6.30.07
JUST THE FACTS
Done mixing a full-length for the band Days, which was tracked and retracked all over the continent in the past year or so, by a few different engineers, including my pal Joe Mitra. Note to self: RE20 on electric guitar? YES.
A busy and exciting couple of months ahead: finishing mixing the Killing the Dream record, tracking and mixing a full-length with (one of my all-time favorites) Rahim, finishing up the second RSA record, mixing an album for the LA band You Me and Iowa, then in August Paint it Black will be here to track a new full-length, Knot Feeder comes in for a few days, and finally Sylvie will come down all the way from Canada to make their second album in the last two weeks of August.
I am also on the last day of the Master Cleanser and I feel closer to Beyonce than ever before. Where's my curry?

Top Gear:
Here There and Everywhere, My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, by Geoff Emerick
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
1968, by Mark Kurlansky
Story of the Sea
the new Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave live songs in the Leonard Cohen "I'm Your Man" DVD
Our neighbors in the next block North of us seem to be shooting guns in the air
Finally hearing the great new Mary Timony record with all the vocs and overdubs and a nice mix by T.J. Lipple
A Personal Journey With Martin Scorcese Through American Movies
the new Blonde Redhead

6.6.07
MY RANT ABOUT LOUDNESS, by J.
So Bob Weston and Jason Ward just opened a mastering facility in Chicago and I was checking out their website, where I saw this. I'm so glad someone has finally provided a clear and graphic explanation of why louder is not necessarily better. The push to make each record "louder than the other guy's" is a monumental disservice to music and - with some exceptions - is rooted in the kind of thinking that gave the world penis enlargement pills, as opposed to a genuine desire to serve music or make more meaningful communication happen.
In the last few years, like a lot of engineers I know, A/B'ing as I have been mixing records, I have noticed a disturbing trend toward records that run "in the red" and actually sound it. I've found myself thinking "how could the engineer, producer, mastering engineer, and above all the artist, not hear that this record is actually DISTORTED? I've even tried to make myself get used to the sound - it is initially pretty exciting, for the right band, the right kind of music ... I've thought, "well, sociologically, the 21st Century is a violent, competitive, psychopathic, bullying era in history, so it's only logical that's how we look at music too" ... but that's not how I look at music, and it makes listening to a whole record, focusing, getting INTO the record in a meaningful way, actually difficult. It also can make for an awful lot of second-guessing in the studio, particularly about mix aesthetics. How will this mix translate once it is slammed into oblivion with compression and limiting? I have even heard lately of mastering engineers wasting precious energy and time listening for digital overs with headphones (!), just to be sure they squeeze the last half-dB of volume out of the program ... rather than being allowed to focus on creative decisions about the approach that most flatters that program. But it is absolutely a market-driven problem. With labels and artists who are demanding louder records without thinking about whether there's a trade-off - and there most certainly is - you could be forgiven for thinking the work will go to the person who will simply make the loudest record. Vlado will always make it louder.
I'm not saying it's wrong to want your record to leap out of the speakers; far from it. But I am saying by playing into "the loudness wars" you are allowing people you've never met - the prime movers of the highly expoitative mainstream music industry, who are deeply invested in the logic of dick-size comparison - to define what "leaping out of the speakers" means, and often to the detriment of your music and the degradation of the hard work you and your colleagues have put into it. And you are an accessory to the hijacking of the volume control from the people who buy your record and maybe want to decide for themselves how loud to listen to it. Seriously, put on some CD's from the early 90's and then put on something from the past year or two, and you tell me which is easier to invest your time and attention in. I'm not talking about the intrinsic qualities of the music, just which approach gives you a headache quicker.
Records themselves have been "loud enough" since the invention of stereo. You the listener can make them louder at home by buying bigger speakers and a massive power amplifier - then the loudness wars will be between you and your neighbors, instead of between market forces and art - because when those two fight, art invariably loses.

Whew.