The Living Rockumentary

1.) No picture taking tonight. We won't have enough time to do it properly do to some schedule conflicts.

2.) Tiny, I really wouldn't call the Martha mix a "Beatles mix". It's not supposed to sound like the Beatles or to mimic their style, I just called it that on my computer because before mixing it, I listened to the album Let It Be, and was reminded how everything doesn't have to be spread all over in the stereo field. Mostly, I just shrunk the width of the drums down a little. What do you mean width? How can a sound have width? What I mean is, if you sit in front of two speakers and listen to a stereo recording, you are hearing what they call the stereo field. The stereo field stretches from the left speaker to the right speakers. So, if I had two microphones recording the drums, one of them facing right and the other facing left (kind of like your ears do there on the side of your head) and then played them back as the right-facing mic in the right speaker and the left in the left, that would make the drum set as wide as the entire stereo field. It's a sound that I generally enjoy, but sometimes, this big spread can make the drum set sound less like a drum set and more like a series of seperate drums (which lots of times is great). It also means that the other instruments can get a little buried mixed in with all these drums.

What I did on this new mix of Martha is, I made the spread of the drums thinner so that it went from the left speaker to the center speaker. That made room on that whole other half for some other instruments to stand out a little more in the mix. It wasn't supposed to be Beatlesy, and it really isn't, it's still more spread than a Beatles recording, it's just slightly inspired by them. Mostly, listening to Let It Be reminded me that I can be a little more brash when approaching panning (placement of various instruments in the stereo field.)

3.) My guess would be that maybe there is something screwy with the CDRs that I have at the moment. Did anyone else have an issue? Max, I'll give you a copy tonight.

4.) King Radio was inspiring Saturday night. Mostly it was the amount of work that they put into their music that inspired me. It's hard for me, sometimes, to fight off the slacker part of me. Laziness seems to be such a part of rock music these days that it's difficult to keep aware of it happening to myself. King Radio reminded that it pays off when you put in all the effort. It was fun playing "New Year's Day."