An enjoyable trip to Bristol for a birthday party. The floods on Friday resulted in a difficult trip down. We were set to arrive at 1pm, and actually arrived at 7pm after needing to find a National Express coach in the heavy rain. No alternatives were provided by the train companies, all of the many passengers for Bristol were simply told that travel isn't/wasn't advised, and that nothing could therefore be done. This was not helpful. We explored alternatives. Deb was amazing in this crisis, and slightly enjoyed the adventure. We hooked up with a student who was fairly new to the UK and hadn't been to Bristol before and we found him a coach too. The lady at Birmingham National Express was the star of the day, and went above and beyond to find us a place on a coach two hours before our ticketed time. Without her we would have arrived at 9pm. National Express were brilliant on every level.
The party was great and had everything; good food, lovely people, games, star performances by most of the guests, a 1970s disco, and all set up, enjoyed, and tidied up by 8pm. I spent much of the time talking with electronic musician Leo, also known as Widespoon, and I hope that he can contribute to Snow Business.
Today, the first day of recovery has been busy and joyous too. First, more admin work on the Christmas album. It might be that there's a performance of the music in Crewe Library, but we will see. The logistics of such a show is not easy and the work considerable. I answered a few questions for the local Nantwich News.
Most of today was spent working on my 1-band EQ plug-in for Prometheus and it's largely complete. Here are two graphs; two -6dB dips at 450hz and 3600hz (incidentally, ignore the 'scribble' at the bottom of these, that's junk from the live white-noise):
You can see that mine on top has a smooth result and the Sony plug-in is more 'precise' in that intermediate bands are not touched, but I rather like that they are in mine, that the result is a smooth 'flow' between settings. Of the many changes I made today, the first was realising that positive and negative gains needed radically different bandwidths to give equivalent results. Testing on sine waves gave perfect results, so, after about 7 or 8 full days of programming this, I think it's complete. There are two overall 'gain' controls too; one a master boost to all levels, sort of like a 'contrast' control, and one a post-EQ volume, sort of like 'brightness' (to continue the image processing analogy).
I've done this mainly so that it can be applied before limiting, rather than after. All future songs should be better balanced and better limited. Over time, each update, each improvement, becomes harder and harder for smaller gains, but we must improve. I must improve with each song and each result. There's no point in doing the same thing twice.
Next, I must finish Christmas Smells. Crucially, the vocals are needed, and perhaps a new take of the electric guitars. I sang so much on Saturday that a day of vocal rest today is beneficial. Onwards we charge!
