July 3, 2020

WFH: DAY 82. 8.15 am: A communion. 8.45 am: Inbox plundered, responses given, and spam deleted, I cranked-up the studio computer in readiness for a day or crackling, hissing, splintering, and grumbling sound-sample editing. I was a happy man. ‘Thank you for the gift of noise!’

To begin, I made small adjustments to sample volumes (in the range of -2dB to +2dB) at the beginning and end of the composition, to ensure parity of output. I have an alarming tendency to progressively increase the gain as a piece proceeds. The internet signal dropped-out periodically. The otherwise engaging percussive accompaniment of the rain tapping on the Velux and dripping from the troughing onto the window ledge didn’t further my efforts at mixing over the monitors:

In remaking the composition from the ground up, I appreciated certain sufficiencies and subtleties that weren’t apparent when I, formerly, had been over eager to overlay other sounds upon it. The recovery process involved separating out frequencies from the recovered mix file, by a dual process of enhancement and suppression across the range from 31Hz to 25kHz:

1.45 pm: ‘Keep listening to the whole, John, even as you work on the part!’, advised the inner-tutor. There came a point when the original conception gave way to better ideas. You can’t pour new wine into old wine skins. 3.00 pm: My ears had grown too accustomed to the sounds. I read for half-an-hour:

3.30 pm: I was in new territory. The burden of reproduction began to fall away. Of course there ought to be a period of silence to conclude. How could I’ve not discerned that aspect of the internal rhythm? There is much more space in the new conception of the composition. And the plausible sense of a bleak and forbidding landscape was evoked too, now. Which was entirely appropriate, because almost all the narratives in Jones’s collection are set outdoors: in forests and fields, on highways, and by pools, rivers, and lakes. While not complete, this version of the composition had already improved upon the last.

7.30 pm: I worked at the micro level, inserting newly made bricks into the wall, where necessary, while pointing-up others. I’d reach totality. It was the time to set the composition aside for a day, and begin work on reconnecting the parts of composition 2.

‘For now we see through a glass, darkly’ (1 Corinthians 13.12):

Previous Post
July 2, 2020
Next Post
July 4, 2020

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.