President's Day
Monday, February 16th, 2026 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio62F and sunny again today!
Just got back from running the Sunday errands, on a Monday! So nice to do it without gloves or a scarf, and with daylight!
I did remember to stop at the UPS store, after Aldi, and drop off those shoes for a return to Amazon, so that 70.00 will be refunded soon.
Last night I managed to EQ guitars for Magic Monday, and Tuesday Siren before bed, so that's five of twelve now done!
I'll pick up with, Our Cold Feet, in a moment here, and we'll see how far I get tonight.
Laundry will take up a bit of my time later tonight, but I've still got until 3AM.
Okay, just knocked out, Our Cold Feet!
I'm starting to develop an instinct for the guitar sounds. With all of these songs it's a lot of hopping around between Sakura, PQ2, Fast Dist, and Convolver... a tweak to this will effect that, then you go tweak that and it effects this other, and you just keep going from one console to the other until you finally get the sound.
The new PQ2 for all the guitars look very similar, however... it's always a high pass to *around* 200Hz, then a big wide-Q dome of a boost at around 3000Hz, and then one band pulled down to zero, with a modest Q, which usually lands somewhere in the 500-700Hz range. But it's sliding that band back and forth that... well it almost acts like a tone knob... you really hear it wherever you move it, but it's easy to find the sweet spot by ear.
Further brightness or darkness is then tweaked in Sakura, by manipulating the envelopes and the string dampening... with just tiny adjustments making a big difference.
The Fast Dist distorion can sound very tinny if the settings are wrong, like fizz, but to get that right is about adjustments to what's coming in, and the mix level, with the output always being 100%. The threshold can be very low, and still deliver a lot of distortion.
Convolver's self-convolve, and WET knobs then bring the sound into the room. The DRY knob is always around 80%.
So, if a first pass leaves a weird sounding guitar, it's just hopping around and tweaking things here and there until it finally pops out.
Okay, it's just about 6PM. Closer To You, is next, and I've got three hours until it's laundry time!
Talk to you later!
Our Cold Feet, guitars are done! Exporting test WAV. On to Bed In The Suburbs!
Bed in the Suburbs guitars are done! Exporting test WAV. Clue Phone and Other friends are done, but still need to be exported to test wav. But after that, on to, Spell I'm Under!
Spell I'm Under guitars are done! Exporting test WAV. Clue Phone & Other Friends test WAVs were already exported!
Miss Fortune and Archeology are the only two left! I can probably knock out Miss Fortune before it's shave, shower, and laundry time... and then do Archeology as the laundry is going downstairs.
I just now noticed today is a New Moon!.. so a good time to finish spectral on the Guitars!
Okay, Miss Fortune is Done! I'm gonna just break away now to trim the beard, shave the bald head, shower, and get the laundry started.
My ears are fatiged.
I'll talk to you once the laundry is up from the dryer, by which time Archeology guitars will have been done.
I'm all clean and shiny, and the laundry is in the washer, with 9 minutes left.
Archeology guitars are done, and it's exporting as a test WAV!
Just got news from Alexa that the shoes were received by Amazon and the refund was issued! Woo-hoo!
40 minutes on the dryer. All the new album data's backed up, and the test WAVs from this weekend are ready for me to review in the Beyerdynamics later tonight.
Okay, so as a review, here... Last weekend (Superbowl weekend) I started in on spectral an analysis and solidified the PQ2 settings for all drums, cymbals, and the bass guitar.
This was on the heels of a couple weeks of gain balancing, and I ended Superbowl Sunday with a folder full of test WAVs of just the rock trio.
Then came Saturday, Valentine's Day, where I managed to do spectral on all the orchestral instruments, except for the piano... nailing down new PQ2 settings for all of them, and saving them into the same folder created for the new PQ2s of the drums/bass.
But I also saved all the guitar setting information as I went.
Sunday, the challenge was to break the back of the guitar settings, armed with a folder full of data, and an afternoon free to monitor in the open air.
Between Clue Phone, and Other Friends, I worked out the beginnings of system that was then applied to Reavis, before it got too late for the iLouds, and then in the late session, I applied that system to Magic Monday, and Tuesday Siren, in headphones.
Today, then I was confident enough in the new system to knock out all the remaining guitars at lightning speed. And now I have new Test WAVs to review that feature both the newly EQed orchestral (except for piano), and the newly EQed guitars.
So... it's probably *not* true that these are the *final* guitars!
But they are more uniform now, with all their sounds having been established by the same underlying principals, and I do have the old guitars on file if they're needed.
I anticipate that if there are any guitar issues, now they will be global... for example, perhaps the one tone notch, and the one wide boost (and the one low pass for the highest highs) are not sophisticated enough... or... some knob in Sakura remains problematic, or... Convolver's Model S cab sim (used universally) is not the most ideal.
I'm sure to be tweaking these guitars as I move through the next phases, but now, the fixes will be minor, and easily propagated to the other songs.
So the guitars did make a big step forward this weekend.
And between last weekend and this one, the whole mix has effectively had it's long awaited, "spectral analysis" and tone balancing (except for the piano).
So, this coming week, after work, I'll crack the code on the piano, and then do a second pass for gain balancing, now that everything's been tone-balanced.
And if that all goes well, then we're talking about the start of the compression phase next Saturday! Hooray!
I'm gonna be applying different types and levels of compression to each instrument, so that phase is gonna take some time, I'm sure.
After it's done, the music will be exported to Audacity, where the vocals and sound effects will have their final gain, tone, and compressor treatments... and then it'll be about mastering and release!
So, we're in mid February right now?... Hrmmm...
My new goal is the end of April for the release. Two and a half months seems doable.
And that'll be nice, because that's when Uranus re-enters Gemini, to stay for good!.. completing the long dance of the three generational planets entering new signs.
Okay, eleven minutes to go on the dryer down there.
I'm gonna sign off for the weekend.
Talk to you next Saturday, when, hopefully, the compression phase begins!
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