Blog: Back At The Mixing Desk

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More Transferable Skills ACTION for me last night, as I spent several hours at home hunched over the computer MASTERING the FAWM album. I say "mastering", but that may be to make it sound a bit more CLEVER than it really was, as what I was ACTUALLY doing was going through thinking "I wonder what the difference is between Normalisation and just increasing the volume? How does compression work? Why do tambourines always come out so LOUD?" There was a LOT of staring at WAV GRAPHS, application of LIMITERS, and trying to work out whether one song sounded EVER SO SLIGHTLY louder than another. For our most recent couple of Proper Efforts we've sent everything up to The Snug and they've squirted it all through one of their Magic Loudness Machines, but as I'd done everything else at home I thought I ought to finish it off there too.

And I must say, tho i say so myself as shouldn't, it's all sounding Surprisingly Good. As i was remarking to Mr FA Machine the other day, it's like I've stumbled on an entire album that I recorded unconsciously. I can remember BITS of certain songs, but the FACT i did it at such a PACE means I've never really gone back and listened to it that much, and have sort of assumed it'd be 50% rubbish, but I don't think it is. Of course, i ALWAYS think that when I demo new songs and am SOON disabused by The Validators!

The plan now is to make the finished article available to any newsletter subscribers who'd like one over the weekend (and ONLY over the weekend!), then send it to the CD manufacturers next week. In the meantime I'm going to put the updated versions up on my FAWM page - they should now be of a reasonably similar volume, and a couple have been remixed a bit to sort them out. I must say, I've REALLY enjoyed this PROJECT, tho I'm glad it's 11 months until I even have to THINK about doing it again!

posted 28/2/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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