Flying
This morning this stretch of road looked like space, three dimensional and with thousands of little spaceships flying around at great speed. Cottonwood season.
Mix Test
A blade of light near the studio’s entrance:
Today I walked to the studio and fired up the console to do a couple of test mixes. I remembered a bunch of albums from the Sixties, where the stereo field of a trio (((I think the Beatles might have done a few mixes that were similar, once they went stereo, but I could be wrong))) has the guitar or vocal in the middle and the drums and bass off to the sides. That sort of mix uses the width of the stereo field to create a better separation between the instruments.
There used to be severe limits to this kind of mixing, because of the nature of recording in the early days – literally cutting a groove into an acetate disc – and also because of the way vinyl worked: the groove was deepest in the center and therefore the bulk of the bass had to be delivered there. Bass over to the side did not work.
So Jon sent me a track from yesterday’s rehearsals and here is what I did. Mix1 features the bass about half-way left. The drums are half-way right and the guitar is center. Keep in mind the drums had only a stereo mike and the kick mike on it. They will sound much better once they are properly miked up.
This placement sounds great on loudspeakers, I find, and does quite well on headphones. Headphones are the biggest concern, because bass to far on one side feels weird, but this seems OK. Let me know what you think.
Here is a reference mix, where I did my usual stereo field – I usually have the bass at -14 and the kick at +14 (((the stereo field goes from -100, all the way to the left, to +100, which is all the way on the right))), to create a little bit of separation between them. The guitar is still in he middle and the stereo drums are all the way to the left and right. This field, which sounds a bit too narrow here, sounds much better with more instruments, like two or three rhythm guitars and one or more percussion tracks added, which can be pushed out to the left or right side.
Again, this is only a rehearsal, with plenty of clams… Do let me know how you feel about the two different mixes.
Saturday
Yesterday I learned a new way to tie my shoes, using the Ian Knot. In the afternoon I took photos for this Time-Lapse:
Fade to Grey from Ottmar Liebert on Vimeo.
The color and shadows were all fading to grey as the sun dove behind clouds. The camera choked a couple of times, which created two or three hickups. I like the bits of color. Will try again.
Nice comments yesterday. I especially enjoyed this:
It really doesn’t matter what the numbers are. It’s how clear the sound is and how much room there is in it for you. A place for you to slip in and enjoy the ride.
and this:
I enjoy the three dimensional sense of a higher quality audio file…It’s little like drinking Wine; when we’re exposed to something better it’s not easy to go back to something of a lesser quality……Cheers!
Woke up at 06:30 to snow on the ground and dark grey clouds. It’s been so very dry that all moisture is welcome. 
Sparkles
This morning the first rays of the morning sun are reflected by the snow on the trees,
making everything
sparkle…
