Thursday, January 07, 2010

FL notes - 07/01/10.



Returned to Libris Acres, and immediately began the final stage of work on the Future Loss material. It's a nerve wracking process: applying the knowledge I've gained from the last nine months of working other band projects such as Boats..!, Whimpshake and Rui, while at the same time being careful not to overcook it. There are still some keys, Kaoss and vocal takes to do before the mixes can be sent to Brian for his inspection.

I've started using a second pair of speakers for monitoring purposes; the £5 ones Luke bought from Netto Supermarket several years ago. They have a vulgar blue light on the front and emit the kind of nasty, tinny sound one would expect from speakers with "XtremeIT" written on them. They've proved essential, as I'm able to A/B my mixes instantly between the Alesis M1 Mk2s and a less glamorous sound source. Doing this often reveals flaws in the balancing and EQ that I wouldn't otherwise notice if I was just using one set of speakers.

I felt that quite a few of my mixes at the end of last year were beginning to sound too trebly, especially when played on small stereos, such as in the car. After a vivid dream about a frequency chart in the night's sky, in which a positive curve was drawn around the 158Hz mark in a spectral blue line, I went back to some of these mixes and boosted them at this exact level. Bingo, they suddenly sounded warmer and less tinny on inferior speakers, while still retaining all the clarity they had shown on the proper monitors.