More work on the final stages of The Golden Age. I put together 5 scores yesterday for 3 of the songs, and Peter came for his piano lesson. My mum asked if he could sing, that maybe he could become my vocalist - what a cheek! Such unwelcome and spontaneous commentary is usual for those known as my parents. It would be presumptuous, if not selfish to want to be loved or appreciated by one's family, who cares about that! As a child all I wanted was to be left alone, avoid their attacks. I spend and have spent great efforts in concealing everything I've done and do from them, an attitude that has irrevocably affected the way I deal with all other humans (my first art club used to hold it against me that I was hesitant to share my work with them, when hiding my work was purely due to shame and modesty, my deisre not to show off), but still they spy on my work to volunteer some critique. I console myself with the expectation that this is common, that no father would congratulate a son on a D.I.Y. job well done; a parent's raison d'etre is to point out flaws. I'm amazed that anyone could like their parents.
Today I've recorded the vocals for the last track, Rembrandt. It may benefit from some extra layers. I hate and will never use (and never have used!) any form of 'pitch correction' or 'auto-tune'. This (hopefully) makes my songs more emotionally expressive than the awful music I hear on the radio and television and, by and large, cannot stand. Real vocals benefit from lots of layers. I've tended not to like those either because they also mask emotional rawness, but there are many vocals in this album.
Today was mostly spent mastering, finalising the volumes. Generally I render everything to the first peak. This leads to music at about -16dB LUFS. LUFS is an odd standard of loudness. For this calculation, the bass of the song is cut off 37.5hz, frequencies over 1500hz are turned up, and the result measured. It seems to pay no attention to psychoacoustic effects, Fletcher–Munson curves etc. I've turned up my base volumes by 20% to bring them into the -14dB range, which is the Spotify standard and a nice level without being too harsh like the awful Bjork Utopia, or the less bad but still too-loud Blackstar by Bowie; but this is louder than most of my albums.
I've found and used a free LUFS meter, but I'll probably program my own at some point; not an LUFS meter but a better volume analyser just for me.
One other aspect of mastering is checking the overall EQ. Prometheus has an Spectrum Analysis option and I've made a 'standard candle' sort of set of levels which can be compared with my mix, to note if any frequencies are obscenely lacking or present. My ears aren't perfect and I check things though many speakers, as well as visually using tools like this and a separate spectrogram too. I've also made some tweaks to the cover art, which is now this...
With a bit more contrast and some dots. These final stages of an album take an age, but things are moving on. I'm full of ideas for albums, and need to make some other art. Time is short. Money is shorter at the moment. Blessings must be counted.
