My latest single just dropped on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Amazon Music, really every streaming platform on Earth by way of Distrokid. It’s also on regular old Youtube.
It’s called “Just for a Moment,” and the B-Side is “Union Street (Hold On).” Give me a listen, like, and follow if you’re a fan.
I have a track I’ve mastered. It’s -14.7 LUFS and -1.2 True Peak. I’m pretty happy with it other than I wish it were about a decibel louder. So I thought I’d try to go for -13.5 LUFS. But it seems whatever I do the true peak is more sensitive to than the LUFS. For instance, the first thing I did was raise the gain on the Multipressor in the master chain from 1.6 to 2.0. The overall LUFS integrated went to 14.4, but the True Peak went to 1.0 which I want to keep under. Should I increase the limiter then? Shorter version of the question: How to increase the LUFS without increasing the True Peak? Thanks! I bought a copy of Levels.
I do think I have figured out one thing: Just a small bit of audio or so can make your True Peak sky rocket out of the blue while 98% of the mix is well below your target, even though it’s not necessarily audible. Once you identify that bit, and it’s not hard with a metering plug-in like Levels or Youlean, you can create an identical track, cut and copy that bit to it and apply more processing to just it, whether that be a Limiter, faster attack time on your compressor, and then it frees up the majority of the track to breathe! [I made these comments to this video post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS07ChRkY4M ]
Last night the idea came to me as a melody A-F#-D-A-C-B. I didn’t know what the notes were until I played it on the guitar and this is where the Snarkman was another blessing, since it identifies the notes as you are playing them. Then I was able to surmise that it was over a D-C-G chord movement. I tapped the rhythm as 109 and layed down the first demo on the iPad in Garageband with an accompanying “Drummer Track.” I sang mumbo jumbo which is what I usually do just so I can get the jist of the idea before I go to sleep.
1:49 pm. Today, I’m going to try writing the lyrics. I’m going to listen to what I mumbled last night and see if I can write some real words.
2:30pm. I got a first verse, chorus, and half of a second verse, but I had to stop. Or maybe I didn’t need to stop, but it feels like I need to stop for a while, do some other things and let my subconscious go to work. I still struggle with just letting out anything that comes to my mind, which I think you have to do on your first draft. When push comes to shove and its going to press tomorrow you can clean it up, but for now let your mind have some space.
I think the desire is to make everything so pretty, especially when the music is pretty, so when something comes out that is either nonsensical or not necessarily a pretty image, the impulse is to quash it. I say let it out, especially on the first draft. I’m trying to walk a fine line here with a balance between the subconscious and the conscious. I want to let each have its day in court so to speak. On the one hand if I wait for the subconscious to come up with the most perfect line, it’ll never get done, on the other hand if I just go with the first thing, not trying at all to bring some sense into the equation it won’t have any value either. “Sound and Sense” as my college poetry textbook said. An equal mixture of both. That’s poetry.
5/19/20
Well, let’s see. So technically I put in 40 minutes on this yesterday, but as I was doing other things the song remained in my head, and new lyrics started coming to me. Luckily with the Notes App whether I work on it at the desk or when I’m out and about with the iPhone, it all syncs up. Today, technically I sat down with it another 45 minutes or so. Well the end result is, I’ve got two or three pages of lyrics, way more than I need, but they don’t necessarily make sense together. Also, when I sing the ones I have, it just feels like there are better lyrics hiding, but I can’t force it or they won’t reveal themselves. Actually after I wrote for 45 minutes I opened up Soundtrap and layed down a couple guitar tracks. I’m a little stressed about the lyrics. It feels like a delicate line to walk between not rushing them and procrastination. I don’t mind having this creative space at the beginning, but I definitely don’t want it to go on too far. There should be some kind of deadline, but I’m not sure what it should be.
As a teen I romanticized it. Now, I realize that’s the same as mythologizing something. Of course the reality of the experience was anything but. Unless you were having a good trip, as it were. As a young teen in the early eighties, maybe from my older sister’s record collection, I was into CSNY, Dylan, Clapton, Beatles, Stones, etc. This was odd for 1983 I suppose. Even though MTV fascinated me in and of itself, I always “hate-watched” the content thinking it was so superficial compared to my beloved 60’s.
But enough about my thoughts on this now. I’ll add to them later including a whole chapter from my novel “The Horizon’s Blue Chance” which is all about a re-enactment of Woodstock at a college party in 1988. (the Chapter that is, not the whole novel. It’s the next to last one in the book, so it serves a prominent purpose to the story as a whole, at least psychologically and spiritually, a sort of “belly of the whale” experience.”)
I saw an article in today’s New York Times entitled “Woodstock Was the Birthplace of Festival Fashion” and like so much of my blog I just wanted to create a repository for media concerning topics I’m interested in.
On all the major and minor streamers. Distrokid is a godsend. God bless you Philip Kaplan!
It’s called “It’s Nowhere.” I hope you’ll give it a listen, and let me know what you think!
Here’s the best link. It’s the Distrokid Hyperfollow Page that has links to all the major services. Am I crazy about this song? Not at the moment. I’ve listened to it so many times over the last few days, I just need a few weeks away from it for sure. Mostly when it comes out on these services you’re trying to see does it hold up at least sonically with other things you like.
I’d say on the whole it does. Like 85% of the time. So that makes me feel good and hopeful about my own mixing and mastering, and the potential of the tools going forward.
I’ll write more about this song later when I’m not so exhausted with it. Hopefully I’ll go on tour and play it live too—for you! For now, here’s a youtube link to the song, that anyone can listen to, even if they aren’t a subscriber to one of the streamers.
