Techno for Luddites

Editing Tedium

I seriously need to finish this album before my social life becomes non-existent.

How do I spend Saturday night? Cutting every single snare drum out of the sample loop drum track and substituting each one with a strategic hand clap. This is just one of the great adventures in audio editing no-one bothered to warn me about. These ugly tasks that no-one wants to do, I always end up volunteering for. Inspired by the hand claps of the Clash's 'Rock the Casbah,' we thought this last minute change would propel the groove along a bit more. Hopefully it'll bring up the the brightness and clarity of the mix. The old snare had a gnarly edge that seemed to slow the whole song down.

If I thought about it properly from the outset, I would have done the whole thing differently. Usually when I get the initial ideas down, I tend to be sloppy. I throw lots of unrelated things together and layer like crazy. Then when it comes to mixing, there is often a concentration of parts in the mid and low range frequencies. It ends up sounding murky and cluttered. So now we're stripping it all back, and I'm chastising myself for being such a messy programmer.

The winner of the week was Om-synth, which can be downloaded from http://www.nongnu.org/om-synth

It's a bit like Reaktor - a patchable synthesiser that allows you to tweak and craft a sound to the minutest detail. Nick came up with a great lo-fi fuzz-like guitar sound that helped tie all the sounds together in the chorus. Thanks to Dave Robillard for developing this handy tool.

posted by deprogram @ 10:47 PM

It's a sweltering night in the studio. A light rain has stirred up all the humidity, and I'm soaking up the heat generated from the console and various humming computers.

Tonight we're mixing the first single off the next record. It's packed with bad attitude, a menacing vocal and a hard, punctuated groove that has been slowed down with varispeed in Adrour. I've entered some sort of stupor, listening to it over and over again, till the repetition has started numbing my brain.

When confused - I make tea. It gets me out of the room, clears my ears, and provides much-needed sustenance for the producer. I walk around in the garden, glance at the moon and breathe in some fresh air.

Usually at this point in the mixing we reach cabin fever. But it's gone the other way this time. The main thing that weighs us down now is distractions - dealing with being broke, a constant stream of visitors, and balancing this with our other bands/software projects. I prefer the luxury of uninterrupted concentration, but this is a bit of a far-fetched aim for a self-funded project.

OK, it's 2.30am and the mix is gathering momentum. These early morning hours are the best for working. Even though my brain is sluggish, the phone is quiet, the traffic has died down, and the only creatures I can hear right now are the possums and our resident owl. Bliss.

posted by deprogram @ 12:26 AM