The day of The Queen's funeral. Perhaps normally I'd be gripped by this spectacle of art (and the comedy of religion - as if anyone, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, believes that there's a magical society of dead people all living and partying away somewhere; the whole Christian idea of life after death is ludicrous), but today I was enthused and ready for normal work, as I'm sure Her Majesty would have been too, so work it was.
I listened to some tracks from Bowie's Heathen last night, one of my favourite Bowie albums. I thought that my mixes could benefit from a 24dB high pass filter, and resolved to check the algorithmic differences between high and low pass filters - my two low pass filters (one 'digital' sounding, one an 'analogue' style emulation called Moog VCF) are 24dB. I noted that the only difference between high and low pass were a few sign switches in the coefficients, so I flipped them and made a new 'High Pass 24D' filter, with a Q factor, which instantly came in handy. When mixing, generally, you need ONE bass sound. Intermittent bass sounds, thuds like the bass drum are fine, or untuned ones, providing you don't mind the wobble/rumble of those, but a tuned bass will interfere with any other tuned bass and sound ugly. Even if the note is identical it will interfere and be unpredictable. So, a general rule is apply a high pass filter to everything but that one bass sound, and pay particular attention to long, drawn-out sounds like chords, strings, low pianos with lots of decay etc.
With each album I seem to learn something and I always regret not knowing it earlier. This is good.
After the programming I got to work on Empathy With Daisies and added a looping vocal using my 'Proteus' plugin, which is a sample player with programmable loop points. This made it easy to loop specific words of Deb's vocal, which Bowie/Visconti also did with the Blackstar vocals. I added this, and added more depth to the solo. I've mixed and heard most of this album on speakers, but this meant it sounded too sparse on headphones, so I've gone back to headphones. The panning for the guitar solo is the main bit that needs refinement.
After that, I added the vocals to Cosmic Solitude, which was fairly easy, then did some work on the dance remix of Dream Sequence. I have the backing and know the tune, but I need to think of more structure... I need a point of tension, something new. I've used some of Deb's vocals, not all, but some are ideal for a club track. I think I'll listen to a few classic trance tracks tonight, like Saltwater, Lizard, Children etc.
