the signature feeling of A Christopher Nolan Film is music by David Julyan and that he doesn't go with the big boys more than he has to. The combination of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard has been spectacular for the Batman works but (for me) David Julyan's writing is deeper and way better-suited to Nolan's narrative abilities. I can't wait to see what he does next - meanwhile I have to go and see the Imax version of "The Dark Knight" as soon as possible now that the crowds have died down! "Good Will Hunting", which I'd previously only had on video, and "The Last King Of Scotland" have also been impressive feature-wise, along with a couple of music documentaries which Nasher has lent me. Oh, and the interview footage accompanying all three(!) box sets of the different incarnations of Genesis - really well re-mixed in surround - was fairly compelling viewing. Hadn't really allowed myself to re-live stuff like "Nursery Cryme" and "Selling England By The Pound" for fear that my trousers would start flaring, but these were massive albums for me when they came out. (And the post-Gabriel stuff too - I actually had the Shergold double-neck at the time I joined The Enid! Had to get shot of it because it was so heavy and badly balanced that I felt like Quasimodo after about five minutes...)
Anyway, I shall attempt to complete the first lap of Dorothee's tracks with increasingly more focus as I go on. I'm hoping to get my dear friend and right hand man Mass involved for a bit of critique and overview in the very near future, and will report back shortly on whatever progress may happen ... byeee
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November 2008. My initial scratchings will be a full and frank account of my progress as I commence mixing Dorothee Munyaneza's album :
Yes, it's time to finally try to make it sound like a bought one! My plan is to arrive at a CD/DVD-A double disk package with 5.1 versions on the dvd.
I am still very much of the opinion that surround sound IS the future and to this end have to adopt a "build it and they will come" approach. Being as this project is of my instigation, an attempt to grow something from scratch with a realistic live and future recording dimension ( i.e. there isn't a deal in place and there won't be until after it's finished - worst case it's cottage industry time ) I'm able to decide on this without having to be over-accountable to any supposedly creative corporate entities. Lucky me!
Obviously fans of stereo (and indeed of mp3) will be catered for, but the conclusion I've arrived at - and will be applying to ALL future productions I get involved in - resultant from the bitter disappointment of my experiences with good old ACSS and Real World - is this : mix it in surround at the same time as doing it in stereo or it may well never happen ..... despite maximum effort, commitment and enthusiasm from yours truly. As the footprint of the surround setup is a little bigger than my permanent studio I will shortly be transporting it to the playing area of longtime musical buddy Nasher's Big Top Studio in Barnet, which he has very generously put at my disposal. I will try my hardest not to outstay my welcome and look forward to doing some serious reading on my bus commute over there!
Currently waiting for the green light to come on over .... have acquired a pile of new surround albums to inundate myself with and (hopefully) reawaken my 5.1 instincts while I'm setting up. Amongst these is the FGTH Sonic Collection, which Nasher has never heard. I'm relishing surprising him with it and to catching his reaction ....
The good thing about having this enforced break from the project is that I'll be better able to get a fresh impression of the content and arrangements when I do restart .... the added factors of new surroundings, a different mixer and monitoring will no doubt come into play as well. I made up a promotional 5-track CD of selected Dorothee monitor mixes for Rob (my publisher at Real World Music) to take to Womex at the start of November, but since then I've haven't done a huge amount.
The bad thing about it is the looming possibility that I might get immersed in festive seasonal obligations before I get it finished. Scary!
Stay tuned .....
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It has to be admitted that my former News section wasn't the success I had hoped ....
I'll keep the archive such as it is here : Old News ...
and from now on I'll blog occasionally on this page.