Holds coming due..
Apr. 30th, 2012 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI spent a certain amount of time over the past months gloating over the things available from my library, and specifically over e-books that I could check out.
I am transparently not the only one, as most of what I considered the good stuff was checked out and had people on the waiting lists, which might be anywhere from one to forty people long. I added my name to a number of those lists, several times over the past few months.
Six of them have become available in the past week or so. When that happens I have 3 days to check them out or they go to the next person on the list, which is fair enough. I think I didn't get to one of them in time, and I'll have to get back in line and wait some more, but that's not a real problem, since I now have a plethora of books on my reader.
Hopefully I'll be able to get to them before they go back to the library.
In other news I have dealt with 20 pages of the 47 page initial chunk. Actually they are 24 pages now, because I mark the deletions rather than making them myself and include bracketed comments when I can't figure out what the author was trying to say. This slower, but the plan is to make it easy for the author to overrule me if he (or she but he in this case) decides it adds to the handmade charm of the paper that he can't decide between "Loop 2" "loop 2" "Loop2" and "loop2." for the same loop.
I have also been mixing like a mad thing. I mixed a whole song Saturday which doesn't happen very often, and about a third of a song yesterday (but it was a longer song). Plus I think I have found a compressor that doesn't make me buzz on the high notes (this was a slightly different problem than the crackles I was wrestling with in November but similarly kicked in when I got loud and is only perceptible (to me, but perhaps my ear isn't very good) on the vocals.) Though it does make me sound funny if I turn it up high (like, the standard vocal settings are too high) but I guess all alterations to the sound do that.
Now I have to go through every song and replace the old compressor with the new one. But I have a variety of other tweaks to make too to try to get the sound even and consistent and ready for mastering. Which I will probably also do myself. I hope it will just be a couple of days work, and I am putting that off until I have all the songs actually mixed. After "Boats Have Bones" I have the harmony for "Last Spaceship" unless I decide it won't pass the funny sounding check and toss it (just the harmony; I think the song itself is okay) and the octave mandolin part for "Sociopaths" which I re-recorded because it sounded blunt and I thought maybe the problem was I let the strings get too old.
For those who are interested, I'm not sure how other people handle mixing, but here's what I do.
During recording I make three passes at everything--more if I'm having trouble getting something good. During mixing I listen to some of each (often not the whole thing--if I'm making a lot of mistakes at the beginning, or my tone is bad, chances are there aren't any brilliant parts at the end) to decide which I like best overall. I move that track to the top of the screen and listen through it more carefully. Every time there's a part I don't like--a raspy note or a sloppy bit or the occasional just plain mistake, I listen to all the other takes, try to pick out the best one, and put a marker there saying what to switch to. I notice that my vocal tone is pretty inconsistent. I'll start out kind of husky, the second and third takes will be better, then I'll start getting tired. So it's usually take 2 or 3 that ends up being the "base" take. But in later takes the high notes will sometimes have a rasp to them, especially in hayfever season. And even within a take my tone can change, so there's that.
Once I have everything marked, I go through, cutting the bad parts out of the base take and substituting the best parts of the other takes. Sometimes my "base take" will end up being mostly take 3 for the first half and mostly take 2 for the second half--perhaps there is an optimum warmup time that crosses those two takes or something.
This is the patched track. I have been talking about this as if every take was vocals, but of course I make mistakes on instrumentals too (though the tone seems to be more consistent) so I do the same thing for the instrumental track(s).
Then I listen to both together. If there are any places where they got out of line, time-wise, I can use "cut at nearest zero point" (which *mostly* works) and drag the cut ends around, playing some parts faster and some parts slower (the program automatically compensates for the pitch when I do this) until the notes are happening where I want them. As long as the cuts are truly at zero points, this is seamless, but I have to listen carefully through each cut to make sure, because sometimes there is a click or a bump sound that this procedure introduces.
I notice that when I scootch vocals around in this way anything more than a couple of percent in the rate change makes for kind of a hollow sound. This is probably happening in the instrumental scootches as well, but I hear it much more in my vocals. I think this is probably imperceptible to most people once the reverb is on, but since I noticed it I have been trying to keep it to a minimum.
Once everything is aligned time-wise, I add effects. So far I only have compressor for the mando and octave mando--adding reverb doesn't seem to do anything but muddy the sound, as the instruments themselves seem to have plenty of sustain, padded room or not. And I can't decide what kind of frequency boosts and cuts I want, so I haven't messed with that. Way back when, I tried to set EQ and reverb on my vocals to pretty much match the sound I got while playing at home (the rumpus room has wood-panelled walls and I thought it sounded okay) so I have a standard setting for those I use every time.
The effects change the relative levels, so this is also when I handle that (beyond crude adjustments I made at the beginning so as not to blow my ears off.) For some songs I have to mess with it on a phrase by phrase basis, as vocally I get considerably louder as I go higher. If I have several high parts occurring together, as in Quetico, I have to set each down several decibels, and boost the softer parts so they can be heard. I don't do that much for most of my vocal lines, though. Reducing the dynamics too much kills some of the interest, I think, and besides it takes forever.
So at some point I suppose I ought to sit down with the EQ patch and figure out if there's something I like better than mando, neat, and octave mando, neat (In the wiskey sense of "don't add anything.') And run through everything making the appropriate changes. Which would probably be good to do while I'm making all the tweaks I made a list of week before last while I was listening through everything to figure out what I had skipped mixing... I feel like I'm nearly done, which probably means I have several weeks of hard work yet to go.
I am transparently not the only one, as most of what I considered the good stuff was checked out and had people on the waiting lists, which might be anywhere from one to forty people long. I added my name to a number of those lists, several times over the past few months.
Six of them have become available in the past week or so. When that happens I have 3 days to check them out or they go to the next person on the list, which is fair enough. I think I didn't get to one of them in time, and I'll have to get back in line and wait some more, but that's not a real problem, since I now have a plethora of books on my reader.
Hopefully I'll be able to get to them before they go back to the library.
In other news I have dealt with 20 pages of the 47 page initial chunk. Actually they are 24 pages now, because I mark the deletions rather than making them myself and include bracketed comments when I can't figure out what the author was trying to say. This slower, but the plan is to make it easy for the author to overrule me if he (or she but he in this case) decides it adds to the handmade charm of the paper that he can't decide between "Loop 2" "loop 2" "Loop2" and "loop2." for the same loop.
I have also been mixing like a mad thing. I mixed a whole song Saturday which doesn't happen very often, and about a third of a song yesterday (but it was a longer song). Plus I think I have found a compressor that doesn't make me buzz on the high notes (this was a slightly different problem than the crackles I was wrestling with in November but similarly kicked in when I got loud and is only perceptible (to me, but perhaps my ear isn't very good) on the vocals.) Though it does make me sound funny if I turn it up high (like, the standard vocal settings are too high) but I guess all alterations to the sound do that.
Now I have to go through every song and replace the old compressor with the new one. But I have a variety of other tweaks to make too to try to get the sound even and consistent and ready for mastering. Which I will probably also do myself. I hope it will just be a couple of days work, and I am putting that off until I have all the songs actually mixed. After "Boats Have Bones" I have the harmony for "Last Spaceship" unless I decide it won't pass the funny sounding check and toss it (just the harmony; I think the song itself is okay) and the octave mandolin part for "Sociopaths" which I re-recorded because it sounded blunt and I thought maybe the problem was I let the strings get too old.
For those who are interested, I'm not sure how other people handle mixing, but here's what I do.
During recording I make three passes at everything--more if I'm having trouble getting something good. During mixing I listen to some of each (often not the whole thing--if I'm making a lot of mistakes at the beginning, or my tone is bad, chances are there aren't any brilliant parts at the end) to decide which I like best overall. I move that track to the top of the screen and listen through it more carefully. Every time there's a part I don't like--a raspy note or a sloppy bit or the occasional just plain mistake, I listen to all the other takes, try to pick out the best one, and put a marker there saying what to switch to. I notice that my vocal tone is pretty inconsistent. I'll start out kind of husky, the second and third takes will be better, then I'll start getting tired. So it's usually take 2 or 3 that ends up being the "base" take. But in later takes the high notes will sometimes have a rasp to them, especially in hayfever season. And even within a take my tone can change, so there's that.
Once I have everything marked, I go through, cutting the bad parts out of the base take and substituting the best parts of the other takes. Sometimes my "base take" will end up being mostly take 3 for the first half and mostly take 2 for the second half--perhaps there is an optimum warmup time that crosses those two takes or something.
This is the patched track. I have been talking about this as if every take was vocals, but of course I make mistakes on instrumentals too (though the tone seems to be more consistent) so I do the same thing for the instrumental track(s).
Then I listen to both together. If there are any places where they got out of line, time-wise, I can use "cut at nearest zero point" (which *mostly* works) and drag the cut ends around, playing some parts faster and some parts slower (the program automatically compensates for the pitch when I do this) until the notes are happening where I want them. As long as the cuts are truly at zero points, this is seamless, but I have to listen carefully through each cut to make sure, because sometimes there is a click or a bump sound that this procedure introduces.
I notice that when I scootch vocals around in this way anything more than a couple of percent in the rate change makes for kind of a hollow sound. This is probably happening in the instrumental scootches as well, but I hear it much more in my vocals. I think this is probably imperceptible to most people once the reverb is on, but since I noticed it I have been trying to keep it to a minimum.
Once everything is aligned time-wise, I add effects. So far I only have compressor for the mando and octave mando--adding reverb doesn't seem to do anything but muddy the sound, as the instruments themselves seem to have plenty of sustain, padded room or not. And I can't decide what kind of frequency boosts and cuts I want, so I haven't messed with that. Way back when, I tried to set EQ and reverb on my vocals to pretty much match the sound I got while playing at home (the rumpus room has wood-panelled walls and I thought it sounded okay) so I have a standard setting for those I use every time.
The effects change the relative levels, so this is also when I handle that (beyond crude adjustments I made at the beginning so as not to blow my ears off.) For some songs I have to mess with it on a phrase by phrase basis, as vocally I get considerably louder as I go higher. If I have several high parts occurring together, as in Quetico, I have to set each down several decibels, and boost the softer parts so they can be heard. I don't do that much for most of my vocal lines, though. Reducing the dynamics too much kills some of the interest, I think, and besides it takes forever.
So at some point I suppose I ought to sit down with the EQ patch and figure out if there's something I like better than mando, neat, and octave mando, neat (In the wiskey sense of "don't add anything.') And run through everything making the appropriate changes. Which would probably be good to do while I'm making all the tweaks I made a list of week before last while I was listening through everything to figure out what I had skipped mixing... I feel like I'm nearly done, which probably means I have several weeks of hard work yet to go.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 01:12 pm (UTC)More than once it has been my reminder to get rid of unnecessary sub-bass.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 02:39 am (UTC)But I have six library books checked out. I hope I can get to them all before they expire.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 02:42 am (UTC)I use Reaper which can just render the reverb on the fly, with whatever percentage the user sets, so I do that. It's nondestructive so I can make as many changes as I like.