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snoozefestaudio17F with flurries and wind out there today, going down to 7F overnight.
Found out last night that I'd be needed for building checks today, so I actually got up at the normal time today and clocked in at 2:30PM... half an hour earlier than my new normal start time.
I left at 4:30PM, and since I was already out, I got my groceries and gas on the way home.
So now all that stuff's out of the way, and I won't have to leave home tomorrow or Monday (MLK Day).
So this past week was the second full week of neither working on, nor listening to the album. But with the graphics done, there wasn't much to do!
I did have an interesting chat with DeepSeek about The Beatles and their pioneering use of compression... which lead to a general chat about how I might mix and master my own album to have as clean a sound.
Basically, the three things I need to learn are, the spectral analyzer, the compressor, and how to side chain.
- SPECTRAL ALNALYZER: This tool will show me which frequencies are the most important for each instrument, and with that information I can do the parametric notch filtering a lot more effectively, to ensure everything is present in the mix and nothing is stepping on anything else.
- COMPRESSION: Apparently what I want to do is individually compress each instrument according to their unique character. This goes for the snare and the kick as well, but some of the other drums and cymbals can be sent to a single compressor.
- SIDE CHAINING: This is a way to set things up so that, for example, the guitar or the orchestral volumes will slightly duck by a few decibels whenever the kick drum hits... or perhaps some drum or other ducks when a particular instrument plays.
All of that will be done in FL Studio, and then in Audacity, the vocals and sound effects will be conditioned and compressed to blend into those final music mixes.
So, if it took me 2 months to go from no EQ at all, to the current Ruff Record, it could take another two months to go from Ruff Record to Archeological Record.
However, there are certain things this time around I won't have to do again! Like... no comping or manual compression of vocals. No foley work. And, one would hope, far less time tightening the music.
So this *could* mean the Archeological Record is done in ONE month!
If we split the difference, then we're talking about March 1st.
In that scenario, the singles would start rolling out, one per week, through March, April, and May, with the "official" playlist version of Archeology making it's debut on June 1st.
So... an album for the summer!
But first, the Ruff Record must be auditioned over the iLoud's!
I finished the final song back on the night of the full moon, at the end of the Great Wekbrek, and since then, normal life has resumed.
Students back to school, people back to work, a new year underway.
Now, tonight is the first new moon of 2026... a symbolically apt moment to hear that work, with new ears, and take my notes.
So, with the evening's first beer, that's what I'll do!
Talk to you later.
Okay!... near field monitoring, at a moderate volume, of the entire album is complete! And I do have a lot of impressions.
As far as a punch list goes, the main note is about balancing. In general, the sound effects are too quiet. They sound fine in headphones, but in open air they're mostly too quiet.
The second note is like the first in that the biggest issue I heard was simply the volume balance of everything from song to song. In some songs this or that is a bit too quiet, and in other songs it's this other thing, or that other thing.
HOWEVER!.. as for the EQ of everything, it sounds great! Nothing souds canny, or boxy, or honky, or lacking. And the overall mixes do not sound muddy or bassy.
This goes for the sound effects too.
So, while I will dial in the EQ of things better with that spectral analyzer and the parametric EQ2, equalization is not the big issue or hurdle here.
And while compression will be the ultimate arbiter of each element's presence in the mix, a thorough pre-compression volume balancing is in order.
I say this because in some songs the drums are super present, while in others they feel distant... and this goes for the guitar and bass as well. So, it's possible to get them all more present and popping, just by adjusting faders... which to this point has not yet been done.
So far all the volume control has been on the level of velocity, and the signal outs of the different effects (PQ2, convolver, Sakura, etc). So, on that level, things could be slightly tweaked, but in general it's time to start pushing and pulling faders on the mixing board.
On the up side, I was quite surprised to find that, "the room" is already an extremely convincing reality!
Based on this audience of the RR, I'm gonna say that the casual listener would assume this is an actual group of musicians and singers in a room, trying to create the feel of a tracked album... and doing an admirable job but... we can still tell this is live!
And that's the exact opposite of what it really IS!.. a completely fictional, piano rolled production, hoping to sound like a living band. So, in other words, it's a total success on this critical level!
You can see them in the space. You can feel the personalities of the drummer, bass player, and guitarist. You can see the cellist, violinist, pianist, etc. From song to song they exhibit the same personality traits.
They are all playing well, but nobody is a virtuoso. That, I think helps to sell it. These are all competent musicians, who clearly have practiced these songs, but you do get the impression that it's people from the neighborhood! It's the best players you could find from the local bars and coffeehouses, who just want to jam.
The inpenetrability of this, band in a room, illusion is the synthesis of many factors beyond just velocities and sliding notes off grid.
- THE DRUM KIT: The painstaking curation of each drum sound mostly from the jazz folders, and the layering of click and body sounds for the snare, kick, and toms, really paid off!
This sounds like a drum kit in a room. There is baked in room verb for every drum and cymbal, and the way our drummer was animated makes it feel like it has to be a human. This is not a drum-machine rhythm track. - CONVOLVER CAB SIMS: For the bass and the guitar these cab sims do sell it! They blend into that room verb that the drums have baked into them. For all the world, this sounds like the small amps of two guitarists in that same space.
The careful velocity and strum work on the guitar strings also humanizes the guitarist quite a lot! The other work done to mitigate the synthy sound of Sakura also works wonderfully. This sounds like an electric guitar!.. and in open speakers you don't hear the distortion or the chorus/delay nearly as much.
So it authentically sounds like a bare signal guitarist, with whatever fuzz or delay there is, feeling more like the result of his amp's speaker distorting a bit, and his notes getting natural slapback from within the room. - UNIVERSITY FREE VST SOUNDS: It was unexpectedly striking how live and human the orchestral stuff sounded in this mix! But it's all down to the fact that these VSTs were played and recorded by college students.
Their humanity is baked into these VSTs!.. as well as a bit of their own room verb.
So again, they blend into the room sound, and you see them playing! You do NOT think, "oh, here's the orchestral samples from the synthesizer that he added later."
Instead you think, "That girl's really good with the cello! How did they mike her so well?" - THE SM58 & the VOCAL CONDITIONING: The vocals on the Ruff Record sound *exactly* like this guy is in the room, using a workhorse performance mike, amplified by some kind of perfect PA system.
The touches of reverb I added put them into that same space as the drums, convolver cabs, and college VSTs.
And the doubling is not perceptible. You do not get any sense of there being a "delay" effect, on the vocals, in the open air monitors. It sounds like he is in that room, slightly left of center, and that his voice just fills the space perfectly.
The backing vocal illusion is also rock solid. When the backup singer sounds, you immediately picture a second singer, on the other side of the room, and slightly further back.
Even though both singers are myself... it feels as if they are two different guys, in that room.
Lastly, my vocals are ever so slightly pitchy from time to time in the verses, and you do still hear a lot of that proximity effect from the SM58, which, again, sells that this is a live performance.--<>--
So, I cannot stress enough how much the room illusion is already there! Using any kind of "glue" reverb to help it?.. is NOT a huge concern, going forward.------------{=0=}------------ THE BAND'S "SOUND"
So, over the twelve songs, the band definitely has a cohesive sound. This feels like the same band, doing the same performance from start to finish.
But what is their sound?
Over this listen, the word that kept coming back to me is, "classy."
Not pretentious or snobby! Not yact rock bougie. But just... classy.
The groove of these players in this room reminded me of, sort of, early Elvis Costello era proto-punk recordings coming out of New York City.
Not to say this sounds like Elvis Costello, but... that vintage and that sensibility of a clean, competent sound, with solid rock-n-roll elements, but... grown up?
There is a proto-punk feel to the way the lone guitar deals with it's split duties carrying rhythm, but also attempting cheep leads... which is punctuated by the way the singer's emotive, but at times, slightly pitchy performance.
The chords and beats are informed by jazz a bit, with bosa nova off-beats, and the occasional jazz chord, which add a beatnik sensibility to the music.
It feels like that 1979/1980 underground pre-punk, but the difference is that here we have real orchestral musicians, rather than the electro-synth elements that characterized that particular movement.
This isn't dance pop, or jock rock, this is... coffeehouse/college town bar... underground, but sincere.
That live feel of the room only amplifies that sense of things... like you stumbled onto a band you should never have heard of, doing a set for ten people, but just killing it.
The quietness of the sound effects, upon this listen, inspires me to possibly add some coffehouse/bar ambiance to the entire album, duriung the main play of the songs.
Like, I will get my foley work up to a good volume and compression, but there is room in these mixes for low level room ambiance to help sell the live illusion.------------{=0=}------------
Okay, so those are my impressions on the first near-field review... EVER... of the fully assembled album... after a two week break from the intensity of the Great WekBrek.
The Saturday Night phone call will happen soon!
But I now have two full days to further review the Ruff Record in peace, and work up my game plan for the final mix!
Talk to you tomorrow.
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