Rain Poems
Fine-tuning the mixes. Listening, making notes, making small changes, listening some more. Switching between a couple of different speaker pairs and a few headphones. Oh, this is fun!
AVID + Pro Tools
This month AVID, makers of the most ubiquitous studio recording software, Pro Tools, was sold to a Private Equity firm. I found this article about Private Equity very illuminating.
What can we expect? I think support will be slashed, subscription rates will be hiked, development will be cut…
What can you do?
Plan A:
We don’t update a hammer, or a guitar annually, but we have become used to (we were trained to?) updating our hardware and software regularly. While I have generally done that with my phone, I never did that with my recording computer and software. Everything until 2021, and including Bare Wood 2, was recorded on a Macintosh computer dating from 2003. The computer was running Pro Tools version 6.9.1, which was released in the fall of 2005. Very stable. So, I suggest using the perpetual version of the Pro Tools software and freezing your system. I use the perpetual version of PT (software version 23.6.0.110), running on my two year old MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip. That version of PT is finally running on Apple Silicon without Rosetta. All of my plugins are running natively as well. Mac OS 13.5.1 seems very stable. So this is where the laptop and the software will remain. Get out of the crazy updating cycle. A digital audio workstation is a tool, not something that needs to be changed constantly.
Plan B:
I also hear good things about Studio One.
SPAT again
A few months ago I looked into audio localization software for binaural and transaural mixing. I downloaded two different solutions and ended up not trialing neither because I started recording again and when the muses visit you must not stop and you must not interrupt them. You do as they say and you say please and thank you.
When I received an email from Flux this week, about their 50% off sale, I took it as a sign and bought the SPAT Revolution Essential software for $199.
Once I am happy with the stereo mixes for the 18 tracks of Rain Poems, I shall begin to experiment with SPAT.
The summer promo of 50% off continues until Monday.
Reasoning Reduces Satisfaction
There’s this behavioral economics study that completely changed the way i thought about art, teaching, and critique: it’s a 1993 study called “Introspecting about Reasons can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction” by Timothy D Wilson, Douglas J Lisle, Jonathan Schooler, Sara Hodges, Kristen Klaaren and Suzanne LaFleur: LINK
Introspecting about Reasons can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction… and it can make us miss out on creating something beautiful, too. Reasoning about why we like something, anything, can be a fun exercise, it can help us learn, and it can also ruin something tender that is being grown.
The way I approach this problem is to record ANYTHING that comes to mind and then step away from it. Record first and inspect later. I often created something and my mind immediately got in the way: that’s not good enough. Why? It’s not serious enough, not complicated enough, not what it should be. Then I made the rule that I can, in fact I must, record anything that comes to mind without analyzing it right away. Call it a grace period. Walk away, and listen with fresh ears tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow it’ll sound terrible and maybe tomorrow it will sound amazing. I have had both happen.
And let the body decide. When the body moves, the feet move, the head starts bobbing, the mind gets overruled.
Does it fit…
I had this idea for a guitar rhythm the other night, a swinging arpeggio played with the sponge under the strings, and recorded it right away. The next morning I listened and came up with a guitar melody I liked. As I listened to the piece, I wondered where that melody came from. I played the melody with my thumb and I think playing that way made it feel more like something I might play on an electric guitar. The first guitar rhythm was played with a lot of swing so this morning I played a second line that didn’t swing at all. The combination of those two rhythms created a beautiful forward movement. But what is this, I wondered (out of habit?)… It doesn’t matter WHAT it is, I told myself. I love the feel of it, my head keeps nodding to it, and I keep playing it on repeat. What more do I want?! I am out of the streaming music game and don’t need to fit into a genre. Now less than ever. LOL. Next came some chords, plucked softly and only on the two and four, like a backbeat. Then I found a bit of rain that fit the tempo and feel… How can rain drops be so funky? LoFi Flamenco guitar? Does it fit? Yes, it does. Hm, and what will Jon do with this one???
Frontier
I have been recording nearly every day this week. Since Wednesday I recorded three new pieces. One new piece each afternoon. It’s a walk to the frontier, to the fog that obscures the mountain. I thought these pieces would take me into foreign territory but they feel truthful, right and beautiful. Prepared guitar, half-speed guitar, anything I can think of. Having a ball. The high of the flow.
