Sunday, March 31, 2019: After lunch, I walked through Gogerddan Woods, on the outskirts of Aberystwyth. We used to visit regularly when the children were young. Our boys would play Poohsticks from the bridge over the stream that, today, was at shallow reflection of its former self. The bluebells, for which the woods is renowned in the locality, were evident only in fits and starts. It’s too early for the full bloom.
I was in doxological mode: humming hymns and whispering chants. At such times, my heart is somewhere between this world and the next. I recalled Samuel Palmer’s vision of nature:
I cannot think it other than the veil of Heaven, through which her divine features are dimly smiling: the setting of the table before the feast; the symphony before the tune; the prologue of the drama; a dream, and antepast, and proscenium of eternity.
Monday, April 1, 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: I attended to my inbox and postgraduate admin. 10.00 am: With the morning’s third cup of PG Tips in hand, I headed for the studio to continue with the second phase of mixing, using three pairs of studio monitors. First, a stereo/mono test of the systems to ensure that I was adjusting the channels on my digital work station within a balanced environment. I purchased a pair of cheapo speaker stands to permit me to spread the stereo field further apart in the studio. I listened:
I tweaked tracks as I proceeded. At this stage, adjustments are minor. The task is to refine rather than change. Possibly, the deficits are only audible to me. But as I will be one of the work’s audience when it’s finished, they need to be eradicated. I’m not seeking perfection; optimisation is the goal.
After lunch, I listened to several of the noise-centred compositions with a view both to situating the tracks stereophonically, ridding the dense ones of muddiness, paying heed to the clarity of the upper frequencies, and maximising loudness.
Techniques for the improvement of one track could be applied to the others, in most cases. Bouncing down. Bouncing down. Email requests and small admin tasks were dealt with in the background. 3.00 pm: Teatime and time to tease the upper-speakers’ frequency bias:
As the final part of The Aural Bible trilogy comes to a close, then, so does a way of working. I’ve done all I can in this mode, for now. Whatever’s next is seeded in what has gone before. That’s an axiom of creativity, in my books. Heed the past. By the close of the afternoon I sensed that an agenda for second-phase mixing had been established. The task ahead was primarily one of consistent implementation.
7.30 pm: I caught up with the early-evening evening emails, before knuckling down to devising questions for the PhD Fine Art Viva Voce on Wednesday.
